Various, assorted and miscellaneous basketball stuff

Catching up on a busy summer

How I spent my summer vacation.

Do they still do that anymore? Probably not.

But it was an interesting summer for a number of past, current and future Duke basketball players.

Let’s start with Cooper Flagg. He just signed an endorsement deal with New Balance shoes. Flagg is 17; he’ll turn 18 in December. And Duke is a Nike school. Flagg will continue to wear Nike equipment in anything basketball related but he can wear New Balance to the Jason Isbell concert next month, should he be so inclined.

It’s easy to overthink this. Flagg says he wore New Balance growing up, he’s from Maine, New Balance is headquartered in the Boston suburbs and has a strong presence in Maine.

But it’s still something totally unimaginable just a few years ago.

Flagg also made news on the court, the good kind of news. He became the youngest player to be named to the Select Team, that scrimmages against the U.S. Olympic team. By all accounts he more than held his own against the best basketball players in the world.

Detroit Piston Jalen Duren was a member of the Select Team.

“He showed no fear. He came and worked hard every day. You would think he was already here [the NBA].”

Other observers used terms like “unbelievable,” “not afraid,” “competitive” and so forth.

My favorite comment came from former NBA player Langston Galloway, a practice player against the U.S. team.

“I’m not even impressed about the scoring and all that,” he told The Athletic. I’m more impressed about his poise. He’s trying to make plays. You can see he understands the game.”

Flagg’s message was consistent. I’m just here to play basketball.

Flagg went into the summer as the presumptive top pick in the 2025 NBA draft and somehow managed to elevate his stock.

Only three freshmen have ever been consensus national players of the year, Kevin Durant at Texas in 2007, Anthony Davis at Kentucky in 2012 and Zion Williamson in 2019.

Flagg has a realistic chance of making it number four.  

Fellow incoming Duke big man Khaman Malauch played for South Sudan in the Olympics. He didn’t play a lot but he got to practice against a Cinderella team that defeated Puerto Rico for its first ever Olympic win.

Kon Knueppel was the third Blue Devil to make a big summer impact. K2, as he’s called, was an inexplicable omission from the McDonald’s All-America team but he dominated both the EYBL circuit and Wisconsin preps hoops.

He looked like a nice rotation piece when he signed but he might be a lot more. He excelled in last month’s Tatum Elite Camp.

“Rained down threes, finished through contact, made smart cuts, kept the ball moving and was rock solid defensively.”

That was Jon Chepkevich of NBA Draft Express and that was a consensus analysis.

All of a sudden the presumptive complementary player is showing up on 2025 mock drafts, not second round but borderline lottery.

Duke now lists Knueppel at 6-7, 217 pounds. Duke won the 2015 NCAA title with a starting power forward smaller than that.

Arianna Roberson is a 6-4 post from Texas and projects to play a lot for the Duke women this season. She averaged 8.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game as the US won the 2024 FIBA U18 AmeriCup.

That was in Columbia. The one in South America, not South Carolina.

She’s not done. She’s representing the USA in the 3X3 U18 championships in Hungary this week.

To the pros. You probably know that J.J. Redick became head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, after Danny Hurley said thanks but no thanks.

First head coaching job at one of the sport’s two most iconic franchises, one whose best players are 39-year-old LeBron James and 31-year-old Anthony Davis and an ownership group with some issues?

A lot of folks will be watching that one. If you’ve listened to Redick on TV or his podcast, you know he knows his basketball backwards and forward and backwards again. Will that be enough?

What you may have missed is Redick’s hiring of Lindsey Harding as one of his assistants. Harding was 2007 national player of the year and is one of three women--Alana Beard and Elizabeth Williams are the other two--to have her jersey hanging from the Cameron rafters.

Redick and Harding were contemporaries at Duke and shared a stint in Philly, where Harding was a scout and player development coach. Harding was named G-League coach of the year in Stockton last season--the first woman so honored. Stockton is a Sacramento farm team. A woman is going to be an NBA head coach someday and Harding has thrown her hat into the mix.  

She’s not the only former Duke women’s player in the NBA news. Her former teammate Mistie Bass-Boyd was hired by the Pistons as Executive Director of Player Engagement and Basketball Operations.

She had been working for Nike.

Back to the Olympics. Chelsea Gray got her second gold for Team USA.

Kara Lawson was an assistant. Coaches don’t get medals but Lawson has one from her playing days and two whatever-it-is-that-coaches-get.

Elizabeth Balogun helped Nigeria to its first two Olympic wins since 2004. They became the first African team to reach the knockout stage.

R. J. Barrett averaged 19.8 points per game for Canada, second on that team only to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Canada won all three games in the preliminary stage but was knocked out by France in the quarterfinals.

Which brings us to the curious case of Jayson Tatum. Remember Tatum was the second-leading scorer for Team USA three years ago in Tokyo and was the only American named first-team All-NBA.  He projected as one of the mainstays this go-around.

Except he barely played, having two healthy scratches. I get that Steve Kerr elected to build his team around veterans James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.  Maybe Tatum was gassed after 90 or so games this past season.

But 11 minutes in the gold-medal game?

I wasn’t the only perplexed observer.  

Charles Barkley isn’t known for holding his tongue and he certainly didn’t this time, telling Dan Le Batard.

“There’s no reason for him [Kerr] not to play Jayson Tatum. Jayson Tatum would have been the second-best player on Serbia. Probably would have been the best player on France. For him not to get any minutes in two games, that wasn’t right, that wasn’t fair. If you’re going to the Olympics, you want to play. Them guys dedicated their summer to the United States and not get to play, I didn’t like that at all.”

Carmelo Anthony said “I understand why Tatum may not have played. I don’t agree with how they went about it. I’m cool with you saying he’s not going to play. Just be honest.”

Ouch.

It should be noted that Mike Krzyzewski said Kerr’s job was to win and win he did. Undefeated, gold medal.

Tatum said all the right things in public and said nothing that happened--or didn’t happen-will impact his decision for 2028, when he’ll be 30. But if Kerr’s primary directive was to win in 2024 then a secondary directive has to be building continuity for 2028 and I don’t see how a DNP-CD in a 26-point pool-play win over Serbia moves that needle in a positive direction.

Still, Tatum has two golds and joins an elite club to make first-team All-NBA, win an NBA title and Olympic gold in the same season. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and James are the others.

Tatum and Gray are the only former Blue Devil players with two Olympic golds on their resume.

That 2028 Olympic team? Tatum, Paolo Banchero, a healthy Zion Williamson, maybe Brandon Ingram, maybe even Cooper Flagg.  A fellow can dream, right?