It might be also worth pointing out that, regardless of what happens--whether he plays one more season, or two; whether he finishes his career at Duke, or elsewhere; whether he wins zero titles, or one, or two--he traded in one complete year of eligibility for 18 minutes of playing time.
A snarky response and several replies have been deleted. Let's be on good behavior, friends.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Yeah, I get it. This redshirt thing (aka “The issue that refused to die”) is a great example of DBR’s quirky, yet endearing charm.
Fellow DBRers, please proceed in what has now become an almost Holy Grail-like quest to bring definitive clarity to the Joey Baker redshirt saga. I salute thee, one and all! 🍺
I'd say it's a high, high likelihood that if Baker does not return for 2022-2023 it won't be because Duke is out of scholarships.
After this season, we know Theon John and Bates Jones are gone, and almost certainly Banchero and Griffin will be, and in all likelihood so would Mark Williams.
So, at most you'd expect 4 other returnees next year, max (Roach, Moore, Keels and Blakes). If by some crazy circumstance all of Roach, Moore, Keels and Mark Williams return, plus Blakes and Baker, that's an absolute max of 6 scholarships taken, and then the three commits to date (Whitehead, Flip and Schutt) gets to 9. Even if Scheyer runs the table on the offers reported to be outstanding (to Lively, Mark Mitchell, JJ Starling and Anthony Black -- which in itself seems very, very unlikely as Starling and Black basically play the same position so it's hard to see getting both) that would still only get Duke to the maximum allowed (13).
I mean, I was one of those bemoaning the decision. And I still do. It was dumb. He played 18 minutes, and it was clear from the first game he wasn’t going to make an impact that year. There doesn’t seem a reasonable argument that playing him there - when you knew he wasn’t going to make a difference - at the expense of the opportunity for a fifth year made sense. You essentially traded a year’s worth of eligibility for 18 minutes, most of which were in garbage time.
Now, the decision may not end up being costly. But it was dumb, and that is what folks were bemoaning. That the outcome might luck into not mattering doesn’t make it not dumb.
Last edited by CDu; 09-10-2021 at 10:53 PM.
The decision was desperate.
That team really needed shooting and Baker looked like he might be a port in the lane clogging storm. Of course he wasn’t, but desperate times call for checking out all of the clogged ports to try to find shelter from the storm of missed threes. Or something along those lines.
I do appreciate the enthusiasm and optimism in this thread and on DBR in general that Baker will become an in-game contributor.
But here’s the thing: they never even gave him the opportunity to be a 3-pt threat. So they had to know that he wasn’t going to make an impact.
It would be one thing if they put him in and gave him serious run for a few games to see if he could help. But they didn’t. So it just goes back to being a dumb and wasteful move. They didn’t allow for any upside in the move to offset the downside.
(Can't believe we're doing this again)
It isn't dumb and wasteful if he doesn't have ACC level talent. It was a desperation heave that didn't pan out, but it wasn't wasteful.
If Baker hasn't impacted the lineup by the end of this coming season, nothing of value was "wasted."
For the love of God END this ...please, please just end this !
I hate this relitigating for no purpose...please end this.
Let's get back to our 2022 recruiting and what a super class it's becoming.
I don’t agree with this. You can’t judge the quality of decisions by the way things turn out. You should judge whether a leader made the best choice given the information they had. Good decisions turn out badly and poor decisions turn out well all the time. That doesn’t mean the quality of the decisions changes with the perspective of time. It just means the leader got lucky or unlucky.
You brought it up. You knew what would happen when you did that.
And yes, it was wasteful. Players develop at different paces. Baker has ACC talent. More talent than, say Melchionni. There was no way of knowing how much he would develop in 3-4 years. They knew he didn’t have ACC readiness as a freshman. That is why he was redshirting in the first place.
I completely agree with you and cato that it was a desperation move. But desperation moves are typically bad decisions. Just like this one was. They got lucky in that the bad decision might not prove costly. But it was a bad decision.
I read that Lively is hosting an open gym type of thing, several of the top programs are in to see him this weekend. Would be truly amazing if Jon could land him.
It seems we're the clear leader for Mark Mitchell and JJ Starling.
Lively is clearly a priority recruit. Do we have any back up plans should we miss on him? UK seems to have offers out to Bona and Lively, so I'd imagine 1 commits there.
And you should have known what would happen by bringing it up. Especially when you misstated what those bemoaning the decision were saying. You don’t get to stoke the fire and then complain that things are burning.
We may or may not lose any major value. That doesn’t make the decision a fine decision. Process over outcome. It was a panic move, and not a good decision. It may or may not turn out to be a painful bad decision. But it was a bad decision.
Gee whiz, this stuff is not life and death. Ease up.
It seems to me like Duke is the clear leader for Mitchell.
For Starling, I'm not so sure. There's just been one crystal ball pick for Starling to Duke, and it was a medium confidence pick. He's going on official visits this month. This weekend, he is at Syracuse. The Orange have been thought of as a leader for Starling. We'll see if there are any changes in the crystal ball after this weekend. I like Duke's chances with the last official visit.
My guess with the frontcourt is that the staff really wants Lively and have made him a priority. As it is, Filipowski could play a lot of minutes at the 5 for Duke next season. Even if Duke lands Lively, I bet we'll see a transfer next offseason, probably a 3rd or 4th year player that wants an extra year and can provide senior leadership. If Duke misses on Lively, there might be two transfers in the frontcourt.