Duke adapts to one-and-done approach

Each fall, hundreds of talented teenagers arrive on college campuses expecting to find a place they'll call home for about eight months.

Most ultimately will have to stay longer, but a select handful will make up college basketball's latest crop of one-and-dones. Most of those spend those months in towns such as Lexington, Ky., inserting themselves into John Calipari's well-oiled machine that churns out first-round NBA draft picks. Others might head to Lawrence, Kan., where Bill Self just saw two of his players chosen among the top three in the NBA draft.

Or, lately, they choose to come here. To Durham.

Duke hasn't been in the one-and-done business very long, or as extensively, as the others. The cornerstone of the Blue Devils program was its reliance on four-year players. The Christian Laettners and Grant Hills of the world turned down early entry into the NBA draft to compete for college championships all four years.

Eventually, Duke players began leaving early, just like players did at North Carolina and elsewhere. The Blue Devils' first one-and-done player was Corey Maggette, in the 1998-99 season. Five years later, it was Luol Deng.

The 2006 NBA draft was the first with a new rule that required players to be 19 and a year removed from their high school graduation. At first, Duke didn't deal with the same issues other schools started to see — roster uncertainty, team chemistry concerns — because the Blue Devils didn't have one-and-done players.

That changed with Kyrie Irving, who declared for the draft after an injury-plagued 2010-11 freshman season. He was the No.1 overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft. Austin Rivers followed as the No.10 pick the next year, after one season at Duke. Jabari Parker was a freshman at Duke last season and went No. 2 overall in the 2014 NBA draft.

In recent years, the Blue Devils coaching staff has realized it must continue to go after blue-chip recruits, even if their time on campus could be brief.

"You've got to just keep going at it and trying to recruit the guys you think would be good for Duke," coach Mike Krzyzewski says. "If you really fall in love with a certain kid who you want, whether he's there for one year or four, really go after him and hopefully you get him. We've gotten a few of those that we've really wanted."

Fit is important at a place such as Duke, with its tradition, history of developing leaders and rigorous academics.

"When we recruit, even with the kids we know are going to be one-and-done … we felt like they fit the profile of the kind of guys we want," Duke assistant coach Jeff Capel says. "Along with that, you have to have a mix of guys who are going to be long term. If you look at the history of our program, the really, really good teams, the Final Four teams and championship teams, they've had really good upper-class leadership.

"That's something that will always be a constant here."

The way Capel sees it, the key to on-court success is finding the right balance between "one or two" early-entry players and "having guys who are more long term, that we feel will grow eventually, that are running a different race.

"We aren't going to be a team that's going to recruit a whole class of one-and-dones," Capel says. "But (recruiting) is different, because a lot of the kids, they want to do that. It's kind of the popular thing."

This season, Duke has three potential one-and-done players in 6-11, 270-pound center Jahlil Okafor (already projected as the No. 1 pick in the 2015 draft), small forward Justise Winslow and point guard Tyus Jones.

Compressed chemistry

Duke's increased willingness to recruit potential one-and-done players has come with challenges.

First, it has made roster management and recruiting more difficult.

"You want to make sure you don't over-recruit too many guys, but you want to have enough. It's not predictable," Krzyzewski says. "The thing that I find uncomfortable is talking to recruits now and saying, 'This is how it's going to be.' In other words, I don't know how it's going to be. This guy might leave. If this guy blows up this year, he could leave. In other words, when a recruit says, 'Where could I fit in?', (We say,) 'You're really good, and you just have to trust us, because there will be a certain amount of attrition each year.'"

Which means there no longer is the luxury of having players spend months and years of playing together. Instead, teammates must bond quickly in the weeks and months leading up to the season.

This year, the Duke freshmen came to Durham already a close-knit bunch. Okafor and Jones are longtime friends, and they made their recruitment a package deal, deciding together they would come to Duke. They helped recruit Winslow, who played with them on USA Basketball teams.

Once the four-member class (rounded out by four-star recruit Grayson Allen, a guard) arrived in Durham, it set about integrating itself into the rest of the team. Players participated in organized team-bonding activities, which included emotional discussions as well as frivolity, such as Laser Tag. They're trying to build trust and relationships that will translate to the basketball court.

"The upperclassmen have been great, just teaching us a lot," Winslow says. "They'll drive us around different places, help us get to know the city."

Says guard Quinn Cook, Duke's lone returning senior, "If it's rides, playing video games or just joking with each other … it's fun when we're all together. I think that leads to the court."

What also helps, the coaches say, is when the freshmen are willing to listen and be coached.

"This freshman class is just ahead maturity-wise," Krzyzewski says. "With our team right now, it's not sophomores, freshmen, juniors and seniors. They're Duke basketball players. The freshmen are not freshmen. They're Duke basketball players. There's not that differentiation. That doesn't happen all of the time. … They're just really balanced guys. They're real good students, good kids and really good basketball players. … They're good guys, so the upperclassmen have accepted all of them."

Over a Skype call when the USA Basketball team (led by Krzyzewski, with Capel as one of the assistants) was about to leave for Spain this summer, Capel said he told the Duke players to walk into Cameron Indoor Stadium sometime and look at the banners. Look closer, he told them, at the type of banners Duke hangs.

"It's championships," Capel says. "It's ACC championships or ACC regular-season championships. Final Fours. National championships. In the last three or four years, we've averaged 27 or 28 wins a year,and that's cool, but we need to hang a banner.

"That has to be the goal. Everyone has to buy in."

Freshmen want title

Okafor, Jones and Winslow share the same dream for this season: They want to win a national championship, Duke's first since 2010 and what would be Krzyzewski's fifth. It will be an uphill battle.

In the seasons with one-and-done players (Irving, Rivers and Parker) since 2010-11, Duke has won two NCAA tournament games. The Blue Devils also have lost in the first round twice — to Lehigh and Mercer.

This season's freshman group is determined to change that. With a group of veterans that includes Cook, Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson, Duke would seem to have the right blend of youth and experience to contend for a national title.

Then, if all goes according to plan, the NBA won't be far off. But that's not the main reason these potential one-and-dones were drawn to Durham.

"It really didn't faze us, who had the most one-and-dones recently," Okafor says. "If we'd been doing that, we'd have ended up at Kentucky or something. But for me, Tyus, Justise and Grayson, what drew us to Duke was winning. … And it came down to Coach K, just knowing all the players he's coached to get to that next level and being a part of USA Basketball. I know he's coached the best of the best. He knows what it takes and what those guys do."

As U.S. coach, Krzyzewski sees LeBron James' diet, practice habits and the way he carries himself. He can teach that to his Duke players who want to learn how to be pros and want to learn how to be pros quickly.

"Really, there's nothing he hasn't seen, with his Final Fours, NCAA championships, gold medals, coaching NBA players," Winslow says.

"He can help me on and off the court become a better man and a better player. All the knowledge and wisdom he has, I'm just trying to get that from him."

And that's something any player can take away — whether he's there one or four years.