At its best, sports is a world of camaraderie, fellowship and shared memories often outliving the participants. At its worst, it’s a world of greed, cheating and manipulation. For two decades, John Feinstein has chronicled the sporting world for good and evil in a string of bestselling sports books. Golf and college basketball are his areas of expertise, but his nonfiction writings include 24 books that also cover college and professional football, as well as major league baseball.

THE LEGENDS CLUB is the story of a college basketball rivalry among three college coaches, two of whom would occupy positions on the Mt. Rushmore of college coaches and one who is revered and recalled by many for his humor and coaching ability but whose career sadly was shortened by scandal and cancer. Dean Smith was the legendary head basketball coach at North Carolina; Mike Krzyzezwski, the coach at Duke; and Jim Valvano, the coach at North Carolina State. Smith was already an iconic figure at North Carolina when, in a span of 10 days, Duke hired Krzyzewski and State brought on Valvano.

"On the pages of THE LEGENDS CLUB, the multi-million-dollar industry that is 'March Madness' and college basketball come together to reveal the best and the worst of the game."

The three schools were located within miles of each other and played in the same Atlantic Coast Conference, a college basketball hotbed. For a decade, the three coaches were intense rivals on and off the court. They recruited the same players, played each other multiple times each season, and battled the same pressures endured by many coaches in college basketball. Feinstein paints a vivid portrait of the three men. On the pages of THE LEGENDS CLUB, the multi-million-dollar industry that is “March Madness” and college basketball come together to reveal the best and the worst of the game.

From his previous books on college basketball, Feinstein was well-acquainted with the three coaches he chronicles here. Krzyzewski is the unemotional tactician with three NCAA Championships on his resume. When first hired by Duke, many questioned who he was and why he was selected. His coaching career had not been marked by great success, but he did have Bobby Knight, with whom he served as an assistant at West Point where he played for Coach Knight, as a fervent supporter. Valvano, when hired nine days later by North Carolina State, already had great success at Iona. If Krzyzewski was taciturn, Valvano was outgoing and a crowd-pleaser. At conferences, meetings and press gatherings, no coach ever wanted to follow him to the podium. He was Sinatra, and every other coach was just an opening act. The speech that he gave on ESPN as he was dying of cancer is legendary (you may find it on YouTube). The V Foundation is named in his memory, and college basketball honors him in games played each season.

Although Krzyzewski has won more championships and Valvano was the captivating speaker, Dean Smith is my hero on these pages. As a coach, he was so revered by everyone who came into contact with him that when he retired from North Carolina, no other coach would park his car in Smith’s spot. “That was coach’s spot” was the explanation. Smith courted nearly every prized basketball recruit in America, and obviously many chose to attend other schools. But regardless of the school he selected, every recruit Smith met received a letter wishing him well in his basketball career.

The story that best represents Dean Smith, the man, occurred off the basketball court. In the late 1950s, North Carolina prepared to recruit and bring its first black player to the campus. Smith understood that the community needed to be integrated if a black player was joining the team. In 1958, Smith, then an assistant coach at North Carolina, walked into a Chapel Hill restaurant where the North Carolina basketball team ate their pre-game meal. He was joined by a black member of the Binkley Baptist Church, the same church he attended. Until that moment, the restaurant had declined to serve black people. Smith ended that practice when his fellow church member joined him for lunch. When Feinstein heard the story, he asked Smith why it had never been told. Smith said that he wished it had remained untold. Why? “John, you should never be proud of doing the right thing. You should just do the right thing.”

THE LEGENDS CLUB is a must-read not only for college basketball fans, but for all sports fans.