Duke basketball all-time great Jay Bilas spoke to the men’s basketball team last week and checked out a practice. Bilas finished his playing career at Duke totaling 1,062 points and 692 rebounds. He also was part of Duke’s 1986 team that was ranked #1 in the country and made the national championship game.
He then spent three years as an assistant under Mike Krzyzewski, going to the Final Four in all three years and winning back-to-back national championships in 1991 and 1992.
Bilas told the team what it means to be a member of Duke, and how it’s still at the forefront of his resume so many years later.
“Most people who know me, and they’re older, but they think of me first as a Duke basketball player. “
He mentioned how although he’s been in several different industries since his time as a player, including being a college basketball commentator for ESPN and a practicing attorney, he is still defined as a Duke basketball player.
With such a young roster head coach Jon Scheyer has this season, Bilas wanted to make sure the guys understood that if basketball is their main priority, their decisions will reflect if that is true or not. He made a point to talk about regret and its effects.
“There are two things now as I look back that were the most important things for me to think about. That’s relationships and regret. Regret lasts forever. It lasts forever. So if you go through this process and your priorities are not in order, you will regret it. You’ve made the decision to be here…right now, you need to be in with both feet.”
The majority of this speech was centered around making this group know that they have to work as a team to succeed. There is no individualized aspect of Duke basketball and these players have to be ready to make whatever sacrifices necessary for the betterment of the program. Bilas brought up how two of Duke’s coaches, Scheyer and Chris Carrawell, may not be in the Duke Hall of Fame or have their jerseys retired. Yet, that is of no concern to them. They care about this program and turning it into the best one it could be.
“Neither one of those guys (Scheyer or Carrawell) and nobody that’s played here is concerned about what they got, should’ve had, individually. They’re more concerned about ‘that’s my banner right there. This is our program…’ And I don’t care whether you play here four years, one, it doesn’t matter. This is a special thing and you want to treat it as special.”
He later talked to the team about the idea of being a champion and what it takes, boiling it back down to regret. Bilas let the players know how important it is to put everything they have into each day, practice, or drill. He highlighted Duke’s loss in the 1986 national championship game. One missed block out by Duke that allowed an offensive rebound putback to seal the game still sits with Bilas today.
“That was kind of the backbreaking play that we went from one of the great teams of all time to, kind of, ‘man they were good but they didn’t win.’ And that’s a regret, and you don’t want to have that. So I thought back after that game, thought back about all the damn block out drills we did, and did I put everything I had into those drills. It came down to a block out.”
With such a young roster, this speech from a Duke legend will sit with the team and let them know this program is so much bigger than any one guy, and it’s now this team’s job to continue the Duke legacy that was made before them.
