Heading into this season Larry Krystkowiak wanted to take his team’s culture to the next level.
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Krystkowiak had been around many teams and been coached by the likes of Hall of Famers Jerry Sloan and Phil Jackson, among others, and knew how it felt when a team was clicking and when it wasn’t. After being fired from the Milwaukee Bucks, Krystkowiak had some time to reflect and figure out just what went wrong — he concluded that it came down to a culture issue.
He began a long research project to try and pin down exactly what culture was, so he could bring a positive one to Utah.
“You could look at Google and there’s millions of definitions of ‘culture,’ ” Krystkowiak said. “Really comes down to who are we and what kind people we are, and that starts with who we recruit and coaching staff and how you interact and treat people.”
During an event hosted by Under Armour president Kevin Plank, Krystkowiak was introduced to some Navy SEALs, and the next step in establishing a culture at the U began.
“If somebody can come up with one thing on the planet that is humanly harder than becoming a Navy SEALs, somebody needs to prove that to me and show me where that is, because I can’t figure out where that would be,” Krystkowiak said. “Number one, just going through the process of becoming a SEAL individually, earning the toughness mentally, physically, so forth. And then when you do become a Navy SEAL, then it becomes really interesting because then you have to learn how to be on a team and do some really hard things as a team — communication and teamwork.”
Krystkowiak grew up wanting to be in the military, and though that dream never came true, he gave his team a taste of it this season. The Utah head coach got in contact with two Navy SEALs, Mark McGuiness and Rick Joselin, and the Utes went through a preseason training regime with the Seals.
“And from start to finish, I’ve never been involved with anything like it,” Krystkowiak said. “Our team slept in the gym and [they] woke them up in the middle of the night and put them through some rigorous things.”
The things Navy SEALs had — the toughness, selflessness, mental strength — were the things that Krystkowiak wanted from his team. So training with the Navy SEALs allowed his team to feel those things away from a basketball court.
“To me, that kind of embodies what we were talking about with our program,” Krystkowiak said.
Last week when the Utes were in Portland to open up their NCAA tournament run, Utah brought McGuiness back for a little inspiration.
“When he walked into our cafeteria and saw our players and our players jumped out of their seats, like a sibling kind of deal, I knew we did the right thing by bringing him back and coming full circle from when we started the process in September,” Krystkowiak said.
The Utes responded on the court as well, punching a ticket to the Sweet 16. Now, like their SEALs mentors, they look to keep fighting on.
“It’s very important to me, you know, and I think a lot of things that the SEALs stand for, we’re trying to stand for,” Krystkowiak said. “The only difference is when mistakes are made on their end, it’s life or death situation. When mistakes are made in our end, ironically it is kind of a death situation this time of year because you’re done.”
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