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    The Ego Whisperer

    Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is the real villain in the LeBron James betrayal

    Chris Baldwin
    Jul 11, 2010 | 3:45 pm
    • If you play for Mike Krzyzewski, you learn to look out for your self interestsfirst.
    • LeBron James is the one gone, but he's not all too blame.
    • Coach K convinced Dwyane Wade, LeBron and Chris Bosh that they needed each otherto succeed.

    The LeBron James jerseys have been burned in a virtual YouTube contest and the 10-story "We Are All Witnesses" Nike mural of LeBron is slowly being dismantled (because downtown Cleveland needs another blighted building side).

    When will Cleveland get around to smashing bobbleheads of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and tossing his motivational tomes into the flames though?

    Yes, Krzyzewski. He's the real villain of LeBron's betrayal and he's skating by with a free pass. If it wasn't for Coach K's work with the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team, LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh never would have even thought of getting together in South Beach.

    Using his typical five fingers can't do anything by themselves, but if they come together they form a powerful fist mumbo-jumbo, Krzyzewski convinced LeBron, DWade and Bosh that they needed each other to succeed. What's wrong with this you ask? It helped the U.S. roll to a gold medal in men's basketball after all.

    The problem is it doesn't stop there with Coach K. It never does.

    For if you spend anytime around the fakest man in sports you cannot help but get drawn into his vortex of personal selfishness. The coach who preaches teamwork has always used other job offers to increase his power at Duke to the point where he now runs a personal fiefdom on the cloistered Durham campus. Krzyzewski's shown time and time again that he considers himself more powerful and more important than any university president.

    So why shouldn't one of his still relatively new eager pupils suddenly consider himself more important than his home state, his hometown and his home fans.

    Crazy Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert got it wrong. LeBron James didn't pull a Benedict Arnold. He went Mike Krzyzewski.

    And Gilbert should know better than anyone.

    After all, another Krzyzewski disciple (former Blue Devil) Carlos Boozer gave the town of Cleveland its first crushing free-agency blow (call it the pre-LeBron death shot) several years ago. Remember, Boozer reneged on the handshake deal with the Cavs that allowed him to become a free agent in the first place and jumped on a more lucrative offer from the Utah Jazz instead, giving Cleveland and a then-rookie LeBron their first hard business kick to the head.

    Many Cavs fans and the team's ownership derided Boozer as a Benedict Arnold then too. Now, years later, after getting together with Coach K himself, LeBron humiliates Cleveland in a national TV special. That's no coincidence, that's a pattern of well-taught, cold-blooded self interest.

    If LeBron had never been coached by Krzyzewski in the Olympics, if he'd never fallen underneath the spell of the selfish sorcerer, he'd still be a Cav today.

    Those looking for a villain in "The Decision" should focus on the right man. He can be found in North Carolina's Triangle, locked behind his high-tech fortress of a basketball center.

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    bring the HEAT

    Top-rated Texas pitmaster headlines new Food Network barbecue show

    Brandon Watson
    Jun 23, 2026 | 10:30 am
    Pitmasters, Servantes, cast
    Photo courtesy of Food Network
    Ernest Servantes (in denim jacket) is among the judges of a new Food Network series.

    Ernest Servantes already knows what it takes to win $50,000 from Food Network; now the Seguin pitmaster is the one handing it out. The Burnt Bean Co. pitmaster, who won a big check on Chopped Grill Masters in 2012 and took the No. 1 spot on Texas Monthly's 2025 list of the state's top 50 barbecue joints, is one of four judges on Pitmasters, a new series that puts elite barbecue teams through a week of live-fire competition.

    The series puts the teams through the wringer with a breakneck schedule of challenges ranging from whole-hog cooking to a four-protein showdown. The premiere episode drops the contestants straight into a "Big Burn" challenge, giving the pitmaster pairs nine hours to build a family-style platter of two meats and a side that defines their style.

    But it wouldn’t be a Food Network show without a twist. This time, Servantes and his fellow judges — Andrew Zimmern, competition barbecue great Moe Cason, and Austin-based barbecue personality Jess Pryles — throw the cast a 60-minute "Flash Burn" curveball that asks them to create the perfect barbecue bite.San Antonio talent won’t just be behind the judges' table. Three teams will feature well-known names in the local smoked meat scene.

    Grecia and Esaul Ramos, the proprietors of San Antonio’s 2M Smokehouse, might have an advantage. After all, the duo is not only married; they work together in the kitchen every day. But they’ll face stiff competition from two other locals with their own live-fire superpowers.

    Boerne’s Al Frugoni, paired with Louisville, Kentucky influencer Jeremy Yoder, is known for his Argentine asado-style cooking and self-named line of seasonings sold at Walmart and H-E-B. Also representing Boerne will be Ruben Santana, paired with Palmira Barbecue pitmaster Hector Garate from Charleston, South Carolina.

    That Santana is listed as a hometown pitmaster may raise a few eyebrows. He’s best known as the founder of Brooklyn’s Bark Barbecue, a project that has gained him national recognition for fusing Dominican and Texas styles. We’ll have to wait to see if he is firing something new in Texas.

    Pitmasters premieres July 13 on Food Network. Episodes will air on Mondays and be available to stream on HBO Max the following day.

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