By @5PointPlayPodc1 - AC
On the night of April 6, 2015, there was an aura surrounding a certain North Carolina-based basketball team. That aura was a certain shade of blue, “the right blue” many would say. Duke had just won the national championship, the 5th for Duke and head coach Mike Krzyzewski. It was also the last for Duke, who is now in a “slump” of 9 years without a championship. That matches the longest drought the team has had between title wins since they began winning them.
In the time that has passed, the landscape of the college game has changed vastly. CoVid came and went, leaving players, tournaments and hopes in its wake. The transfer portal has turned the hoops world on its head. NIL has made it more possible for players to seek greener pastures at universities while shunning possibilities in the G League or overseas. From an era where it was assumed you needed to collect incredible freshmen talent to attempt to win, to the valiant return of the college senior (in some cases SUPER! Senior), we’ve all had to bear witness to a boomerang of sorts.
For Duke, the boomerang landed on April 8, 2022. Almost seven years to the day after being led to its last championship by a freshman point guard named Tyus Jones, an Australian wizard committed to the program he will now call home for 3 years. Tyrese Proctor joined the Brotherhood and instantly, the Duke faithful rejoiced. He even selected the same number as Jones, the now iconic #5. Instantly parallels were drawn. Watching any Proctor scouting film, you saw incredible ball handling ability, excellent shooting and leadership indicative of a winner.
The trait, however that stood out the most was an elite ability to distribute. It’s the reason why that summer of 2022, Proctor was not with his new Duke ‘mates at the K Center but playing with professionals winning the FIBA Asia Cup. The path was set. Duke was staring at #6 thanks to a recruiting class that included 3 - 4 other NBA caliber freshmen. Duke fans were ready to hit the keyboards and claim their supremacy. Then something happened that hasn’t happened to Duke Nation in over a decade. Duke fans had to deal with the dreaded D word: development. That season between injuries, youth and the changing landscape of college athletics,
Duke found itself being manhandled by grown men in a second round 2023 NCAA Tournament loss. But within that game, there was Proctor shaking and baking his way to 16 points and 6 assists, keeping his team within striking distance. All the while, Proctor generated significant NBA first round buzz.
In previous seasons, this would have been a surefire conclusion to a brief but productive collegiate career. But folks, this is the world of NIL we’re talking about here. Proctor, a staunch competitor, didn’t want to end his time at Duke in that fashion (as he stated in a hype video by the Duke social media team). He elected to return to Duke to seek a chance at a championship with a team full of returners and another top-notch recruiting class. I’ll spare you the details of how the team finished the season, but more importantly, Proctor took a significant step backward in the eyes of fans and the NBA alike. His draft stock fell to second round value, a place Proctor himself feels is not accurate of his talents.
After the Tennessee game in 2023, fans saw a player who could score and facilitate, something Duke fans had in Tyus Jones and his younger brother, Tre. He also was an all-conference performer on defense. Proctor was expected to break out in a big way in the 2023-2024 season.
We could point out a few things that might have led to his apparent decline. Injuries to his ankle and head hampered him in the doldrums of January and February. Duke handed the ball to Senior Jeremy Roach and budding freshman Caleb Foster in his absence, and both took the reins. Proctor also hit a shooting slump to start the season (32% from 3) that would have made any competitive player with lofty goals balk. But maybe Proctor was just playing like him. Maybe that is who he is. Proctor has now been asked twice to take on a huge scoring role for two teams that lacked consistent scoring punch from the perimeter. Injuries to Dariq Whitehead robbed Duke of that option in 2022-2023. In 2023-2024, Jared McCain, who burst onto the scene as a bona fide pro started the season slowly. Roach also suffered injuries and a late season slump, and Foster was not quite ready to be an everyday scorer.
It's starting to become obvious that Proctor is a player that is very comfortable distributing the ball and creating options for his teammates. Duke head coach, Jon Scheyer utilized him effectively during his freshman season with multi-faceted scorer, Kyle Filipowski in many screen and motion combinations. You saw the same to start the ‘23-24 season to the tune of a 5.7 assists per game average in the first 6 games. The stage was being set before the first ankle injury on December 2nd, 2023, that cost Proctor a month of formative basketball.
My point in writing all of this is to say, maybe instead of trying to force the round peg into the square hole, the young developing point guard (20 years old on April 1, 2024) would be better utilized as a facilitator as opposed to being a primary scorer. In 2022-2023, when Scheyer completely switched the scoring roles to Roach and Filipowski, and Whitehead began playing with some modicum of health in early January of that year, Proctor went on a streak to end that season amassing 4.2 assists per game and shooting 40% from 3. That was a vast improvement from the 2.2 assists and 22% from deep that Proctor generated while being asked to be a primary scorer up to that early January timeframe. I could get deeper into the analytics of where and how he got his shots, but the story remains the same. Tyrese Proctor is far more comfortable as a facilitator and a tertiary option than he is as the primary. The Duke staff clearly recognizes this based on recruiting and the player they brought back in Caleb Foster. Is it time for us to stop hoping he becomes a Jones brother and maybe realize he’s more like Chris Duhon? Duhon, mind you won a championship as a freshman facilitator and reached a Final Four his senior season. The two years in between, Duhon was asked to be something he wasn’t, which was a primary perimeter scorer. Both times, Duke fell out of the tournament in the Sweet 16.
As the boomerang returns to Durham, will Proctor help bring a trophy with it? The championship game in 2025 is on April 7th, 10 years and 1 day after Duke’s last national title. If Duke’s roster is what the staff hopes, Duke fans could be celebrating another program bolstering result.
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