Of our young core, I think Roach/Steward embody the future of what you describe. I also see Brake as a fiery leader type. If this freshman class can stick together and grow, I think we'll be in good shape.
Folks,
I read these threads daily and though I'm not a frequent contributer, I do read what others have to say. My apologies if I missed this somewhere, but I don't think I've seen this in any of the postgame threads. I've been watching Duke for 40 years now, for about the first 25-30 I watched 90% of our games one way or the other. I still probablt see about 75%. In my opinion there is one overarching problem with this team as I look back over the years. There is no ON COURT accountabiliity. We do not have a true leader out there to hold his teammates to account and to let them know what is expected in real time.
We have the greatest coach in the history of college basketball. If you have any doubt, look what happens after halftime the past few games when he has 10 minutes to hold them accountable for what they have done. I realize he is the coach before the game as well, but (again my opinion) that is more about strategy than accountability. Hurt is a great player, but not a leader. Sorry, but I don't see any evidence of that in Goldwire either.
A lot of this can be attributed to the lack of a preseason and practice. That is where team leaders emerge, and this team has not had that opportunity. I don't want to get too much into the weeds, but on a pure talent level this year's team is at least as good as last year's, but I'd take Trey Jones to win every day. He was the kind of player who lead, and held his teammates accountable on the court, in the moment. I think there is still a chance for that to happen, Roach is emerging on the court and maybe, as our point guard, he can find his voice.
Let me be clear this is not a "blame" or "shade" post. This is just a realization that with fewer multi-year players and a lack of time for cohesion we are where we are. I will cheer like crazy for our guys every game and I will love our teams every year, but I think it's more than just stats or a particular game performance that needs to be looked at.
Go Devils! GTHC!
Of our young core, I think Roach/Steward embody the future of what you describe. I also see Brake as a fiery leader type. If this freshman class can stick together and grow, I think we'll be in good shape.
Joey Baker was open on the three point line a number of times, and no one would throw him the ball...especially Steward, who has lots of talent, but finding open teammates doesn't seem to be one of them. Baker played 13 minutes, showed some hustle, and took zero shots.
In the one and done era of Duke basketball, which has its pluses and minuses, there have been players who had the talent to be one and dones who lacked the skill set to start at the highest level of college basketball. Usually this shortcoming is on the defensive side, although the potential to assess this on the offensive side is limited when there are fewer fixed sets and a more free flowing style is emphasized. When you have a player who is going to be there for four years, if he can't play defense, you coach him up, work with him in practice, and tell him he gets no court time until he can do it. He works his backside off because he wants to play the game. This approach more or less defined at least the first fifteen years of Coach K at Duke .
If he's a potential first round draft pick, you can't do that, or you won't have much luck recruiting the next round of one and dones.
This circumstance, which I am certain has applied to several of our freshmen in the last 6 to 8 years, itself cultivates a lack of accountability. I hate it. I don't enjoy watching it. But these days, it's the price of admission to playing at the level at which we choose to play.
GTHC
Great points, and the fact that K still has not named a team captain is glaring proof that this team lacks a leader. Almost every game this season has started off with our opponents going on a huge run and our players floundering around like they're at the Y and ready to get off the court so the next team can get on. Hopefully someone will stop into this role but we don't exactly have a ton of time.
Unfortunately the guys who would have been great leaders on this team are riding the pine in the NBA instead.
And you know this how? From watching on TV with whatever shots and angles the TV director decides to show? You can get an idea about leadership by seeing who is vocal on the court during games, who is gathering the guys around, etc., but there is much more to leadership than that. Leadership and leadership roles are developed in practice, in preseason workouts, in the weight room, when they guys are eating or otherwise hanging out together. We have no idea what is going on at those times, what the relationships between the players are, what the pecking order is, etc. During games, lots is said and done in the huddles that non-insiders simply aren't privy to, and those kinds of things are relevant to leadership as well.
So while I agree with you that we are not seeing much on the court that screams out "leadership is happening here" and it is interesting that K has not designated a captain -- that is perhaps the most salient fact on this point in my opinion -- I don't think casual observers are in a position to make any definitive determinations about the leadership, or lack thereof, on this team.
OTOH, Baker has been driving me crazy this year. I can count on one finger (or less) the number of times he's recently caught a pass on the perimeter where he was ready to shoot.
He catches facing the pass, pulls the ball in, looks around, and seems to think, "maybe I should have taken that shot" and then looks for someone to pass it to.
Early on it was clear that he was working on a faster release, with mixed results. He'd catch facing the basket and go up.
I want my old Baker back.
There is something to this, as well as this thread as a whole. In the OAD era, we've lacked the upperclassman leadership combined with a developed game that knows how to play with energy and fight for 40 minutes, and when things go badly not to panic, and when there is a need for the killer instinct how to apply it. Coach sometimes calls it the m*****f***er. We've had this with underclassmen before (e.g., Tyus, maybe Zion), but it's hard to ask of a one or two-year player. It just is. Coach knows this. Heck, he's the master of it. But he's chosen to recruit a lot of OADs (some of whom were unexpected) in whom he can't cultivate that, and the guys who stay might have the leadership but not the game (e.g., JGold) to be the go-to guy when the going gets rough. To me, this is the biggest lack in the OAD era.
Championship teams require leadership (which is highly correlative to experience) and transcendent talent. Both 2010 and 2015 proved that. In 2019, we had talent in spades but not the leadership. The Kyrie year we had a lot of both, and that would have been among our easiest title runs had Kyrie stayed healthy.
I totally agree. We have chosen to go all-in on OADs. We have gotten to see some transcendent talents, but we also have the downside that we are experiencing now. Many schools would kill for this downside. As others have discussed, many fans also dislike the lack of continuity and relationship with the team - the fan experience is not nearly as enjoyable. At this point, especially with an almost 74-year old coach, it is hard to turn back on OAD. This year's freshmen seem to have a lot of potential and don't seem to have much chance of getting drafted, so hopefully some will stick around.
And hopefully at some point Adam Silver will get rid of OAD. I think college basketball will be much better off as a result. Obviously, other than for his love of his alma mater, Silver has no obligation to college basketball, so there is no guarantee he does this.
I'm not interested in a pissing match , but I discussed that or practice/prep time in my original post, so most of your post was already addressed. As for seeing it on TV, yes, you should be able to see it on TV, it's in the way the team comes to the huddles as much as what is said, it's the body language as we get set on defense after an important bucket, it's the guy who runs over and grabs a teammate's jersey to talk right at his face. If that was happening, we'd see it, regardless of TV angles and the like. We've all seen it before, we can tell when it's not there.
Hard to know. He scored 28 against Arizona fairly efficiently and did not start in any game in the post season Duke was playing well until Williams went Bootsy on Duke. Nolan had a bad game but I don’t blame that on Kyrie. Duke got hit in the mouth in the second half and never recovered.
I think Roach would/could have been our leader, if he had been immediately handed the team keys. But, how do you do that when Goldwire is our best defender and defense is our weakness?
Yeah, it wasn't Irving's fault. It was just the situation that the injury created, where we built a system around Smith after the injury and things got jumbled up when Irving came back.
We just happened to run into Derrick Williams on the wrong day, and Nolan Smith threw up a clunker (3-14 fg, 6 turnovers), and Seth Curry got hurt. Just a confluence of bad breaks.