Duke basketball senior Javin DeLaurier’s play this season shines a light on his coaches’ flaws.
Player development, especially in regards to big men, has become one of the Duke basketball coaches’ most glaring weaknesses. Though so few five-stars and four-stars stick around more than one year these days, those who do often look like three-stars by the time they are upperclassmen.
Marques Bolden, a five-star who ranked No. 14 on the 247Sports 2016 Composite, left after his junior season after never averaging more than a handful of points and rebounds. Josh Hairston, a four-star who ranked No. 36 in the 2010 class, made Duke fans cover their eyes for four years and averaged a career-low 1.4 points as a senior.
As for the current squad, for starters, one has to wonder if other coaches would have turned junior shooting guard Alex O’Connell into a consistent threat by now. The four-star who arrived in Durham with a No. 68 composite ranking continues to display the same inconsistency he did as a freshman. Actually, his 3-point shooting, once his lone consistent weapon, is now a question mark after his 6-for-26 start (23.1 percent) this season.
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But there is one current Blue Devil who points to more than just a problem with player development. The play of senior co-captain Javin DeLaurier calls into question the Duke staff’s skill at scouting effective big men on the recruiting trail.
Granted, DeLaurier’s size (6-foot-10, 240 pounds) and relatively impressive athleticism also seem to have fooled the recruiting experts who gave him four stars and a No. 39 composite ranking.
The 21-year-old out of Shipman, Va., struggles to dribble, shoot, catch, hold onto the ball in traffic, defend in a halfcourt setting without fouling, set legal screens, pivot without tripping over his own feet or elbowing a defender, and bring his body to a halt without crashing into a teammate, opponent, or ref.
Except when sprinting full-steam ahead in transition — his sparse contributions include blocking shots on the run, putback dunks, and finishing fastbreaks when he does catch the ball — DeLaurier doesn’t move with much fluidity.
But seeing this is DeLaurier’s fourth year in Mike Krzyzewski’s system, the most frustrating aspect of his time on the court is his consistent look of confusion.
So when DeLaurier enters games, those Duke basketball fans who understand that the game requires more than just trying hard with a positive attitude understandably wince, shriek, and moan, expecting he’ll quickly rack up fouls and hoping he doesn’t run over one of his teammates.
Now, let’s zoom in on DeLaurier’s fouling because the addiction evidently calls for an intervention. Through so-called No. 1 Duke’s 6-1 start this season — coming off a historically alarming home loss to Stephen F. Austin on Tuesday night — the crash-test human is averaging 10.2 fouls per 40 minutes.
Think about that stat for a minute. It means that even if Krzyzewski and his assistants wanted to play DeLaurier more than 20 minutes per game, they would not have that choice.
Against Georgetown, DeLaurier required only 13 minutes to foul out. Against Georgia State, he committed two fouls within eight seconds. Against both Kansas and Central Arkansas, he played less than 17 minutes but still managed four fouls.
Not only is his current foul rate on track to be his worst yet for a season, but he’s also slipped compared to his past two seasons in terms of his current field goal percentage (29.2, 7-for-24), free throw percentage (52.1, 11-for-21), and blocks per game (0.6). Meanwhile, his scoring average of 3.6 points falls halfway between his 3.4 and 3.8 from the past two campaigns.
In fairness to Coach K, he did wisely cut down DeLaurier’s playing time last time out — only six minutes despite only two fouls — against Stephen F. Austin. Frankly, though, barring a dramatic improvement, that still seems roughly six minutes too many in close games moving forward.
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Yes, the Blue Devils do need someone to give freshman center Vernon Carey Jr. breathers. No, DeLaurier is probably not the best option right now. When Duke hosts Winthrop on Friday at 7 p.m. (ACCN), it sure seems time for Coach K to either give more run to senior forward Justin Robinson, let senior forward Jack White do his best at the five-spot, or pull the redshirt off freshman walk-on forward Keenan Worthington.
Any of the above options — or even letting freshman small forward Wendell Moore give it a shot — seems better than DeLaurier. Though he seems like a mature, friendly young man and a solid leader in terms of making sure the underclassmen show up on time and whatnot — i.e., all the things he could still do from the end of the bench — he just doesn’t seem like a player worthy of double-digit minutes for a ranked team.
The Duke basketball coaches’ decision to give him meaningful minutes has long baffled many fans, provided material for Javin jokes, seemingly dinged the team’s chances to win, misled DeLaurier about his pro potential, and added to the criticism they receive regarding their recent flaws in scouting and developing big men.
And they tricked this writer into putting DeLaurier on the following list after his somewhat respectable yet apparently misleading numbers last season. In hindsight, until shown otherwise this season, it looks like his spikes in blocks and easy buckets were mostly due to Zion Williamson making his job easier by attracting all the attention.
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