Q&A with Duke graduate, author John Feinstein

John Feinstein, a Duke graduate, a New York Times’ best-selling author and a columnist for the Washington Post, knows the intensity of North Carolina basketball. The Daily Tar Heel staff writer Paige Connelly spoke with Feinstein about his book, “The Legends Club: Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry.”

The Daily Tar Heel: Tell me about your book.

John Feinstein: I think I can make the case that combined, I knew all three better than any of the media. I knew (Jim) Valvano very well, I know (Mike) Krzyzewski very well, and I think I knew Dean (Smith) as well as anybody in the media ever has.

In fact, in 2009, he and I actually started to work on a biography that I was going to write on him, an authorized biography, but unfortunately by then he’d gotten to the point where it was just impossible for him to carry through until the and of the book.

So I knew them all well. They were all extraordinary, and I thought writing their relationships and their rivalries, which were very intense, would make for a very good book. It was certainly a fun book for me to research.

DTH: Of all the college rivalries, why was this close to your heart enough that you wanted to write about it?

JF: The three men that I was writing about were unique in their own way, and as I said, I first met Dean when I was in college, as I described in the introduction to the book.

I met Krzyzewski and Valvano when I was in college, too, when I was a senior, both together at a luncheon in New York City when I was up there with the Duke basketball team because Duke was playing in Madison Square Garden.

I’ve said to people that I wasn’t born to write this book, but I lived it because I was covering the ACC for The Washington Post in the 1980s and spent a lot of time down there in the Triangle area.

DTH: What do you think is so different about the basketball culture here at UNC?

JF: I’m sure you’re aware of his role in helping to desegregate restaurants in Chapel Hill. I was actually the first person to write that story when I did a long profile of him in 1981 in The Washington Post.

It was Dean’s minister, Robert Seymour, who told me the story, and I’ve told this story often; I write about it again in the book in the introduction. When I went back to Dean and asked him to give me more details about that night when he walked in to the Old Pines restaurant with a black member of the church, he said, “Who told you that story?” And I said, “Reverend Seymour,” and he said, “Well, I wish he hadn’t told you that,” and I said, “Why not, Dean? You should be proud of doing something like that,” and he said, “You should never be proud of doing the right thing, John. You should just do the right thing.”

DTH: What’s the bigger meaning of this to you? Why are sports important in our culture?

JF: Bob Woodward was actually my editor at the time, and he said to me “Why do you want to waste your time covering sports?” and that was a tough question for me, and it’s hard to explain.

But my mother died very suddenly in 1993, and when I was trying to sleep at night, the only thing that got me through it was to remember games, to think about games I had seen, games I had covered, games I had written about, and I realized that sports plays an important role in a lot of lives, not just as an escape but as a place to go to for fun, for joy, sometimes for heartbreak on a certain level.

It also bonds people, and I think that’s what Dean and Mike and Jim did — all three of them ... were great leaders and coaches and teachers.

arts@dailytarheel.com