By HARVEY ARATON
Already atop his hemisphere of the basketball world, Geno Auriemma had a sobering overview of the men’s professional version, New York metropolitan area chapter, from a sky suite at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. He watched the Knicks close their season by slaughtering the Nets and pronounced himself wholeheartedly fulfilled as the architect of Connecticut’s recently crowned N.C.A.A. women’s champions and the newly named coach of the United States national team for the next Olympics cycle.
As with Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, the son of Polish immigrants, Auriemma said the typical third-generation American might not fully understand what the national team gig means for him, Philadelphia-bred but Italian-born.
“It’s something I always wanted to do,” said Auriemma, who was an assistant to Nell Fortner at the 2000 Sydney Games.
He acknowledged that the first thing he needs to do is call Krzyzewski to find out “how do you achieve the balance between the two jobs and still be able to stay sane with your personal life and your family?”
Especially when factoring in these twin realities: the Olympic appointment carries a gold-medal mandate while the Connecticut folk have been conditioned (by Auriemma) to expect nothing less than the Final Four.
I mentioned to him that after writing a February column praising Krzyzewski for his three-year volunteer duty in the restoration of America’s international basketball image (culminating with a gold medal last summer in Beijing), I received a fair number of e-mail messages from Duke country wondering how many prize recruits were lost to North Carolina while Coach K was moonlighting with the national team.
These days, in chat rooms and on message boards, there apparently is no such thing as an icon.
But let’s say you are an 18-year-old high school recruit, a globetrotting phenomenon in our so-called amateur culture of uncontrolled patronage. Do you think less of Coach K because he is the guy with Kobe and LeBron on his speed dial, or more?
“Duke’s going to get the guys they’re going to get whether you’re coaching the Olympic team or not,” Auriemma said. “There’s a certain kind of kid that goes to Duke, just like there’s a certain kind of kid that goes to UConn.”
The core players on the 2000 team were not Auriemma players, and that is why he said now was “the perfect time for me to be doing this.” Two of his favorites, Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, are established W.N.B.A. stars and 2008 gold medalists. By the 2012 London Games, Renee Montgomery, Maya Moore and Tina Charles from this season’s team could be challenging for positions.
On the inherent job security risks outside his UConn kingdom, Auriemma said, “I’ve said a thousand times, there are two kinds of coaches — the ones who coach great players and ex-coaches.”
Oh, he has had offers to cross the gender line, within the college game. He said he was once “this close” to accepting one, too, until he consulted a friendly colleague, who shook his head in exasperation and said, “You’ve got to be the dumbest you-know-what in America.”
“Mr. Sunshine, Jim Boeheim,” Auriemma said. “See, he was saying: ‘This is all about winning, and you’re going to win every year, and you’re going to get the best players and you’re getting paid a lot of money. What’s wrong with that? Why isn’t that enough?’
“But that’s because he’s a very simple-thinking guy, while I’m thinking, Because maybe I want to come to the Carrier Dome and kick your butt.”
Boeheim’s sound advice eventually trumped Auriemma’s wanderlust. He settled in as a Connecticut lifer of the Coach K kind. Not a bad career choice in the aftermath of a third unbeaten season and especially now that USA Basketball has called to confer upon him the honor of being his country’s head coach.
They will have no favored status, Auriemma said, because he also considers opposing contemporary stars — Candace Parker, Seimone Augustus, Tamika Catchings — to be his people. “The ones I didn’t get but know,” he said.
He knew one thing Wednesday night, sipping red wine and watching a dreary Knicks game from high above the Garden court. These days, he is having a much better time than Mike D’Antoni, also a friend and part of the coaching Italian brotherhood. D’Antoni finished his first season in New York with 32 victories, or 7 fewer than UConn.
