DURHAM, N.C. — As he's done for the past 42 years, Mike Krzyzewski plans to continue celebrating and improving Duke's historic Cameron Indoor Stadium even after he coaches his last game there on Saturday night.
One of the retirement tasks the 75-year-old Krzyzewski will tackle, once his coaching career ends this spring, is what he's referred to as "figuring out Cameron."
To do so, he's not opposed to mixing business with pleasure while on a trip with his wife, Mickie.
"I think things that I will look at are, hopefully, when I'm with Mickie spending some time in Europe," Krzyzewski said. "You're visiting places that are not just cathedrals, but historic places that are old. But they're not old, you know. They're old in age."
Designed in the late 1930s and opened on Jan. 6, 1940, Cameron Indoor Stadium continues as Duke's basketball home even as other larger, glitzier and more modern buildings open at schools throughout college basketball.
Krzyzewski never wanted Duke to join that crowd. The Duke administrators who employed him since 1980 agreed, starting with the athletic director who hired Krzyzewski, Tom Butters.
"I never wanted to have something different than Cameron," Krzyzewski said. "Cameron is really one of the most unique venues in the world."
In the mid-1980s, rival North Carolina constructed and moved into the Smith Center the same season Duke first reached the Final Four under Krzyzewski, in 1986.
"It was a clear path by Mr. Butters," said Mike Cragg, the current St. John's athletics director who worked in athletics at Duke from 1987 until leaving for New York in 2018.
Butters, who died in 2015, opted for renovations, but Cameron's playing area remained mostly unchanged as capacity remained the cozy 9,314 that makes it among the most intimidating venues in sports.
"We studied raising the roof, but weren't going to tear it down," Cragg said. "How do we make it special for everyone but how do you build around it?"
It's only appropriate that Krzyzewski would study Europe's rich architecture when helping plan how to keep Cameron a viable Division I athletics venue for a few more decades. The stadium's architect, Julian Abele of Philadelphia, studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and traveled around Europe early in the 20th century before also designing Duke's iconic Chapel Tower, as well as most of the school's other west campus buildings.
What European nations have done is what Duke needs to follow, Krzyzewski said.
"They didn't knock something down and build a new thing," he said. "They kept what they've had for hundreds of years. I'd like to study that and talk to people who are not in sport, but who do that, who are really experts, and have them take a look at what we have.
"We have all the feeling and the historic perspective, and whatever. It's something that I'm very, very interested in."
Duke has won 84.5% of its games (930-170) played at Cameron. Under Krzyzewski the Blue Devils are 572-75, winning 88.4% of the time on their famed home court.
So it's clear why Krzyzewski and Duke weren't interested in changes to the stadium over the decades.
The school did what it could to modernize the building, adding wood paneling, brass railings and a scoreboard over the center of the court in 1987-88, and new locker rooms in the early 1990s. Air conditioning finally arrived in 2002, and a video scoreboard over center court in 2008.
Duke also built facilities around Cameron to augment the stadium. That included the Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center, used by the men's and women's programs that also includes an academic center used by all of Duke's athletes over the past 25 years. It also houses the Duke Sports Hall of Fame.
The Krzyzewski Center was built with practice courts and training facilities. Both buildings are connected to Cameron.
In 2016, a new two-story addition to Cameron became a new entrance lobby while also housing hospitality areas.
In his 31 years at Duke, Cragg was involved in all those projects as he moved from sports information director to senior associate athletics director. He and Krzyzewski worked to create the Duke Basketball Legacy Fund, which has raised millions for facilities, coaching salaries and endowed scholarships, with the goal of keeping Duke basketball elite even after Krzyzewski retires.
The time has arrived for Krzyzewski to say goodbye to coaching at Cameron after this Saturday's regular-season finale against UNC. Krzyzewski and the team aim to further bolster Cameron's lore by winning championships in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, to add more banners to the rafters.
But even after his coaching is done, Krzyzewski will be working for Cameron Indoor Stadium.
"Cameron is special," Cragg said. "Whatever he can do to help, he'll do."
