Duke and the NBA - Jim Sumner

[gw67]

Jim Sumner’s Front Page article on Duke and the NBA is outstanding as usual and provides a good reference when looking back at past Duke teams. First, I didn’t realize that Riedy, Kennedy, Crow and Nessely played in the NBA/ABA. Second, it reminded me of the powerhouse Duke teams of the last 40+ years – 1966, 1979, 1986, 1992, 1999, 2001 and 2002. It also reminded me of how great a college player Danny Ferry was. Danny led a team with a 6-5 center and a bunch of players with holes in their game to the Final Four in 1988.

gw67

[cspan37421]

No offense to Marty Nessley, but the notion that he made an NBA roster (for about a half-season) while Amaker could not, well, that suggests to me there's something wrong with the NBA game.

On the other hand ... supply and demand. You can't teach height.

[MChambers]

Jim Sumner’s Front Page article on Duke and the NBA is outstanding as usual and provides a good reference when looking back at past Duke teams. First, I didn’t realize that Riedy, Kennedy, Crow and Nessely played in the NBA/ABA. Second, it reminded me of the powerhouse Duke teams of the last 40+ years – 1966, 1979, 1986, 1992, 1999, 2001 and 2002. It also reminded me of how great a college player Danny Ferry was. Danny led a team with a 6-5 center and a bunch of players with holes in their game to the Final Four in 1988.

gw67

I remember being astonished at a 1977-78 newspaper account of an NBA game that described some team (the Nets?) being led on a fourth quarter comeback by rookies Bernard King and Mark Crow.

[pdbauer]

I didn't come up with this myself, but read somewhere that the best metric for predicting NCAA tournament success was the number of lottery picks a team has, with 3 being a good predictor of Final Four- or NCAA champions-type success. Using this metric, it is not surprising that Duke's 1991-1992 teams with 3 (Laettner, Hurley, Hill) and 4 (Laettner, Hurley, Hill and Parks) had a lot of success. Meanwhile, the decline in the mid-1990s is also understandable... we went from 4 lottery picks in 1992 to 3 in 1993 (losing Laettner to the NBA) to 2 in 1994 (losing Hurley) to 1 in 1995 (losing Hill) to 0 in 1996 (losing Parks).