Staying Power

It finally happened.

The Duke basketball team has lost a player early to the pros.

Jay Heaps left the team in December to become the second pick overall in the draft.

Only it was the Major League Soccer draft.

Heaps was a walk-on for the basketball team who had appeared in four games when he left.

Other than that, they have all stayed.

Johnny Dawkins, Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner.

Even Grant Hill.

Four years. Imagine.

It is one of the more remarkable streaks in college basketball, and it is going to end soon.

Maybe very soon.

Elton Brand and William Avery are sophomores, but the NBA is ready and waiting, and reporters who follow Duke guess Brand will leave if Duke wins the NCAA title but stay for another try if Duke falters.

Corey Maggette is a freshman who has started only two games, but he’d be a first-round pick, easily.

The day is coming, Coach Mike Krzyzewski knows.

If not this year, probably next.

“That’s a sign of the times,” Krzyzewski said. “I feel it’s an honor for our kids to be considered to be people that the pros would be interested in. [But] all the kids want to do right now is play basketball. I’m sure they’ll be courteous, but basically they want to talk about the team and how they’re playing. What happens after the season, happens.”

That it has not happened before is remarkable, leaving Duke as the last untouched bastion among the powers of the college game.

“It’s an unspoken tradition,” said sophomore Shane Battier, who knows his class probably will be the one to end it. “Coach really doesn’t talk about it. What he does say is that if certain opportunities arise, it may be best for the individual. That individual will have to look at it seriously and do what’s best for the individual.

“It’s a different day and age. Especially with all the players coming out so young, I would say even six years ago, there was a lot more pressure to stay. It was a lot rarer to come out early. I think that’s changed, where there’s really not that pressure.”

That Duke’s stars have stayed four years is one of the undeniable reasons for the Blue Devils’ stunning success of the past 13 years--a stretch in which they have reached seven Final Fours and won two national championships.

Imagine how much more dominant Kentucky might have been had the Wildcats not lost Antoine Walker after his sophomore season in 1996 and Ron Mercer after his second year in 1997. Or North Carolina if the Tar Heels hadn’t said goodbye to Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace after two years in 1995 and to Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter after three last season.

And how bright would UCLA’s future be if anyone imagined most of these freshmen and sophomores would ever become seniors?

Of course, you can’t credit this particular Duke team’s success to seniors. Guard Trajan Langdon is the only senior in the top eight, but he is only the latest star to play four years.

“You know, Grant, Christian, Bobby [Hurley], Danny, all those players, no one wanted to leave early because they had such a great time at Duke, such a great experience,” said Chris Burgess, the sophomore center from Irvine Woodbridge High who said he is considering leaving after this season--not to turn pro or transfer, but to serve a Mormon mission after which he would return to Duke.

“The guys went to so many Final Fours,” Burgess said. “Going to Final Fours, wanting to win, maybe that keeps you from making a decision to leave. I think that’s a big thing, that no one wants to leave early. [The coaches] aren’t saying you can’t leave early. People don’t leave early because they don’t feel like it. But if you do, that’s a decision you have to make.

“That’s a decision Elton will have to make, or Corey will have to make, or even William or Shane. Hopefully, they’ll make the right decision and that’s staying, but that’s their personal decision. That said, I think it’s something that no matter what you do, the coaching staff will support you.”

Perhaps it is partly coincidence, but circumstances seem to have conspired to keep players in Durham.

“At Duke, I think since it is such a great academic institution, a lot of people would love just to graduate from Duke. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it,” Brand said. “And you know, there are different situations for different people. I’m sure Grant Hill didn’t have to leave early to support his family or anything. [Hill’s father, Calvin, played 12 seasons in the NFL.] Like I say, there are different situations.”

And yet there is a culture Krzyzewski has created--one that doesn’t depend on a star system and thrives on internal pressure from teammates.

“I think it’s because it’s very team-oriented,” Avery said. “You don’t have that one player going out and averaging 20 points and things like that. You take it stage by stage. Each guy just tries to get better and better every year. The goals are not personal goals. Goals are like, winning the NCAA, something like that.

“Then if they win one, they’re not easily satisfied. They want to win two, three or four.”

Should Duke win this season, it won’t be enough to stamp this team as the best in Blue Devil history--not after Duke won back-to-back titles in 1991 and ‘92, the only team to repeat since UCLA’s heyday.

“That puts a lot of pressure on that guy, whoever wants to leave. He owes that to his teammates,” Avery said. “If Elton comes to that decision, of course I’m going to try to persuade him to stay, because I want a string of them.”

Krzyzewski is far too cagey to actively discourage players from leaving, though he has never adopted the stance that, say, Dean Smith did at North Carolina, advising players to leave if they were going to be very high picks.

If there is pressure, it is subtle.

“I think one time, when he was kind of upset at our team, he did say, ‘I don’t care who leaves early, who leaves for the NBA, but right now you’re with Duke. And when you wear that Duke uniform, you don’t think about anything but Duke,’ ” Burgess said. “He said that’s the commitment you make to the coaching staff, and that’s the commitment you made to each player.”

Probably no one has come closer to leaving than Ferry, who played in three Final Fours in four years before becoming the Clippers’ notoriously wasted pick at No. 2 overall in 1989.

“He was really close,” said assistant coach Quin Snyder, Ferry’s roommate in college. “I think it was a situation where he would have been in the top two or three picks. His father was an NBA executive [Bob Ferry was general manager of the Washington Bullets at the time], so they understood the market.

“But we lost in the Final Four, and he wanted another chance.

“In Christian’s case, it was the opportunity to win another championship. And Grant, he came back and continued to develop.

“But the market’s changed since ’94. It’s become much more prevalent to leave early. There is not the level of talent in college basketball because of that, so it perpetuates itself.”

As for whether Duke tells players during recruiting they’ll be expected to stay four years, Snyder says that’s not the case.

“Players certainly know they can leave,” he said. “More than anything in recruiting, players still want to know how they’ll be coached in a way that it will be possible to reach their goals.

“But I think it’s dangerous for kids to get ahead of themselves. It stunts so many kids’ development. You see it, they start thinking two or three steps down the road instead of thinking about getting better each and every year.

“I don’t think we’re that different from other schools. I think it’s more happenstance. We’re only talking about three or four guys. It’s not a very large sample. We’ve done nothing to encourage or discourage or anything. We’ve always tried to analyze what’s in the best interest for the kid.”

The old concept that a player should come out early if he’ll be a top-10 pick doesn’t apply anymore, Snyder said.

“What if you don’t want to be a top-10 pick? What if you want to be the top pick? Or what if you only want to be a top-20 pick, go in the first round? Or a high school kid, who just wants to go to the NBA?”

The string of players who have stayed is indeed a fairly small sample.

Though there have been nine first-round picks since Krzyzewski arrived, only three or four were among the hottest prospects, and Hill has made by far the biggest impact in the NBA.

Duke has thrived with a few stars and a series of terrific college players, plenty of them old-fashioned ball-distributing point guards or defensive specialists who didn’t make it to the NBA.

The Duke formula has worked better over a longer haul than the prep all-star teams that are assembled to attempt quick runs to glory.

“Personally, I think if you think ahead, about what do I need to do to get to the NBA, I think you’re hurting the team,” said Burgess, who acknowledges he had more of that mind-set coming out of high school but has since “grown up a lot.”

“That’s what a lot of players do on other teams. That’s why I think Duke’s a real good program, because they think about where they are now, and what they need to do.”

Exactly, Brand said.

“I’m not thinking about it right now,” he said. “I’m just wrapped up in Duke basketball right now.

“I haven’t ruled it out because I haven’t really thought about it. I haven’t ruled it out--or ruled it in.”

First Things First

DUKE’S FIRST-ROUND NBA DRAFT PICKS UNDER COACH MIKE KRZYZEWSKI (right), ALL OF WHOM PLAYED THEIR SENIOR SEASON.

1986: Johnny Dawkins

1986: Mark Alarie

1989: Danny Ferry

1990: Alaa Abdelnaby

1992: Christian Laettner

1993: Bobby Hurley

1994: Grant Hill

1995: Cherokee Parks

1998: Roshown McLeod