Mike Krzyzewski made headlines this week when he reportedly banned his players from using their locker room and wearing Duke apparel. But unless that somehow adds a point guard to the roster and/or puts Harry Giles and Grayson Allen in time machines and/or heals the Hall of Fame coach's back in a way that results in a quicker-than-expected return from surgery, I'm not sure it helps.
So consider this sentence a rolling eyes emoji.
But, in fairness, I totally get it.
Manipulating situations and playing mind games often does go hand-in-hand with coaching a roster dominated by teenagers -- as Kentucky's John Calipari demonstrated in 2014 when he created what amounted to a fresh start for his struggling team by convincing them the past was in the past thanks to a "tweak" he was making before the SEC Tournament. In reality, the "tweak" was very basic and practically nothing. But that's not the point. That was never the point. The point was to get his players -- not to mention Kentucky's fans -- to completely disregard how they went 1-3 in their last four regular season games, and to make them believe their struggles were history thanks to a magic trick discovered late one night at home.
And guess what?
It worked!
Kentucky advanced to the national title game.
So perhaps Krzyzewski's decision to play mind games with his players will have a similar effect. But the truth is, and any basketball person paying attention will tell you this, Duke's issues aren't psychological.
I mean, Grayson Allen's issues might be psychological.
I'll concede that point.
But Duke's larger issues are rooted in the fact that their top players this season (Luke Kennard, Amile Jefferson) entered this season as projected role players, and their projected top players have either been suspended (Allen) or hurt (Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum). Consequently, roles have never been clearly defined. So the Blue Devils are still trying to figure things out, and create chemistry, completely on the fly.
Plus, Coach K remains sidelined post back surgery.
That's not nothing.
Plus, Duke doesn't have a natural point guard.
And that really has turned into something even if most trusted it wouldn't in the preseason. I include myself in that group, by the way. I recognized Duke's no-true-point-guard roster as a possible problem but discounted it, and for two reasons:
- The talent on the roster, positions be damned, seemed capable of overcoming anything. Duke has nine McDonald's All-Americans, for crying out loud. So I figured anybody could play PG and things would be OK.
- Duke didn't have a high-quality true point guard last season, either. But the Blue Devils still ran the nation's fourth most efficient offense and made the Sweet 16. And if they could do that with that roster, doing even better things with this roster seemed like a probable outcome.
All of that made sense at the time, I think. But here's the thing I, and many others, missed: The Blue Devils had clearly defined roles last season, which is why the offense worked. They were shorthanded relative to normal Duke standards after losing the top four scorers from a team that won the 2015 NCAA Tournament, meaning there were plenty of shots to go around and not many players qualified to take them. So Allen took 14.3 shots per game. Brandon Ingram took 13.4. Kennard was happy to get 9.3. And nobody else mattered much.
But now?
Now Allen, Kennard and Tatum all believe, and perhaps reasonably so, they should be taking around 14 shots a game. But Duke only averages 59.5 shots a game. And there are six other players averaging double-digits in minutes, all of whom were also heralded high school prospects. Meantime, there's no true point guard to decide, in the flow of the game, who gets what. So everybody just tries to get what they can get whenever they can get it, and never was this more clear than in the final minutes of Monday's shocking loss to NC State.
The Blue Devils were down 74-73 with 2:30 left.
That's not ideal. But they were still OK.
Then Duke's subsequent three possessions resulted in this:
- Luke Kennard missed 3-pointer
- Grayson Allen missed 3-pointer
- Jayson Tatum missed 3-pointer
By the time Duke's top three scorers finished impatiently jacking long jumpers, the Blue Devils were down 79-73 to a team with a special point guard -- Dennis Smith. And isn't it funny how things tend to work that way, how teams with reliable and true point guards seem to handle late-game situations better?
Duke doesn't have a reliable and true point guard.
It was a problem Monday night and has been all season.
Granted, the Blue Devils do have just about everything else, which is why it's foolish to lower their ceiling too far, especially until after we see how they look when Krzyzewski returns next month. But it should be noted that the past six national champions were all guided by real point guards -- Ryan Arcidiacono (Villanova), Tyus Jones (Duke), Shabazz Napier (Connecticut), Russ Smith (Louisville), Marquis Teague (Kentucky) and Kemba Walker (Connecticut) -- and that's probably not a coincidence.
Bottom line, Duke has a hole in its roster that has developed into a real on-the-court problem. That doesn't mean it can't be overcome, of course. But it does mean the Blue Devils must overcome it to reach their goals, and now they don't even have a locker room or any school-issued apparel at their disposal. Whether the latter matters in any real way is debatable. But the idea that it's true, that a frustrated Coach K got ban-happy from home, is worth highlighting, if only because it's the latest reminder that Duke's season isn't going as planned.
