DURHAM, N.C. — The fourth point was a fluke. Total luck. A one-legged stepback, some prayer-turned-parabola that just happened to go in the hoop.
Doesn’t matter. Counts the same. That’s point number four — and game’s to five.
It’s mid-September, about two weeks before official practice starts for the Duke men’s basketball team, that sorta sleepy period when the program’s current pros return to campus. Up today? Jayson Tatum, the young Boston Celtics star, making his first preseason pilgrimage back to Durham in three years. Understandably, once pickup games inevitably break out, everyone wants a piece of the All-NBA forward … including Duke’s new head coach, Jon Scheyer.
More specifically? All the 35-year-old wants, desperately at this moment, is for 4-year-old Deuce Tatum to “inbound” him the ball. Let him drop this fifth point, and Deuce’s daddy, in one fell swoop.
“I don’t pick my spots when I’m competitive,” Scheyer tells The Athletic. “I’m competitive all the time.”
The imaginary whistle blows, and Scheyer catches the ball just left of the elbow, in no man’s land on the court. Accounts vary of what came next.
“Like a spinning 3,” says new Duke assistant Jai Lucas.
“Like a half turnaround — not looking at the basket, throwing it up there,” says Amile Jefferson, another assistant and one of Tatum’s former Duke teammates.
There’s only one consensus: “Jon hit the game-winning shot over me,” Tatum says.
“He can shoot,” he continues with a laugh. “He can’t dribble or move no more …”
But Scheyer won. “And then literally did a lap around the court, screaming and chanting,” Jefferson jokes. “He’ll never let us live that down.” (Nor will he mention that, by the time of their pickup session, Tatum had already lifted weights, gone through shooting workouts and played Jefferson one-on-one. Semantics, right?)
Of course, Scheyer isn’t the only former coach Tatum came to see. And although Mike Krzyzewski’s visits to the gym — despite maintaining his sixth-floor office in the adjoining building — have been far less frequent since his April retirement, for Tatum, he made time. So during that same two-day visit, Krzyzewski inconspicuously came through, via the corner entrance of the practice facility bearing his name. Donning baggy gray Nike sweatpants and a dark pair of Air Maxes — with bubbles in the soles for support — the teacher saddled up to the student and grabbed his shoulder. They shared some words, maybe 15 minutes worth, but before long, Krzyzewski retreated to the adjacent weight room with glass walls, from where he watched. At a distance.
It’s a striking snapshot of two coaches, one player. But it also reveals why Scheyer’s in this spot at all, and the smattering of reasons supporting him as K’s successor. For one, he’s spent more than a third of his life on these grounds: four years as a student, the last nine on Krzyzewski’s staff. By virtue of his prolonged presence here, and the two national titles he’s won as a player and assistant, he knows Duke as well as anyone not named Coach K. He is young and relatable, a proven recruiter, a basketball bookworm with the best kind of curiosity. But he is also unproven, with no head coaching resume to speak of, and larger footsteps to fill than any college basketball successor since Gene Bartow followed John Wooden at UCLA in 1975. Krzyzewski took Duke, a successful program before his arrival, and turned it into a basketball behemoth. Now it’s Scheyer’s job to feed the beast: to ensure Duke doesn’t slip from its place on the sport’s sterling pedestal.
“You know, you may run different plays, or you may have to recruit differently, or all those decisions, but to me, what’s the most important is that we carry forward the same values and the culture that we have,” Scheyer says. “Before he got here, there was great success, but he’s obviously taken it to incredible new heights; that’s the program that I know, and that’s what I want to continue.”
When Scheyer was younger — a high schooler still driving his midnight blue Nissan Pathfinder around the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Ill. — he used to quiz his parents whenever they rode shotgun. At least with music trivia, compared to basketball, Scheyer showed some mercy.
“He’s kind to me,” his dad, Jim, jokes. “Keeps it in my wheelhouse, where I can at least reasonably guess.”
But with his Blue Devils these days, not so much. And Scheyer’s playlist, perhaps, goes even deeper than his basketball knowledge. One of his favorite singers — who seriously stumps his talented teenagers — is Motown icon and former lead for The Temptations, David Ruffin. “How do you get a White kid from the suburbs of Chicago, who wasn’t born in that generation, but he loves the old Motown sound?” says Chris Carrawell, a fellow Krzyzewski assistant since 2018 who’s now Scheyer’s associate head coach. Some of the credit there goes to Jim and Scheyer’s mother, Laury, but it’s also his own contagious curiosity. Scheyer seamlessly slides from Biggie, Tupac and Jay-Z to the more modern Drake and Lil Baby. Gotta appease his younger players sometimes, at least.
It’s subtle, but that’s a sign of Scheyer’s influence, of how he’s impressing his personality on Duke’s program. It goes back to that idea of constant competition, in any and everything. Scheyer’s always had that fire, his parents say, perhaps partially as a result of growing up in the greater Chicagoland era during the ’90s, when Michael Jordan’s Bulls reset the standard for basketball success. (Scheyer’s favorite player, other than Jordan? Horace Grant, a fellow bespectacled baller.) Said competitiveness even extended to board games. “It used to be such a fun game,” Jim says of Monopoly. And God forbid Scheyer lost. “If by some chance he lost, he would say, ‘Rematch, rematch’ — and it’d be midnight or 1 in the morning. We’re like, no, let’s just go to sleep,” Laury adds, “but he will badger you.”
That sentiment is why, on a recent recruiting visit, Scheyer, Jefferson, Lucas, and general manager Rachel Baker quite literally broke out in a footrace to see who was the fastest. And why Scheyer, Jefferson, and Lucas have been regulars at the school’s tennis courts. What started out as an outlet away from basketball quickly ballooned into another series of scorekeeping. “I’ve become really close with both tennis staffs, the women’s and men’s teams,” kids Scheyer, who had never played tennis before. “They’ve been kind enough to let me use the court every now and then.”
Krzyzewski instilled the same sense of competitiveness, but in a manner more befitting someone his age. “Coach did it with his attention to detail,” Jefferson says. “The fact that guys would come in — no matter what time they would come in — and they would see Coach is here watching film, Coach’s car is around, Coach is grinding it.” Scheyer has to find his own way to set the table, to establish the sense of urgency he knows firsthand is required to win at this level. “I can’t turn it off, and I think that’s something that our guys have seen from me,” Scheyer says. “You set the tone for how badly I want it, right?”
And if you ask Scheyer’s players, the message is getting through.
“The biggest thing that stood out for me ever since I was just recruited here just a few months ago was how hungry Coach Scheyer is,” says Northwestern transfer Ryan Young. “For a guy that’s already been to the top and won it all, that really stands out.”
Speaking of messages: That’s another Scheyerism, keeping a constant stream of communication. Be it texts — he’s a GIF guy, according to his staff — or social media, Scheyer is constantly reaching out to his players with words of encouragement and affirmation. “It’s hard for your message to be delivered if you’re not communicating enough,” he says. “We talk about having a shared vision and one vision; well, then we better be communicating about what that is frequently.”
But as Scheyer knows, all communication isn’t equal. He’s aware his players prefer texts to calls, so he varies both so as not to overwhelm. He also understands, though, how his players receive information today, what they respond best to: social media. Unlike his predecessor — although, there are legs to the rumor of a secret Krzyzewski Twitter account — Scheyer has active Twitter and Instagram accounts. He frequently reposts former players, current ones, general Duke comings and goings, to his nearly 150,000 followers. More importantly, he finds ways to subtly slip messages to players. Case in point: Junior point guard Jeremy Roach, Duke’s captain and lone rotational returner this season, is a big Philadelphia Eagles fan. So when quarterback Jalen Hurts posts an inspirational caption, or something about grinding in silence, Scheyer forwards it to the man he needs to do the same for his team.
It is youthful, yes, and different. Dramatically so, if you imagine Krzyzewski trying to do the same. Keep in mind: Scheyer is the youngest high-major coach in the country this season, with three ACC counterparts more than doubling his age. But as college athletics swirls and the power balance shifts from coaches to players, Scheyer is one of the rare few with enough experience and pedigree to command respect, while still being fresh-faced enough not to blindly follow “agreed-upon” conventions.
“It would’ve been easy for him to just kind of keep things the same, and keep everything how it was, but he has the mindset and the attitude to go, well, what’s the best thing?” Lucas says. “How can we grow? How can we add onto what we already have here? Maybe it would be an outside perspective on things; maybe that would help. Just the opportunity to even think that way, I think, is a testament to him.”
If this seems like all rainbows and sunshine so far, it hasn’t been.
And the practice is proof of that.
One of Scheyer’s early challenges — and a lingering one — has been rehearsing without his full roster. Even now, with games underway, Duke has yet to have every member of the No. 7 preseason team in the country participate in a practice together; five-star freshman guard Tyrese Proctor didn’t arrive from Australia until August, and soon thereafter freshman wing Dariq Whitehead fractured his right foot. Most recently, the No. 1 recruit in this year’s freshman class, center Dereck Lively II, has been held out with a calf injury. “His biggest thing,” Laury says, “is getting his full team back.” But time moves on, and Scheyer has had to make the best of it.
Except for one practice, earlier in October, when that didn’t happen.
“You want every practice to be great,” Carrawell says. “You have a vision on how you want it to go — and that one day, it didn’t meet his standard; it didn’t meet our standard.” As a player and captain for Krzyzewski, Scheyer learned what makes a meaningful practice: when defensive calls drown out sneaker squeaks, when players and coaches are encouraging alike. In a practical sense, echos are eerie; it should never be silent enough for sound waves to carry through the gym. But this practice, they were. “Just a tough day to pull stuff out of the guys,” Jefferson says. “They just didn’t bring it, and Jon was really upset about that.”
It’s Scheyer’s pet peeve. As a player, he prided himself on not only never missing a game, but never a practice, either. “Whether I didn’t make a shot, I was showing up. I was giving you everything I had every single day,” he says, “and so that’s an expectation that I have as a coach.” The difference now is, he’s not just responsible for himself; he’s responsible for Duke as a whole, all 15 guys on the roster, from walk-ons to future millionaires. Which, in turn, means he has to hold those 15 young men accountable — and that, as much as anything else, is the biggest question surrounding Scheyer in his new role. As an assistant, Scheyer had a reputation for being a player’s coach: the kind of guy who, after Coach K kicked you out of the locker room, would sling his arm around your shoulder and build you back up.
“It’s gonna be really interesting when you’re trying to get guys to play hard, and you’re gonna go through adversity, and how are you gonna coach them up?” says an NBA scout who has attended Duke practice under both Krzyzewski and Scheyer but isn’t authorized to speak on the program. “That was probably the biggest thing that stood out to me. It’s just a very different personality (from K), and the team takes on that personality.”
Scheyer knows this criticism, or skepticism, is coming. The reason he’s been such a strong recruiter — helping haul in No. 1-ranked national classes like a kid does candy on Halloween — is because of the relationships he builds. He has always been the fun, young assistant, in contrast to Krzyzewski’s … well, crankiness. Or, candidness. “My job was to complement him,” Scheyer says, “and that didn’t necessarily mean to be as fiery.” Now, though, that is his role: to make and articulate tough decisions. To bench guys, to bump them from the starting lineup. Sometimes, to say they straight up won’t play. What does that look like? Can he do that?
“I just want to tell (them) without sugarcoating anything, man, I love this that you’re doing,” Scheyer says, “and then also, I don’t love this that you’re doing. And I say it in my own way.”
With fewer F-bombs than his predecessor, perhaps. But Scheyer is just like K in how he relies on backup for any anecdotal argument he might make: the film. Someone misses a defensive rotation? Show ‘em. Didn’t kick to an open shooter? Show ‘em. Took an inefficient, tightly contested shot at the rim? Show ‘em. There’s no twist on tape, so that in tandem with Scheyer’s own honesty — at least for the time being — has been the approach. But Scheyer also acknowledges, as he had to do during the practice, that there’s a feel element to all this he’s still figuring it out. In that sense, it’ll just take time.
“When I see something I don’t like, I just blow my whistle and say it,” the head coach says. “That’s the only way to learn: is to do it in real time, then run it back and to do it again.”
(Lance King / Getty Images)
When did one era become the next?
Because there was never an official baton pass from Krzyzewski to Scheyer. It just … happened. The university lists Scheyer’s start date as June 4, but what about the second Duke lost in the Final Four, when the buzzer sounded and Krzyzewski stood up off his sideline stool? Or after his final postgame news conference? Or even thereafter, when he hopped on a golf cart alongside his wife, Mickie, and rode back to his last Duke locker room? There’s no cut-and-dry line of demarcation.
Which, considering Scheyer and Krzyzewski’s relationship today, maybe is most fitting.
“For me, our relationship has grown. It hasn’t stayed the same; it’s grown,” Scheyer says. “There’s a different level of empathy that I have.”
Last season, during Krzyzewski’s retirement tour, everything was a last. This season will be the opposite; everything Scheyer does this season — and fails to do — will be a first: his first home game, first ranked win, first road trip … but also, his first loss, and first losing streak. Through all that, Krzyzewski regularly stressed the need to be in the moment; not to contextualize a career in real time, but to savor it, because it would never happen again. The same applies to Scheyer’s situation now. “He’s really trying to be in the day, in the moment,” his father says. “I don’t think he’s thinking about experience or inexperience. It’s just kind of all, how does the staff coordinate during a team? Who does what? Getting the team together, getting them — hopefully — growing, and playing more and more together as it goes. I think he’s pretty present with those things.”
Scheyer still texts regularly with Krzyzewski, too, but he initiates. Plus, it’s not always — or even frequently — about basketball. “He’s allowed me to be me ever since I was a player. I’m not surprised by how he is,” Scheyer says. “We talk all the time, and I don’t shy away from that. He gives me great perspective. I bounce stuff off of him; I’ll continue to do that. That doesn’t make me a worse basketball coach.”
If anything, it’ll make him a better one. But it won’t suddenly turn him into Mike Krzyzewski Jr., either. That’s not why he was hired. He was hired to be himself: a 35-year-old, pickup-playing, social-media-using, relationship-building self-starter. He will run different plays (and already has). He will use timeouts differently, use different mannerisms midgame. Heck, he’s already made two unconventional hires (by Duke standards), both widely lauded: Lucas arrived from Kentucky as the first assistant in some three decades not to have played at Duke; and Rachel Baker became the program’s — and men’s college basketball’s – first general manager, after extensive time at Nike and on the grassroots circuit. For one of the nation’s most fervent fan bases, there will be an adjustment period. (Hopefully, Scheyer’s parents joke, a grace period, too.) But if there is one thing in common between the winningest coach in men’s college history and the first-timer following in his oversized footsteps, it’s this: The job, the gravitas of being Duke’s head coach, is all-consuming.
Even Scheyer’s daily half-hour to himself — what he calls “my time,” right when he wakes up each morning between 5 and 5:30 a.m. — is typically dedicated to his team. Be it installing plays for that day’s practice, or scheduling time to chat with a certain player, Scheyer has learned in a short time this job never stops. Which means neither does his mind. And while he still carves out time for his family and three children, prioritizing putting them to bed every night, everyone also acknowledges the reality of his situation. “It’ll be harder,” his mom says, “during the season.”
But this is all of Scheyer’s choosing: the job, obviously, but how relentlessly he has thrown himself into it. He doesn’t know any other way. If he wants Roach and Proctor to make the right pick-and-roll reads, well, he’s gonna curl around the screener himself and show them exactly what he wants. He regularly bounces ideas off Krzyzewski, but also his other prominent coaching influences, including Charlotte Hornets coach Steve Clifford — whom Scheyer invited to Durham for two days last season — and Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch, whom Scheyer played for in 2011 with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the Houston Rockets’ G League affiliate. For a similar reason, he’s always watching pro games, stateside and overseas, to see which of Steve Kerr’s or Monty Williams’ sets he can incorporate into his playbook. “Dude’s a basketball savant junkie,” Carrawell says. “He’s always putting himself (in hypothetical game situations) because he watches it so much.” Scheyer even follows successful younger non-basketball coaches, like Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams, for tips on organization and interpersonal relationships and management styles.
Anything that’ll give him even the slightest leg up.
It is a time-consuming, exhausting, all-encompassing endeavor. It is also, to Scheyer, non-negotiable.
“You just feel it at such a deep level,” Scheyer says of his sense of responsibility: to Krzyzewski and all the former players he now represents; to his current team, who trusted him and followed a first-timer — but also to himself, to prove that he is capable, the right man for this job.
Now, and Duke hopes, for decades to come.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Grant Halverson, Lance King / Getty Images)
