Duke basketball: Social media deletions puts cloud over Patrick Tape saga

The social media postings, and deletions, of the Duke basketball team have put an unnecessary cloud over the Patrick Tape saga in Durham.

Welp, here we are again.

Over the last week, the official Duke Men’s Basketball social media pages have posted graphics officially welcoming Patrick Tape to The Brotherhood.

In a matter of minutes, all of those posts were deleted on each occasion.

The latest deletion came via Twitter on Saturday afternoon after the following graphic was deleted from the team’s account but posted by a fellow Duke basketball fan before the team could take it down.

The tweet from Duke said, “Official: Patrick Tape is the newest member of #TheBrotherrhood 🖊🔵😈.”

Saturday’s tweet can still be seen on the Duke Bleacher Report page.

Now, this all could be accidental and the paperwork has just not reached the offices in Durham, but the fact that this has happened multiple times this week has no choice but to leave Duke fans wondering.

After all, Tape did commit, decommit, and then recommit from Duke all within a ten-day span of each other.

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From Mike Krzyzewski‘s statement in the graphic above, it sure doesn’t seem like Tape decommitting from Duke once again is an option, but who truly knows at this point.

Patrick Tape’s recruitment certainly was faced with challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many thought the 6-foot-10 forward was headed to Syracuse after he backtracked on his first verbal commitment to the Blue Devils.

Tape is slated to be the veteran big man of the 2020-21 Duke basketball team after the program lost three seniors to graduation, Javin DeLaurier, Jack White, and Justin Robinson, while freshman Vernon Carey Jr. is headed to the NBA.

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Patrick Tape is finishing up his online coursework at Columbia, where he will be graduating in May before getting down to Durham and hopefully enrolling in classes, whether it be in person or online, to begin his pursuit of his Master’s Degree.

Hopefully, in the coming days, Duke will be able to post about Patrick Tape and not have to delete it after the Charlotte native signs his National Letter of Intent.