Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Am I being quoted as an authoritative source? Ha! Love it. Now I've officially made it.
Yeah, I debated on whether or not to include Semi, but I can't help but like the guy - even if he transferred - so I'm curious how he does in the NBA. If the ~30 of you that visit my page daily have a problem with it, umm...sorry?
i am absolutely in your boat, and as a daily visitor to your site (THANK YOU!!!), i appreciate being able to keep tabs on Semi, even if others don't consider him in the "Brotherhood". He played at Duke, that's good enough for me. Had Sulaiman, or Gbinije made it to the NBA, i would appreciate keeping track of them too.
I think the better question is would Semi have a problem with it? I think he might...he was a star after he transferred...not at Duke. Just a guess...that Semi does not consider himself a Duke guy.
Some other poster also kind of indicated he belonged on the list as much or more than someone like, say, Tyus - because he was on the roster two years and not one like Tyus. I think we can all agree that's not a pertinent fact here.
Is it accurate to list him as a former Duke player in the NBA? Of course it is.
Is he a Duke guy? Different question, different answer.
Hard at work making beautiful things.
Ugh, there are two separate questions here. One easy, one complicated.
1. Can grad_devil follow Semi's NBA career out of personal interest by posting numbers with other former Duke players on a publicly available site? Yes, of course.
2. Can Duke take credit for Semi's NBA career? I heavily lean toward no, but I guess it's open to opinion.
Unless you believe in partial credit, I see the above statement as wildly inconsistent. Either Duke claims Seth instead of Liberty, or Duke claims Semi instead of SMU. Can't be both.
If you DO believe in partial credit, then congratulations, Duke gets a little more for Semi and a lot less for Tatum. Two years at Duke directly made Semi an attractive transfer candidate for SMU, and one year at SMU directly made Semi a 2nd round NBA draft pick. He's where he is now because of personal and professional development, which has very little to do with SMU, and even less to do with Duke. Meanwhile, Jayson Tatum is an NBA All-Star mostly because of two-plus years with the Celtics staff, and somewhat because of one preceding year with Coach K.
We're not even factoring family, primary school, high school, AAU, pre-Olympic teams, and perhaps most importantly, pre-draft training (agent or no agent) and stints in the G-League, where applicable.
You can see how partial credit becomes kind of a bad idea.
Duke doesn't claim Ojeleye. They do not list him, Elliott Williams or Gbinijie on their list of NBA players.
I have a special spot for EWill. IIRC, he transferred due to tough family circumstances. Here's what Coach K said upon his departure:
"We fully support him in his efforts to be closer to [his family] during this trying time," coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "He is a good young man with an opportunity to become an outstanding player. We wish him well as he determines his future. He will always be a part of our program and we will always be in his corner."
Guess that bolded statement doesn't extend to listing on the website, huh?
That's actually pretty standard, college and pro. Here's Semi's NBA.com page, for one example. But I could find dozens of examples for every pro sport.
https://www.nba.com/players/semi/ojeleye/1628400.
See, Brevity, you are tough and I am squishy easy. I'd count as a Dukie anyone who enrolled at Duke for at least one semester and worked out with the basketball team for at least a week. But I do have some standards -- I would not count as a Dukie someone who snuck into Cameron to a basketball game using someone else's student ID and then played hoops somewhere else.
But I have good company. Duke claims as Nobel laureates both those on the faculty who have done celebrated research and those who passed through Duke as a student or post-doc and may not have done any research. Most recently, we are claiming William Kaelin of Dana Farber and Harvard who has Duke undergrad and medical degrees but never did any research at Duke. From Wikipedia (which I bet Duke wrote):
As of 2019, 15 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Duke University. The following list includes only those who have graduated from Duke or spent at least one year as a postdoctoral researcher/medical resident/visiting professor or two years as a faculty member at Duke.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
This is a silly discussion. Semi is a former Duke player. Seth is a former Duke player. I'm a former employee of company X AND a former employee of company Y on my CV. It doesn't need to be either/or.
(Traditionally places like NBA.com will only list the last school where someone played, but I imagine that is more out of only wanting to list one school than anything else)
Also, how about that Zion kid, huh? He's pretty good. Even though he had an "off" game and only scored 17 this time.
His streak of 20+ PPG comes to a close but he set the record for a teenager. Sure there are plenty more records to come.
More importantly, they won. After dropping a few, they're 4 games back from the 8 seed. They had creeped up to within a game or two but have fallen back.
Hard to compete in the James Harden scoring race when you take 9 shots (7 of 9 and 3of 4 from line). Some guy I’ve never heard of (B. Ingram) was 4 of 20, although Ingram did make a couple of big ones at the end. Saw only 4th quarter, but NO had trouble getting the ball to Zion.