The Latest From Seth Davis in SI

[Duvall]

"leadership" might not be the best term, but i agree with the gist of what i think davis is saying. there is, at this point, nobody on our team that instills confidence in me, as a fan, in late game situations, the way nolan and kyrie did last year, and scheyer the couple of years prior. which is not to say that somebody on the team won't emerge in this role; i think somebody will. my money would be on seth or austin, with quin being a dark horse to assume this role. i do think someone will assume it.

at this point, though, i don't think that person has emerged, although i do think that somebody will rise to the occasion. my best guess would be that this is what in part the staff is doing right now: putting different players in positions to take on that role.

Sure. But I wouldn't call that leadership, I would call it not having one of the top ten or so players in college basketball. (At this point.)

[Lid]

I would assert that at this point, one of the main leaders is Tyler. Surprisingly. But Curry and Rivers have yet to figure out exactly what they are doing on the floor and what their roles are. I also think that Mike's point about Nolan is a good one.

I believe K has said as much, too, that TT is emerging as a leader (the leader?) on the team. (Thought I read or heard that, but now I can't find a link. You'll trust me, right?) I do think it's interesting to consider the different types of leadership, and the narrow range of leadership that fans can observe (mostly just on-court). It's an intangible, but surely we're not debating whether having strong leadership is helpful, and likely to have positive repercussions in terms of stats/game flow? You don't have to have leadership to hit your free throws, but a leader might make you more likely to settle in and do so.

I'm quite curious to see how this plays out this year (as much as I can see, since I'm just a fan). I think there are lots of guys who seem like they could grow into that role. I hadn't thought about Mike's point re: Nolan, and I think it's a good one. Having a strong leader around makes for a great role model, but it could also delay other guys' development in that area. Necessity is the mother of something. I forget what.

[Matches]

It's usually a waste of time for fans and commentators to talk about leadership.

This, a thousand times. Was Jon Scheyer the "leader" of the 2010 team? I don't think so. Clearly he was one of the best and most important players on the team, but I never had the sense that he was general leading followers into battle.

Greg Paulus was praised over and over again on this site for being a "leader". I never saw any evidence of it on the court. Greg was a useful, sometimes above-average player who, by all accounts, worked hard and was a good kid and a good teammate, but nothing visible on the court suggested he was, in any way, the team's leader. Perhaps that all occurred off-court, but that just reinforces the notion that it's silly for fans and commentators to speculate about it, since none of us knows what happens off-court.

I think it's relatively clear that, thus far this season, we have had difficulty delivering the killing blow i.e. putting away a team once we have them down. We do not run stall ball particularly efficiently as of yet. We do not, however, look disorganized or lost in those situations; we're just not executing particularly well. "Duke needs a leader" = "Duke needs a go-to guy on key possessions late in the game."

[jimsumner]

Back in the early part of the season, K indicated that Seth Curry needed to find his "command voice." Coming from someone trained in leadership skills at the United States Military Academy, this was not an off-hand comment.

I think that's still an ongoing process. Curry is, IMO, the best combination of experience, basketball IQ and skill-set on the team. He's intelligent, articulate and well-respected by his teammates. But he's awfully quite. I think the best-case-scenario is for Curry to find his command voice.

[Duvall]

I believe K has said as much, too, that TT is emerging as a leader (the leader?) on the team. (Thought I read or heard that, but now I can't find a link. You'll trust me, right?) I do think it's interesting to consider the different types of leadership, and the narrow range of leadership that fans can observe (mostly just on-court). It's an intangible, but surely we're not debating whether having strong leadership is helpful, and likely to have positive repercussions in terms of stats/game flow? You don't have to have leadership to hit your free throws, but a leader might make you more likely to settle in and do so.

I agree that leadership is both real and important. I'm just skeptical about the ability of fans and talking heads to spot its presence or absence.

[ncexnyc]

Back in the early part of the season, K indicated that Seth Curry needed to find his "command voice." Coming from someone trained in leadership skills at the United States Military Academy, this was not an off-hand comment.

I think that's still an ongoing process. Curry is, IMO, the best combination of experience, basketball IQ and skill-set on the team. He's intelligent, articulate and well-respected by his teammates. But he's awfully quite. I think the best-case-scenario is for Curry to find his command voice.

As the character from, "Laugh-In" used to say, "Veeery interesting."

I'm glad you mentioned K's background and coming from you it should put to rest some of the comments from those who are downplaying the importance of leadership on the court.

I will say that I'm not quite as sold on Seth as you seem to be. I still believe we'll be seeing a great deal of movement within our backcourt as I don't think Coach K has found the right combination as of yet.

[OldPhiKap]

Back in the early part of the season, K indicated that Seth Curry needed to find his "command voice." Coming from someone trained in leadership skills at the United States Military Academy, this was not an off-hand comment.

I think that's still an ongoing process. Curry is, IMO, the best combination of experience, basketball IQ and skill-set on the team. He's intelligent, articulate and well-respected by his teammates. But he's awfully quite. I think the best-case-scenario is for Curry to find his command voice.

Reminds me of Grant Hill, who was a natural leader on the floor but -- quiet and reserved when talking to his teammates. But he learned to fill the role quite well.

I agree that Seth is the logical choice, and also agree that he has it within him to do it. But like many things, vocalizing leadership is a learned trait. The kid is very bright, it seems, and I think it will come with time.

It is somewhat difficult when the most experienced players on the team are big men, because you really need someone up top who sees the whole floor on the offensive end to get the table set and the offense run correctly. It's hard to lead from the baseline.

[gumbomoop]

I believe K has said as much, too, that TT is emerging as a leader...

About halfway through last season - TT's first - K said on his TV show that TT "is going to be a leader."

He has said this season that the team just plays better when Tyler's on the floor. I suppose that has something to do with sneaky-court-sense-D as much as anything, but to K being a step ahead of the other team - not to mention one's teammates - might be understood as a kind of leadership.

Must be something, as TT has not yet exhibited classic PG skills on O.

[jacone21]

About halfway through last season - TT's first - K said on his TV show that TT "is going to be a leader."

He has said this season that the team just plays better when Tyler's on the floor. I suppose that has something to do with sneaky-court-sense-D as much as anything, but to K being a step ahead of the other team - not to mention one's teammates - might be understood as a kind of leadership.

Must be something, as TT has not yet exhibited classic PG skills on O.

K's offense and defense are systems. They both require players to make the right plays/reads and be where they're supposed to be. Some players always know where everyone is and should be. That's what Tyler has the ability to see, and what K sees in Tyler. Tyler coaches his teammates on the floor and in huddles. He was even doing that last year. I'm sure he's very active in practice, correcting guys and helping guys with the system. I was telling my wife during the Colorado game that if Tyler had Austin's physical gifts, he would be ridiculously good. Because he sees everything. Unfortunately, just because he can see it, doesn't mean he can do it. Kinda like being over 40.

[Kedsy]

I think some people are concerned at how fast these large leads seem to vanish. It appears that we get a large lead and suddenly the wheels fall off. If we were executing classic stallball, we'd milk the clock get a decent shot and force the other team to work for a score. So far it seems as if we aren't doing a very good job of either. I think some people are worried we are dancing on the razor's edge and sooner or later we are going to slip.

In my observation, the dramatic part of the lead vanishing (e.g., 19 to 12 in one minute against Washington) generally happens before we go into stall ball. Who knows, maybe the vanishing lead is what incites us to start stall ball.

[johnb]

Sure. But I wouldn't call that leadership, I would call it not having one of the top ten or so players in college basketball. (At this point.)

I agree. Grant Hill did apparently need to be goaded into being more vocal on the court, but he still led by the fact that he was as good a player as K has ever coached. Laettner was obviously much more vocal (and difficult), but he also was ridiculously good.

We have a whole bunch of very good players but no one who is a POY candidate, at least this year. When we play a top tier team that is ALSO operating on all cylinders, we'll probably lose, but I don't think it's because of a leadership issue.

[cspan37421]

Back in the early part of the season, K indicated that Seth Curry needed to find his "command voice." Coming from someone trained in leadership skills at the United States Military Academy, this was not an off-hand comment.

I think that's still an ongoing process. Curry is, IMO, the best combination of experience, basketball IQ and skill-set on the team. He's intelligent, articulate and well-respected by his teammates. But he's awfully quite. I think the best-case-scenario is for Curry to find his command voice.

That really makes sense to me. Think about it - who gathers the other four on the floor after, say, a foul has been committed by us, gathers them in a huddle and reminds them of what to do, what to watch out for, etc? That's what K apparently seeks ... and it reminds me of the praise he heaped upon past leaders as well. He's looking for a guy to be him, when he can't be out of the floor himself.

It's kind of surprising, but this has not an uncommon problem for us. While it would be nice to chalk it up to players who are too selfless ... that's probably just part of it. Some are naturally quiet. Some may be trying to gauge their place in the pecking order. But we do need someone to step up and be the vocal leader. This requires seeing the whole game too ... not just the guard part, not just the big man part. I infer that Coach sees that potential in Seth ... he can understand the whole floor. However, it's not at all clear that Seth has that command voice. Quite quiet, indeed! I certainly don't see it in Andre or Austin. I see sparks of it in Tyler - he's vocal and seems to have his mind on the whole floor.

[feldspar]

I mean, what really is the definition of a leader on the basketball floor anyway? Is it the guy who scores the most points? That's usually the default by lazy sports reporters. But I think it's much more than that. It's a lot of things -- the guy who shows the most heart, the guy who gets the other guys fired up when the chips are down, the one initiating communication on the floor.

I don't think we have a leadership problem. I think it's just easy for sportswriters like Seth who want something cut and dry to point at to look at this team and just assume nobody is leading the helm. How many huddles has Seth been in? How many practices has he been to? What is he basing this assumption on? That's the problem when you have a well-balanced scoring team like this team is. Not one guy is going to stand out.

I think what Seth maybe should have leaned toward is that this team doesn't necessarily have one "go-to" guy. One guy you can point to and say, with the game on the line, he can get the job done. I'd agree with that to a point. But "go-to" guy does not equal leadership.

[snowdenscold]

Don't know if I buy into your claim about final margins of victory. In a number of games, the winning team pulls away from their opposition due to the losing team fouling in an attempt to catch-up, only to have the other team hit freethrows and see their scoring attempts fail.

Well it depends on how close things are throughout the game, and especially going into the final minute. If you're within 5 points, of course you'll foul, and there's a decent chance the final margin with be much higher than 5 (if as you say, the winning team hits FT's and the losing team takes quick 3's and misses).

If, however, you're leading by 15+ for most of the 2nd half, I wouldn't be surprised to see that final margin reduced by the end - as long as you don't cross that threshold to where intentional fouling by the other team becomes worthwhile.

[g-money]

This, a thousand times. Was Jon Scheyer the "leader" of the 2010 team? I don't think so. Clearly he was one of the best and most important players on the team, but I never had the sense that he was general leading followers into battle.

Greg Paulus was praised over and over again on this site for being a "leader". I never saw any evidence of it on the court. Greg was a useful, sometimes above-average player who, by all accounts, worked hard and was a good kid and a good teammate, but nothing visible on the court suggested he was, in any way, the team's leader. Perhaps that all occurred off-court, but that just reinforces the notion that it's silly for fans and commentators to speculate about it, since none of us knows what happens off-court.

I think it's relatively clear that, thus far this season, we have had difficulty delivering the killing blow i.e. putting away a team once we have them down. We do not run stall ball particularly efficiently as of yet. We do not, however, look disorganized or lost in those situations; we're just not executing particularly well. "Duke needs a leader" = "Duke needs a go-to guy on key possessions late in the game."

I would generally agree with this. I made a post in the UW postgame thread linking leadership to the person that has the ball at the end of the game, but maybe I didn't think it through enough. So, here goes:

In my 25 years of playing organized basketball at various levels, I've always found that when high pressure situations occur in games, a cohesive team tends to look to one player to make the right decisions with the ball. [That doesn't necessarily mean 'shoot the ball', it just means 'make the right play', if that makes any sense.] While this player may not possess all the generally accepted qualities of leadership, he always has a sufficient combination of talent and leadership that the other players are willing to place their trust in him. It's almost as if the other four guys on the floor have enough confidence in the "leader" that they're able to subdue whatever fear they would otherwise be feeling (such as the sort of panic that can set in when a big lead suddenly starts to evaporate, for example).

Last year we were fortunate enough to have three guys - Kyrie, Nolan, and Kyle - that the other players on the floor could have total confidence in in critical spots. This year we have not yet seen that person emerge. Based on Jim's comments above it sounds like Seth could potentially be that guy. He definitely has the talent and the rapport with his teammates to make the leap.

It'll be fun to see it play out. Luckily this sort of challenge is right up Coach's alley.

PS I didn't intend to be gender-specific in my writing above. I suspect that this observation could apply equally well to the women's game.

[Newton_14]

I agree with Mullet and Seth Davis on this one actually. I don't necessarily agree that leadership had anything to do with the loss of the lead in the Washington game, but, losing leads late has become a pattern with this team. It started with Belmont and reared its head in practically every game. This team does not yet know how to play with a lead and close games out properly. It's not just executing clock management/stall ball in the final 6 minutes, they have lost leads before getting to that point. However, they survived every single one of those and sit at 9 an 1 against a tough schedule, are still developing, and have plenty of time to improve. Many different factors at play, with leadership being just one.

That said, I want to comment on leadership separate from the "lost leads" thing. I spoke on this in all of the Phase threads, most recently in the Phase II thread where I shared what K stated was current status. In short, K said that Tyler is the best leader on the team, but at that time (in between OSU loss and CSU win) Tyler was not on the floor enough minutes to be the main leader. He stated that of the guys that do play a lot of minutes, Mason was beginning to emerge as a leader, and K feels that Ryan has the potential and qualities required to be a leader as well. This came from one of K's daily DBR reports, a 3 minute radio show each day at 8:30. I believe GoDuke.com stores each of these daily reports on their website. Short, but great info most days.

I got the impression early in the year watching the guys, that this was going to be Seth's team, and he would step up into that role. Like Jim stated, Seth is so quiet, it appears to be an issue for him to be a vocal leader. I still think he can be that guy, but it hasn't really happened yet.

I disagree strongly with those who believe having a leader isn't important, and especially those who feel Jon Scheyer was not a leader on that title team. Both he and Lance were great leaders on that team. Nolan, Kyle, and Kyrie were definitely leaders on last year's team. This year's team needs leaders as well.

[Des Esseintes]

Umm... well, yes. In 2010 Jon Scheyer took control of the Duke Men's basketball team and helped drive them to a National Title. 2010 Scheyer and 2009 Scheyer were dramatically different players and people. I can't believe that you weren't able to see that.

See what? I saw that he was a greatly improved player. Drilled threes, got to the line, never turned the ball over. Now, these were things he had always done, from the days when he was the team's steadiest player as a freshman, but he did them more productively in 09-10. So productively that he started getting mentioned as a Naismith candidate. But changed as a person? I understand I have a tv set that probably needs replacing, but I don't know how you know such things.

Here's what I think. I think Scheyer, LT, Zoubek, Nolan, and Singler got better between March 2009 and March 2010. At basketball. Maybe they did as people, too, but that's for someone who has met them to say. So all of those guys who were already excellent at basketball got better, Duke had some favorable matchups in the tournament, and that halfcourt three didn't fall.

That, or Scheyer-Rasputin "took control" of the various players' limbs and "drove" them to levels of athletic achievement their delicate wills could never have achieved alone.

[basket1544]

Duke in 2009 had several leaders, but none of them were able to push their teammates over the wall that was Villanova. 2010 team had very vocal leaders. There was a difference in their attitude and their drive. It was very clear that Lance, Jon and the rest were not going to back down to anyone.
This year's team doesn't have someone that will get in the other players faces and push them during a game (I remember seeing Lance do that). However, we don't know what the players are doing during practice. Seth gets a very determined look on his face that shows he has the desire. I've seen Ryan talk to other players during the game very adamantly. I think they are learning to lead but they still have a ways to go.

[Des Esseintes]

I disagree strongly with those who believe having a leader isn't important, and especially those who feel Jon Scheyer was not a leader on that title team. Both he and Lance were great leaders on that team. Nolan, Kyle, and Kyrie were definitely leaders on last year's team. This year's team needs leaders as well.

Is anyone saying leadership isn't important? I don't get that impression. It's more that leadership is not something those of us unconnected to the program can meaningfully measure.

You mention lost leads, and maybe that is a sign of absent leadership. But somebody got those leads. We want to attach narratives to everything, and thus diminished leads suggest a leadership vacuum. But you can create a narrative of anything. Imagine a Washington game in which Duke's leadership pushed the team in a burst to take advantage of the young Huskies' disarray to generate a big lead, a lead large enough to guarantee victory even when Washington righted its ship. Is that what happened? I have no idea. Probably not. But if it did, it would be leadership, not its absence, and you and I would have no ability to tell the difference from the stands or our living rooms. You can even find evidence for the fantasy. ("Veteran leader" Ryan Kelly, after struggling with his shot all first half, "took over the game" early in the second when Duke pushed for its biggest lead.) Narratives are nothing if not supple.

Maybe Duke does have a leadership problem. But I don't know how the games to this point have suggested that. Was Maui really that long ago?

[Newton_14]

Is anyone saying leadership isn't important? I don't get that impression. It's more that leadership is not something those of us unconnected to the program can meaningfully measure.

You mention lost leads, and maybe that is a sign of absent leadership. But somebody got those leads. We want to attach narratives to everything, and thus diminished leads suggest a leadership vacuum. But you can create a narrative of anything. Imagine a Washington game in which Duke's leadership pushed the team in a burst to take advantage of the young Huskies' disarray to generate a big lead, a lead large enough to guarantee victory even when Washington righted its ship. Is that what happened? I have no idea. Probably not. But if it did, it would be leadership, not its absence, and you and I would have no ability to tell the difference from the stands or our living rooms. You can even find evidence for the fantasy. ("Veteran leader" Ryan Kelly, after struggling with his shot all first half, "took over the game" early in the second when Duke pushed for its biggest lead.) Narratives are nothing if not supple.

Maybe Duke does have a leadership problem. But I don't know how the games to this point have suggested that. Was Maui really that long ago?

I specifically stated in my post, that I was totally separating the lost leads discussion, and leadership discussion. I also stated that there were many factors that go into the lost leads and it was possible leadership played a role, but if so, was one of many factors. The part where I discussed leadership exclusively had nothing at all to do with the leads this team has lost. Sorry, I thought I made that clear, but maybe it did not come across that way. My intention was to discuss leadership on the current team in and of itself. Losing the leads is a different topic altogether.