Coach K’s last Duke home game will also be emotional for Cameron’s other caretaker

When Mike Krzyzewski takes his final bow at center court at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday, William Harris will be watching. He’ll be perched on a collapsed basketball goal that sits behind the stands in the corner behind the visiting bench, a vantage point that allows him to poke his head over the fans and see the entire court.

Harris will watch and listen. He’ll wait as Krzyzewski and his family and the fans and dignitaries and Duke legends file out, the students leaving flakes of blue paint behind. Then he’ll do what he has done after every Duke game for the past nine years. He’ll grab his push broom and sweep the playing floor clean.

Krzyzewski has thought of himself as Cameron’s caretaker over his 42 years at Duke. Cameron’s actual caretaker is fine with that.

“He built this program,” Harris said. “They weren’t destitute before he got here — they had some history as a program. But I was a fan as a kid, and I never knew anything like this.”

Harris grew up in Durham, just south of N.C. Central, and went to Hillside and Jordan for high school. In the early-to-mid-’80s, it wasn’t easy being a Duke fan. The UNC fans on the school bus outnumbered him ten to one. Then Duke, under Krzyzewski, became the Duke we know today and life got a little easier.

After serving as a Navy cook, Harris came back to Durham and signed up with a temp agency that sent him to Duke housekeeping. Eventually, he got hired full-time and moved around campus. In 2013, when the Cameron job came open. Harris had the seniority to get it, and he never looked back.

“I feel honored to work here, to work in this building on this campus,” Harris said. “I can’t say I did anything special to get here, but now that I’m here, it’s mine now. Somebody else wants this building, I’m not going to give it to them. I like it.”

Late nights in Cameron

Buildings like Cameron that exist in our minds on a plane far beyond bricks and mortar, where the past seeps from the crevices, often have someone who not only takes care of them, but feels a personal connection to them.

Cameron has two.

There’s Krzyzewski, who has made protecting the traditional (and claustrophobic, and intimidating) interior of the space a bedrock priority, while pushing to modernize and expand it elsewhere. It’s air-conditioned now, with more electronics, and the building’s footprint has expanded, but the stands are just as close to the court as they ever were, still surrounded by wood paneling and brass railings.

And there’s Harris, who over the past decade has come to know all the quirks and secrets of a building this old, the mechanical ghosts that inhabit it and the living history that’s never far away.

As Jon Scheyer will soon, Harris works in the footsteps of a legendary predecessor. Ronald “DC” Williams worked in Cameron for 16 years before passing away in 2005, and was used as an exemplar of teamwork in Krzyzewski’s 2000 book, “Leading with the Heart.”

For almost a decade, Harris has worked third shift, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and during Cameron events, where he sweeps the playing floor before each half, in addition to myriad other duties. It’s his building now, alone in Cameron for all the late nights amid the echoes and strange clanking noises. He and his girlfriend bought a town house not far from campus a few years ago, where they live with their two teenage children. It’s close enough that Harris can walk to Cameron through the snow, if he has to.

There’s a rhythm to the time between each game, men’s and women’s, attention rationed out as needed. The first night after a game, he’ll sweep the court and its corners. The next night, the lobbies at both ends. The night after that, he’ll polish the terrazzo floors of the concourses. The next he’ll shampoo the carpet in the back hallways and Legacy Club, where famous alumni mingle before the game and at halftime.

Most nights, he’s alone, after all the players and coaches have gone home, and it’s just him and Cameron.

“It’s quiet, almost like a church,” Harris said. “You walk into an empty sanctuary. I like the contrast though. I can come in at night and it’s dead quiet. Three hours prior, it could have been a men’s game and you want to put your headphones on because your head is thumping. You should see the place when it’s over. You just stand there and say, look at this mess.”

But Harris holds no ill will toward the students in their paint, or the fans who spill popcorn or soda. It is not the first time, and it will not be the last. It will all be made clean during the quiet dark nights Harris spends alone with his headphones and his thoughts — but he also reflexively stoops to grab a single loose piece of pom-pom from the floor as he walks.

‘It might be tough’

During the first half of men’s and women’s games, he has the Legacy Club to himself, a rare moment of respite from the madness outside. After his halftime duties are complete, he’ll quietly shimmy up on the collapsed practice basket to watch the end of the game.

That’s when he sees the most of Krzyzewski. Since Harris works overnight on non-game days, he doesn’t often bump into Krzyzewski or the players. Harris sees them when they get back to Cameron early in the morning after flights home from Syracuse or Boston, or before games when Krzyzewski grabs a meal in the team room, always with a fist bump for Harris. The freshman stars come and go in a flash, but Harris gets to know the players who stick around for a while — Quinn Cook, Jack White, Matt Jones, Nick Pagliuca.

Still, Krzyzewski has been a constant for Harris, as he has for so many at Duke, from childhood to adulthood, for 42 years — long before they ever shared a building they both respect and revere. And while this may be Krzyzewski’s last basketball game at Cameron as a coach, neither he nor Harris is actually going anywhere.

That won’t make it any less emotional for either of them.

“I keep thinking about that,” Harris said. “Like, how’s it going to be in here Saturday? Especially if they have a tribute or something on the video board I haven’t seen yet? It might be tough. I keep saying, he’ll be retiring, but I don’t think he’ll be away from the program that much. He’ll still be here.”

So will Harris, who will watch Krzyzewski exit the floor for the last time from his perch in the corner, waiting for not only the coach but everyone else to clear out so he can get back to work. There are floors to sweep and wastebaskets that won’t empty themselves.

Krzyzewski’s last home game will be over. Harris will have another long night ahead, in an old building that won’t be quite the same.

This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 8:10 AM with the headline "Coach K’s last Duke home game will also be emotional for Cameron’s other caretaker."

Luke DeCock

The News & Observer

Luke DeCock is a former journalist for the News & Observer.