Duke is staying ahead of the field again.
While Duke may think it is always the smartest entity in any room, the private school with all the money and no state oversight keeps proving it.
The latest innovation by the Blue Devils was to create the general manager’s position for men’s basketball and fill it with a mega-qualified woman.
Rachel Baker is a former college athlete who has worked for both the NBA and Nike, which seems to fit right in with Duke’s one-and-done philosophy and its innovative NIL moves.
It also speaks to Mike Krzyzewski’s curious comment at his retirement press conference that his successor Jon Scheyer is “the smartest guy in coaching” or something like that.
Coach K may have been talking about Scheyer’s pure intelligence rather than his basketball acumen, since after all he was a 33-year-old career assistant when elevated.
Can’t you see Scheyer suggesting the GM role, and all it entails, and his Hall of Fame boss saying, “Let’s wait until you are the head coach?”
But a younger Coach K did something similar about 25 years ago; when tired of fighting Duke over how Iron Duke money would be split, he said keep it all for the other sports.
He then created the Legacy Fund, with a $1 minimum gift and got Grant Hill to pony up first. The multi-millions raised ever since has endowed coaches and staff salaries and helped expand Cameron Indoor and build a practice facility next to it.
Duke hasn’t skipped a recruiting beat since Coach K announced the 2022 season would be his last. It reeled in another No. 1 class as if Scheyer would surely keep the program going at the highest level.
More likely, the class led by Dereck Lively II knew they would play one season and enter the NBA Draft like so much of The Brotherhood before them.
Baker’s NBA relationships can certainly help that promise, but her work with Duke co-licensee Nike may be more important as the NIL money ramps up for future first-rounders like Paulo Banchero, who made millions as a freshman through the Creative Artist Agency (CAA).
Baker will apparently handle all of that in a job eagerly observed by other programs to see what she is doing to make Duke even smarter.
Featured image via Duke Athletics
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