Kudos to Coach K.

To paraphrase that old sportswriter, Billy Shakespeare, I have come to praise Mike Krzyzewski, not to bury him.

That's a bit different from the tack I took earlier this year, after his Duke University Blue Devils, with a lineup loaded with McDonald's all-Americans, barely beat unheralded, and largely unknown, Belmont in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, then lost to West Virginia, which had finished fifth in the Big East, in the second round.

That came on the heels (not, to coach K's relief, Tar Heels) of first-round losses the year before in both the ACC tournament (to N.C. State) and the NCAA tournament (to Virginia Commonwealth).

As if that weren't bad enough, Krzyzewski also had been coach of the star-studded U.S. team in the World Championships in '06, when his talent-laden aggregation of NBA stars and studs lost in the semifinals to Greece, 101-95, in a game in which it looked as if neither Coach K nor his players had ever before seen a pick-and-roll.

It didn't help Coach K's reputation, or the overhyped NBA's, when the Greeks were trounced in the finals by Spain, 70-47.

So there seemed reason, after that string of setbacks, to wonder if Coach K had lost it; if he'd lost the drive, and the skills that for so many years made his Duke teams so formidable; if his reputation had come to exceed his talent.

Not anymore.

Not after the Olympic team he and the Phoenix Suns' Jerry Colangelo so painstakingly put together pounded the opposition on the way to winning a gold medal in Beijing.

I've been giving Coach K a hard time. Now, it's time to give him credit.

There never was a question that the U.S. had the best players. Not with the likes of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony on the roster. But there remained the question of whether the United States would put the best team on the court.

The Americans, after all, hadn't been the best team in the world since 2000. The United States lost at the World Championships in 2002 and then, with Larry Brown as coach, finished an embarrassing third in the Olympics in Athens in 2004, losing three games. That was followed by the third-place finish at the World Championships two years ago.

That's why this U.S. Olympic basketball team was nicknamed the "Redeem Team."

And if it didn't have quite the cachet -- or, frankly, the talent -- of the "Dream Team" that -- led by Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson -- dazzled the world at Barcelona in 1992, what it did have was motivation.

Basketball was invented in America. It's our game. But the rest of the world was not only catching on, it was catching up -- in large part because, somewhere along the line, too many American players, and coaches too, appeared to forget that it was a team game.

It didn't help that the NBA marketing mavens celebrated individual stars, touting great players more than great teams.

The trickle-down effect of that was that American kids came of age playing a game in which physicality mattered more than fundamentals.

It was difficult then, especially since they only played together for a short time, for a collection of NBA stars to combine their considerable talents and overcome foreign teams that not only played more often, but often played a very different style of game.

But this U.S. Olympic team made it look easy.

To begin with, Colangelo and Krzyzewski looked for players who could put their egos aside, who'd be thinking "team-first," rather than "me-first."

That's no small accomplishment in this day and age.

Coach K also was smart enough, and humble enough, to keep his ego out of the picture, to let the players shine in the spotlight. While this Olympic tournament was also about redemption for him, he knew it wasn't going to be about him.

Unless, of course, the United States lost -- in which case he knew he'd take heat.

But the U.S. didn't lose. They won. Won big. Won impressively.

They cruised to the finals, winning by an average of 30 points a game, and then -- in a game Krzyzewski correctly called "one of the great games in international basketball history" -- the United States held off a determined Spanish challenge in the fourth quarter and ran off to a 118-108 triumph.

"It was great basketball at the highest level," Coach K said, "and it brought out the best in us."

Yes it was. And, yes, it did.

Kudos, Coach K.