Duke must land dream transfer target after losing 5-star Shelton Henderson

With a five-star de-commitment shaking up the Blue Devil's roster outlook, the pressure is on Jon Scheyer to land Cal transfer Andrej Stojakovic.
Duke Blue Devils head coach Jon Scheyer
Duke Blue Devils head coach Jon Scheyer | Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

When Duke lost assistant coach and top recruiter Jai Lucas to Miami, the immediate concern was about the Boozer twins, Cameron and Cayden, who headline the Blue Devils’ 2025 recruiting class. While Jon Scheyer has been able to hang onto the five-star forward and four-star guard, his program did lose its grip on five-star wing Shelton Henderson, who on Friday de-committed from Durham and is likely to join Lucas in Coral Gables. 

5-star wing Shelton Henderson de-commits from Duke

With Henderson out of the 2025 class, Duke has fallen from the top of the recruiting rankings to No. 15 with Cameron Boozer leading the way as the No. 3 player in the country. Four-star power forward Nikolas Khamenia is also the second-highest ranked future Blue Devil at No. 15 in the class, nine spots higher than Cayden Boozer. 

While much of the country has vowed to get old and stay old through the transfer portal, including the two teams that played for the national championship, Florida and Houston, without a single freshman seeing the floor in the title game, Scheyer has stuck to Duke’s success as an NBA factory. Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach nearly got the Blue Devils to a championship in their one-and-done season, and next season, Scheyer will rely on the talented offspring of a former NBA star to lead him back to the Final Four. 

However, to replace Henderson, it appears that Scheyer could be after another son of a former NBA star in the transfer portal, Andrej Stojakovic. 

Duke involved with Cal transfer Andrej Stojakovic

As Dick Weiss reported, Stojakovic entered the portal with a “Do Not Contact” tag, meaning he already has his third school in three years picked out. The Cal transfer began his career at Stanford, but now it appears he’s either heading to Duke, Auburn, or Illinois. For Scheyer’s sake, it better be the Blue Devils. 

At 6-foot-7, Stojakovic is an oversized scoring guard who would seamlessly slide into Knueppel’s role as a secondary offensive creator who can occasionally take over games. Not as talented a shooter as Knueppel, Stojakovic relies on his balance and creativity as a driver to get into the paint and finish at an above-average clip. He scored 17.9 points a game as a sophomore last season and exploded for a 37-point outing in Cal’s season-ending loss to Stanford in the ACC Tournament. 

Stojakovic won’t be the athletically gifted wing that Henderson projected as, but his experience and craft as a three-level scorer would make him the ideal consolation prize for Duke. And the nostalgia factor would be off the charts for early 2000s NBA fans if the Blue Devils’ roster included two Boozers and “Baby Peja.”

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