By Chris Lea, WRAL-TV sports anchor/reporter

At 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas, my WRAL Sports colleague Louis Fernandez and I got into a heated debate.

We were editing video to send in for WRAL’s Sunday morning news shows after witnessing Duke’s collapse in the final moments in their Final Four game versus Houston.

Debates aren’t a new thing for Louis and I. Our differing views on sports is what makes working with him fun.

He brought up how Duke has produced 21 NBA first round draft picks since 2015 but had no championships to speak for after their freshman led 2015 national championship. The online sports chatter from Triangle-based sports media held much of the same sentiment for the rest of Sunday.

The insinuation here is that former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and current head coach Jon Scheyer are failing in their results with future NBA talent.

I told Louis in so many words that I believe that argument is flawed.

Before I get into my rebuttal, I’ll list the 21 first rounders.

Justise Winslow, Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, Brandon Ingram, Jayson Tatum, Luke Kennard, Harry Giles, Marvin Bagley III, Wendell Carter, Jr., Grayson Allen, Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, Jalen Johnson, Mark Williams, Wendell Moore, Jr, AJ Griffin, Paolo Banchero, Dariq Whitehead, Dereck Lively II and Jared McCain.

Now. Here’s my rebuttal.

The first part of the argument is clear. Only two freshmen-led teams have won a national championship in the last 15 years. 2012’s Kentucky Wildcats and 2015’s Duke Blue Devils. A six-round (for most), 68-team, single-elimination tournament mostly favors upper-classmen-led, experienced teams with some level of continuity.

Many of the players responsible for Houston’s comeback win over Duke Saturday night have been in college for at least three seasons. Their leading scorer LJ Cryer is in his fifth year of college basketball and is 23 years old.

Duke’s Cooper Flagg just turned 18 in December and should’ve been playing high school basketball this year.

Bringing this up doesn’t absolve Duke, or Flagg, of the responsibility of their collapse Saturday night when this team should’ve cruised to victory. However, Flagg was playing on that big of a stage for the very first time (although he did finish with 27-7-and-4). Cryer had already won a natty with Baylor. Experience matters.

Duke’s 2015 team still boasted four of their top eight scorers as upperclassmen who had been at Duke. Three of Duke’s top eight scorers this season are upperclassmen, but only one of those – Tyrese Proctor – has been with the program more than a single season.

The next point in my rebuttal is the flaw in the star rating and drafting system as an indication of ‘winning’ – especially instant wins. A five-star talent from high school dubbed as a ‘Future NBA first round draft pick’ does not guarantee wins at the college level. Basketball is still a team game.

Minnesota Timberwolves star shooting guard Anthony Edwards is one of the NBA’s fastest rising stars and is looked at as one of the future faces of the league. In 2020, he was chosen as the first pick of the NBA Draft after leading his Georgia Bulldogs to an underwhelming 16-16 overall record. That team missed the Big Dance altogether with a player many see as a possible future ‘great’.

Basketball analysts too often assign a team’s success to their star players. Teams like the 1996 Chicago Bulls with names like Jordan and Pippen, and the 2015 Golden State Warriors with Curry and Thompson would not have achieved their success and championships without those stars, but it didn’t happen overnight.

So why expect the same from 18-year-old, one and done players in a single-elimination format, when we give more grace to 29-year-old NBA superstars in a best-of-seven series playoff format?

LeBron James is arguably the best basketball player who ever lived. Fun fact: He never led any team he’s played on to a championship in his first year with (or back with) a franchise. It’s always taken two or three years within his tenure to bring that championship home. Still, that great of a player only has four titles in 22 seasons.

Why? Continuity matters.

Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach will be first-round picks this year, but that doesn’t guarantee their NBA success. Nor should it make people use the first round status to look back at their lone magical college season that fell short as a mismanagment of talent. They’re kids playing on a team for one year, trying to figure it out on the fly.

I’ve been in the Raleigh market (and North Carolina in general) long enough to know that any shot that can be taken at Duke will be taken. Coach K won five national championships in 42 years. Scheyer has reached 89 wins in three seasons and has gone further in the NCAA Tournament in each of those years. This isn’t a coaching problem either. It’s simply an attempt to knock a top program down a peg.

That happens to any team or person at the top of their game.

Should Duke opt for more contuity and experience to bring home those championships? That’s something Scheyer has to figure out (and maybe a post for another time). He’s not the only coach that hasn’t won a national championshp within three years.

Why? Winning in this particular format is one of the toughest things a team or coach can do.

Louis and I agreed to disagree, but I believe I’m right.

Tell me what you think. Email me at [email protected].

Source: wralsportsfan.com