Duke basketball recruiting commitment worth a quick $100K
By Matt Giles
It pays to want to play Duke basketball.
On Friday evening, Centennial (Calif.) shooting guard Jared McCain revealed his commitment to the Duke basketball program. Before his announcement, the 6-foot-2, 180-pound five-star, who moonlights as a creative dancer on TikTok, already boasted a relatively high value in the name, image, likeness (NIL) department: at $286,000, per the On3 NIL Valuation.
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Four days later, as Jeremy Crabtree of On3 noted, the McCain stock has skyrocketed to $397,000, marking a 39 percent increase in that span. As a result, the future Blue Devil, who sits No. 23 overall on the 247Sports 2023 Composite, now ranks No. 6 among all high school prospects in NIL value (Bronny James, a potential 2023 Duke target, tops that list at $6.3 million).
Crabtree also pointed out McCain’s sudden spike in social media popularity:
“Since Jared McCain’s commitment to Duke, he’s gained more than 100,000 new followers on TikTok and added around 84,000 followers on Instagram.”
As it stands, McCain is up to an astounding 1.2 million followers on TikTok and 358,000 followers on Instagram.
A four-year Duke basketball career from a five-star?
With the new NIL rules in place, allowing college athletes to profit off their popularity, it’s reasonable to think a guy like Jared McCain could earn more money as a Blue Devil than as a young NBA player.
Perhaps McCain imagined that possibility when he said the following last week to 247Sports recruiting insider Dushawn London about his long-term plans in Durham:
“My end goal is to win a national championship. To win four of them is the ultimate goal.”
At this early juncture, Duke’s 2023 class ranks No. 1 on the 247Sports Team Rankings and consists of three pledges: Jared McCain, Oak Hill (Va.) five-star point guard Caleb Foster, and Windermere (Fla.) four-star power forward Sean Stewart.
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