I don't have any inside info here on PBJ, obviously, but it's widely considered that RSCI No. 4 Jaden Hardy and No. 8 Michael Foster will be going the G League Ignite route, so there are your top-10 guys. I suspect that 1) Rod Strickland et al reached out to PBJ to gauge his interest and tried to recruit him; and 2) if he was thought to be going that way or even strongly considering it, some of the more plugged in recruiting and NBA guys would've heard about it and mentioned it in their analysis. Of course, it seems like PBJ is playing his decision quite close to the vest, so who really knows.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
It may be that PBS's situation at UWM is tenuous enough to give PBJ a reason to delay his commitment. PBS has yet to field a winning record in 4 years, and this year UWM was in the bottom half of the Horizon League. I presume he is in the final year of his contract, and it doesn't seem that he's merited any kind of extension. I wonder if PBS realizes his tenure is on thin ice and may not enter into 2021-22 as head coach. As such, Duke might be PBJ's backup. It's just odd to me that Junior hasn't committed yet.
Very excited about the commitment of Theo John this morning...I also believe Duke's basketball Twitter may be doing some foreshadowing...
https://twitter.com/DukeMBB/status/1...620213250?s=20
They are saying "Or 2?"
My guess Blakes is very close to being next, maybe today.
I love it when recently committed recruits start using "we" when talking about Duke. It's like falling in love all over again.
These are good gets. We needed some bodies to fill out the roster.
Article saying there's less certainty about Baldwin playing for his dad.
https://basketballrecruiting.rivals...d-developments
I can’t rate players, especially ones I haven’t seen, but #1-20 >> #125-500
On average, #10 is a truly great high school player. We’ve gotten numb to that fact. It’s akin to someone being among the 10 best mathematicians or cellists in high school. It’s rare. When you get to #125-500, I’d imagine there is little reliable difference between 125 and 500. As in, they appear to be solidly able to play college ball but aren’t athletic freaks, at least nationally.
Since the 1980’s, Duke’s starting lineup has been composed almost entirely of #1-20’s (or at least 1-40) while most teams—including P5 teams—are fortunate if they can recruit a single McD AA in a 4 year stretch. They’re filled with 100-500, and so whenever any of their players makes all conference (or the nba), they’ve overperformed.
When a #100-500 (like JG, who was actually #398 at 247) has a great run at Duke, it’s partly him,
partly coaching, and partly opportunity—we didn’t have enough people at his position for a couple years. It’s not about likability or reliability (I always found his entry into the game to be likably reassuring), but about talent. We aren’t Final Four good if we are relying on guys who aren’t at least at the NBA fringe, and JG isn’t there. While I don’t particularly enjoy watching Duke teams composed of OAD’s, we won’t win big every year without them. If a #1-5 (like a Baldwin or Bagley) is willing to sign with us in August, we make room (as would virtually any team, in any league, anywhere). Having said that, it’s a little hard for our players to overperform. I guess Zion did. He was about #5, and he became legendary, but for a long time, most of our starters were recruited with the expectation that they’d play pro eventually.
On more controversial news, my view on possessives is that when I’m looking at a singular proper noun that ends in s, I add an apostrophe but no s. Socrates’ philosophy, Blakes’ shooting. I do this for 3 reasons. One, I don’t generally pronounce the extra s, so why add it? Second, we live in a world of limited resources, so why waste fonts? And 3rd, there are so few ways to rebel in this increasingly buttoned down world filled with carping naysayers, and if I want my sentences to retain the lean vitality of youth, without being burdened by mythical vestiges of a grammatical Eden, I’m gonna take charge of my sentences. In so doing, I imagine myself to be embodying Zion on a breakaway dunk or Mel Gibson exhorting the troops in Braveheart or Belushi creating a fraternal ideal in Animal House. By exercising a wanton disregard for convention, I feel akin to Icarus or Lavar Ball—misunderstood in his time, perhaps, and risking a fall, but the gamble revivifies and makes the hum drum of everyday existence sparkle, and, further, it provides the sort of primal oomph that juices me into promiscuously challenging the Oxford comma, the split infinitive, and rules that forbid me to end sentences with words that—through no fault of their own—happen to be prepositions.
I know that somewhere on this thread there was discussion about recruiting ranks. I admit that I don't keep up with said rankings like I once did and I guess it's because those it will be discussed on DBR. However I ran across a Rivals website on ranking of recruits that covered; 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. I saw that Kerwin Walton(Cheats) was rated #93 coming out of high school. I had no idea he was rated that low/high coming out of high school. I guess it shows that these rankings are not always accurate.
GoDuke!