The Duke men’s basketball program has dominated the recruiting trail for decades thanks to legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski and successor Jon Scheyer, and that means the Blue Devils are all over the NBA as well.
Last year’s NBA Finals included three former Duke basketball stars. Rookie Dereck Lively II wanted a championship to start his career with the Dallas Mavericks (and teammate Kyrie Irving wanted a second), but Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum helped lead the Celtics to victory for his first career championship.
Tatum also became the first Duke men’s basketball player to win two Olympic gold medals when Team USA won it all in Paris weeks later.
While those three names took most of the headlines in the postseason, the Orlando Magic and New Orleans Pelicans are both led by former No. 1 overall picks from Durham in their primes.
With ESPN ranking the top 100 NBA players ahead of the 2024-25 season, here are the seven Blue Devils who made the list.
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Tatum finished off the best year of his career in 2023-24, making his third consecutive First Team All-NBA squad after averaging 26.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists, and 1.0 steals per game. He led the Celtics in points (25.0), rebounds (9.7), and assists (6.3) across their championship run, joining a short list of NBA legends to accomplish that feat, and he gets properly placed among the league’s top stars.
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Banchero, the first overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft, led the Magic to the playoffs for the first time last season. The 6-foot-10 forward averaged 22.6 points per game in his sophomore campaign, adding on 6.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists for one of the most well-rounded stat lines in the league. His real high point came during Orlando’s first-round series against Cleveland when he scored at least 30 points in three of seven games with two double-doubles.
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Now 32 years old, it’s been more than eight years since Irving won his first championship with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. In his 13th career season last year, the Duke basketball alum still averaged 25.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 5.2 assists while making 41.1% of his 3-point looks.
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If Williamson can just stay on the court, he’d probably vault up another dozen spots on this list. The No. 1 overall pick from 2019 has played just 184 games across his NBA career, an average of 36.8 per year, but he averages 24.7 points per game across his career. He finished with 5.8 rebounds and a field goal percentage of 57% last season, both career lows, but he added a personal-best 5.0 assists.
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It’s crazy to think this will be Ingram’s ninth season in the NBA, and the former Blue Devil has spent the past five of them with Williamson in New Orleans. Ingram has averaged at least 20 points per game in each of the past five seasons with at least five rebounds and five assists in each of the last three.
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The New York Knicks traded Barrett to the Raptors midway through the 2023-24 season as part of a package to get Toronto star OG Anunoby, and the former Duke star responded with some of the best basketball of his career. In 32 games with the Raptors, he averaged 21.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists while shooting 55.3% from the floor.
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Last year’s breakout star of the postseason, Lively scored 8.8 points and pulled down 6.9 rebounds in just 23.5 minutes per game as a rookie. He put together four double-doubles in Dallas’s run to the Finals, two of which came in a statement victory over the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference semifinals. He finished the playoffs with 7.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in 22.0 minutes per game.
