“With Kyrie in the lineup, we’re rich. We don’t look at the prices on the menu, and we don’t look in the newspapers for coupons.”
Coach K spoke to a packed Blue Devil Club meeting at Croasdaile Country Club in Durham on Friday on a wide range of topics spanning from road games to selling chocolate to classic rock, but obviously knew what everyone came to hear as he addressed the injury to our star point-guard Kyrie Irving. “Without Kyrie,” Coach said, “we’re still going to order the steak. We just might look for specials in the newspaper first.”
K did not speak in specifics about the injury, the diagnosis, or the chosen treatment plan, but did speak as a coach who was preparing his team to play differently. “No one is going to feel sorry for us,” he added. Just like Nolan said about the tough stretch of games to start the season, this is not K’s first rodeo. He made it clear that losing is not an option for him, his players, or for the Duke program and its fans. As coaches clearly communicate more candidly with the Blue Devil Club group, I’m going to respect that by not going into too many specifics, but in short we can expect Kyle to shoot more, for our guards to work harder without the ball to find an open shot, and for our bigs to have more of an emphasis on rebounding than we’ve had to start the season off. Possessions will be treated with more respect than in previous games. He clearly spoke in certain terms about Kyrie being unavailable, but the context was talking about the team right now. He just simply never looked ahead past the St. Louis game to give any indication of what to expect moving forward.
The recent work of the Plumlees and Ryan Kelly received glowing reviews from the Hall of Famer as he explained all three, especially Miles, are beginning to be as comfortable with the game environment as they are in the practice environment. With the teamwork of the Plumlee Brothers Dunking Company specifically highlighted, it’s safe to expect the Plums to continue to start together beyond the Bradley matchup. K was pleased with the progress of Seth Curry as well, saying it’s a matter of getting used to coming off of the bench, taking less shots, and playing on a bigger stage. He also said that Tyler and Josh were coming along and just working through being freshmen, and talked a lot about Andre’s role in their development. K joked, “I told Andre to look at Tyler and Josh and asked him if he remembered that being him last year. Then I said ‘help them not be you for as long as you were you last year’.” Evidently having a career night at Duke qualifies you for the crosshairs of a classic Coach K barb, which I’m sure was fully welcomed by Andre who has been arguably our most consistent player this year.
But enough about basketball. Anyone who has ever heard K speak in person, he’s at his best when he’s a normal guy. When he talks basketball, he has no peers. You just know you’re listening to a guy who is smarter than you could ever pretend to be about the game of basketball. But to be on the same level as Mike Krzyzewski when talking music, NFL, news … he turns into a giddy little kid, like he’s just flat out tired of being on a higher plane than everyone else on the face of the earth and welcomes the opportunity to be just a guy who can give you a little head nod like “you know what I mean?” and have the person he’s talking to actually know what he means for once.
First, he talked about the decals on the court at the CBE Classic and other big events and blamed the lack of a true head of college basketball for sponsors being able to have the freedom to advertise on the playing field like that. “God bless Reese’s, I love them, my wife loves them,” he said, “but don’t use the top of the key to sell chocolate. You don’t see a baseball game with a Reese’s logo on the pitcher’s mound to sell chocolate, or a giant Car Quest logo between second and third.”
He talked about rivalries, and how he never has wanted Duke to be focused on beating one team. As an example, he spoke about the first few times he beat Carolina and how he’d drive around Durham and see bumper stickers with the scores printed on them. “First of all, why would I want a bumper sticker with the other knucklehead’s logo on it anyway? That’s just bad branding. You think Coke puts the Pepsi logo on their stuff?” Unfortunately, he didn’t weigh in on Coke vs. Pepsi. But he did encourage Duke fans not to worry about the other guys and just to focus on our team right now as well as our history of great things happening within our program.
By far the coolest part of the session was K’s response to a question about if Bruce Springsteen has asked for tickets yet. “He wouldn’t have to ask,” K said. “I love Bruce Springsteen.” He mentioned talking about trying to get him to Countdown to Craziness to sing “Devil With a Blue Dress” but they couldn’t make it happen. Maybe next year. He did say he’s gotten to be friends with Steven Van Zandt (aka Little Steven, aka Silvio Dante) through Sirius/XM, which was very cool. We heard a story about K recording one of his shows in NYC and he had Bruce on as a guest on K’s radio show through Van Zandt. To return the favor, K was brought on as a guest DJ for a 90-minute spot on “E Street Radio”, which K called one of the best experiences he’s ever had. “I prepared for it like I prepare for a national championship game.”
A couple of other interesting tidbits –
- He considers Wojo and Collins to be the best assistant coaches in America, college or pro. “Not even close. There is no one you can compare them to based on what they do and how they do it.”
- Duke’s involvement with the US National Team has significantly impacted the way Duke is received on the recruiting trail, both in terms of credibility and in terms of being able to relate to today’s young basketball players.
- The pre-season round robin with MSU, Kentucky, and Kansas has been something that’s been discussed for a long time. K expects it to turn into a national kick-off event at the end of the initial three seasons with more programs being involved. “Michigan State in New York. Kentucky in Atlanta. Kansas in Chicago. But none of them are road games.”
To summarize, he did not give the crowd any warm-fuzzies about Kyrie’s return, and even spoke about having “9 scholarship players”. What he did do, and what he is a master at doing, is he made everyone in the room feel great about the players who are available for the St. Louis game, and sent a strong message that he does not have any intentions of changing his expectations for where this team will end up this year.
Oh, and he didn’t mention names because, well … he can’t mention names. But he did say the next three weeks he’d be on the road recruiting. Next week he’ll go see Gbinije, and then will head over to watch some Juniors play before heading down to Florida for an all-day showcase where he’d be watching some other Juniors play. “We don’t recruit a lot of kids. We see guys who we like and we go after them.”
Special thanks to Adam for posting my first blog post ever! Feel free to joke around with me at The Devils Den or you can find me on Twitter (@thedevilwolf) or email (thedevilwolf @yahoo.com).
