By Al Featherston
It could be another week before we know for sure when Kyrie Irving will return to the Duke roster - or even if he will return at all.
Last night, after the victory over Bradley, Mike Krzyzewski was pretty forthright about the severity of the toe injury.
"Kyrie's injury is a serious one," he said. "It's being evaluated with our medical team here at Duke and with medical people from different parts of the country who are experts in foot injuries. Some type of analysis should be done by a week to 10 days. Then a course of action will be taken based on that analysis.
"But it's a serious injury ⦠I can't say anything more because we're learning more. Whatever final decision is made, it's going to be based - obviously - on what's in his best interest in his career and not to save him for any period of time or whatever. But he could be out for a long time."
Coach K was immediately asked if Irving could be out for the rest of the season.
"He could be ⦠yeah, he could be."
Gulp!
I don't know any more than most of you. I've read the pessimistic tweets this morning: Seth Davis of CBS Sports tweeted that it was a 55 percent chance that Irving would miss the rest of the season. Irving himself tweeted: "Situation not looking good and I'm not feeling good...smh worst thing ever." On the other hand, his father told Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports that nobody knows anything - that it could be three games or the rest of the season.
It's hard to be optimistic, but it's probably a good idea to wait for the final medical ruling before drinking the purple kool-aid.
Let's try to break down the future in view of this news. It seems that we're facing three possible futures:
(1) The pessimism is misplaced and that Irving will be able to return after an extended rest - let's say a month or six weeks.
Obviously, this is a best-case scenario. And, if this turns out to be the case, it's not so bad. During Irving's temporary absence, Nolan Smith gets to polish his point-guard credentials and both Andre Dawkins and Seth Curry get a chance to expand their games and their confidence. Even freshman Tyler Thornton will benefit from moving up in the rotation.
The overall team will benefit from learning to perform better in the halfcourt - a lot less transition without the Road Runner Irving. That would be a big benefit in postseason, when it's often hard to run.
This situation could be equated to what happened to N.C. State in 1983 ⦠when Derek Whittenburg broke his foot in January against Virginia and missed a month of the season. His absence allowed Thurl Bailey and Terry Gannon to expand their roles and pushed Sidney Lowe to take on more of a scoring load. When Whittenburg returned, N.C. State was a MUCH better team than it would have been had he played all season. Jim Valvano always thought that in hindsight, Whitt's injury paved the way for that team's miraculous run to the national title.
And a month/six-week absence might actually make Irving more effective down the stretch. He would be fresher - and hungrier - after his enforced vacation.
All-in-all, not a bad scenario.
(2) Irving's absence is longer, but he's able to return in late February or just before the postseason starts.
Not as promising. Although all the earlier benefits would accrue, that would be balanced by the difficulty in re-integrating Irving's game. Make no mistake, Duke is going to play differently without him.
As it was, the Devils were still adjusting to his game - think of all the missed feeds he couldn't connect on with the Plumlee brothers in the Michigan State game.
If Irving returns towards the end of the season, there wouldn't be a lot of time to work out those kinks. A Duke team that had gone almost three months without Irving might struggle - at the worst possible time - to work him back into the lineup.
And what kind of shape would Irving be in after missing three months of action? It's impossible to know what kind of conditioning he'll be able to do - Bobby Hurley was famous for his workouts on the stairmaster to stay in shape when he broke his foot in 1992. There are also stationary bikes and swimming pools to help crippled players maintain their cardiovascular shape. But that's not the same as playing.
This scenario would match what happened with Elton Brand in 1998. The freshman big man - off to a great start - broke a bone in his foot in a December practice. He missed 15 games and returned in late February. Brand had some great moments after his return - a 10 minute stretch against UNC that sparked one of the great comebacks in Duke history - but he was still erratic. He was ineffective in the ACC Tournament loss to UNC and in the crushing NCAA loss to Kentucky.
If this is the scenario, it is bad - but not necessarily fatal - news.
(3) The worst happens and Irving's season is over.
Duke will just have to learn to play without him. It's going to make success a lot tougher, but remember just a year ago, when Duke had to adjust to the offseason loss of Gerald Henderson to the NBA and of Elliot Williams to transfer. We all thought those were crushing blows.
How did that work out?
***
No matter which scenario is in play, one thing is certain -- Duke can't play the same way without Irving as it did when he was running the show.
"Everybody's game changes as a result, including mine," Krzyzewski said. "That's what good players do. When I a great player gets hurt and can't play, it changes everything ⦠including the habits of having played with that great player for the entire preseason and eight games. There's just a period of adjustment that our team has to do through. Hopefully, we will get him back, but we don't know when.
"We have to go and make these adjustments. We tried to make a few tonight, but there's a limited practice time."
Duke - with just three easy games in the next 24 days - will have plenty of time to implement whatever changes Coach K comes up with. What those changes are, I can't even begin to guess.
Let me go back to another moment of crisis and recount how Coach K out-thought us all.
It was the night of Feb. 27, 2001, when No. 2 Duke lost starting center Carlos Boozer to a broken foot in the next-to-the-last regular season game of the season. Coach K was despondent when he met with the press following Maryland's 91-80 victory.
It seemed to be a season-destroying blow. Even with Boozer in a talented starting lineup, critics suggested that the Devils were too small and too thin (basically a six-man rotation with freshman Chris Duhon the only significant sub) to win it all.
The Duke coach retired to his office - supposedly trying to figure out a way to save the season, but in reality, he later admitted, simply feeling sorry for himself.
"Okay, Carlos is out and it's not going to happen this year," Krzyzewski later wrote of his blackest hour. "We're not going to win the national championship ... it's over. It's over."
Sometime during that dark night, his military training kicked in and Krzyzewski began to attack the problem, rather than wallow in self-pity. Over the years, he had put two words at the heart of his coaching philosophy: Next play. It was his way of saying to forget the past and move on. Now it was time for him to take his own words to heart.
Next play.
As he watched video of North Carolina, Duke's next opponent, he started to formulate a plan.
"We have to transform to a more up-tempo style, I thought," Krzyzewski later wrote, describing his thought process. "Duhon ... Duhon is the key. He's fast. He's a great defender. He can shoot. He'll free up Jason [Williams] to do more."
The next morning, Krzyzewski stunned his staff by telling then his plan - he would replace Boozer in the middle with a committee of three little-used big men, Casey Sanders, Matt Christensen and football player Reggie Love. And he'd replace fifth-year senior Nate James, one of the team's leaders and key contributors, with Duhon.
"Nate is going to be the key in making this work," Krzyzewski told his assistants. "He's got to accept his new role without reservations. Having him come off the bench will give us a big punch."
When Krzyzewski met with the team, he had to do two things - convince them that the season was not over and sell them on his new scheme. Because of the NCAA rules mandating a day off each week, he had not talked to his players on the day after the Maryland loss. But he called them in for an unusual 6 a.m. practice the next day.
"I remember the next morning we walk in there to meet the team and he's like, 'Hey, guys, we're going to win the national championship and here's how we're going to do it," assistant coach Johnny Dawkins recalled.
Krzyzewski was planning to unveil his team's new attacking style in Chapel Hill on the last Sunday of the regular season. The Blue Devils could still tie for the ACC regular season title with a victory, but without Boozer, what chance was there of that?
"I'll never forget the look on the face of Brendan Haywood when Casey [Sanders] stepped into the jump-ball circle," Battier told writer Donald Phillips. "He got this sarcastic smile on his face and started shaking his head. He was thinking, 'You've got to be kidding, you're starting this guy?' I looked over at Mike [Dunleavy] and we just smiled at each other. I could read his mind. We were both thinking, 'Haywood, you just don't know what's coming. You just don't know.'"
Nobody did, except for Krzyzewski and his Blue Devils,
Sanders, who up to that point in his career had been little more than an afterthought at the end of the Duke bench, made two huge plays in the early minutes - beating Haywood down the court for a layup and blocking an inside shot by the Tar Heel center. He helped Duke seize an early lead and nurse it into the early minutes of the second half. It was still close when, with 17 minutes to play, Battier made the play that broke Carolina's back - as Joe Forte raced in for a breakaway layup, the Duke senior caught him from behind and blocked away his layup. Dunleavy got the rebound, pushed it ahead and Duhon hit a 3-pointer. Six minutes later, Duke was up 72-57 and a desperate Matt Doherty pulled his big men, Haywood and Kris Lang -- going small in an attempt to match Duke's quickness.
It didn't work and Duke almost coasted to the 95-85 victory. Battier was magnificent - 25 points, 11 rebounds, five blocks and four steals. Jason Williams added 33 points and nine assists. Krzyzewski's new three-headed center monster contributed just two points and five rebounds, but between them, Sanders-Christensen-Love limited Haywood to just 12 points on five of 12 shooting.
"We could have easily come out and folded and hid behind the excuse that, 'Well, we didn't have Carlos Boozer,'" Battier told reporters. "But now we have new life at a time when a lot of teams become very stagnant and very conservative."
Duke, of course, used its new style and new energy to win the final 10 games of the 2001 season - including the 2001 ACC and NCAA Tournament titles. Boozer did return to play a significant role in the two Final Four games in Minneapolis, but it's important to remember that he did it in the context of the team's new offensive style.
Krzyzewski has never ceased to amaze me with his late-season adjustments to his lineup. How many of us suspected that he would solve his point guard problems in 2008-09 by moving Jon Scheyer to the point and plucking Elliot Williams from the end of the bench - Scheyer to run the show offensively; Williams to apply the on-the-ball pressure that Coach K wants from his point guards.
How many saw the February 2010 change coming - the insertion of Brian Zoubek into the starting lineup and transition to a halfcourt game after a decade of breakneck running?
That one -- like Coach K's transformation of the 2001 team - produced a national championship.
That's not to say that success is assured. The '98 Brand injury, Sean Dockery's health issues in 2005, the accumulation of injuries in 2007 ⦠sometimes it's too much to overcome.
But the point is that not all is lost. Duke still has a ton of talent to turn to. Singler and Smith might be the two best senior talents in the country. Andre Dawkins and Seth Curry are explosive players. The frontcourt of Mason and Miles Plumlee and the improving Ryan Kelly is still intact.
K will find a new way of putting this talent together ⦠and it very well might be a way that none of us can expect at the moment.
As for Irving - if the first scenario turns out to be right and the gifted playmaker returns sometime in January, I expect K to go back to playing the way he was trying to play before Irving was hurt. It might take a few games for the team to re-adjust to his return, but if that's in late January or early February, that's no big deal. Even a couple of losses at that point in the season wouldn't be a tragedy.
But if Irving can't return until late February or early March, then it will be up to him to adjust to whatever new style K installs. And, obviously, if he never returns, the new style will be the team's permanent style.
***
The saddest part of the Irving news is that it's going to rob us of seeing a great player for a significant part of his career.
Is it possible that Kyrie Irving will end up playing just eight games for Duke University?
I refuse to speculate whether this injury makes it more likely or less likely that he turns pro after this season. All I'll say is that even if he doesn't return, all he'll have to do is demonstrate his recovery in a couple of off-season drills to guarantee that he's still a top three draft pick.
It's tragic because Irving was well on his way to proving himself the best freshman in the country ⦠and one of the top players. In just eight games, he had already outplayed senior preseason All-Americans Jacob Pullen and Kalin Lucas in head-to-head duels. He had a better first eight games than Jason Williams, Bobby Hurley or Tommy Amaker. Indeed, he had a better first eight games than Phil Ford, John Lucas, or any other ACC point guard I can think of. Maybe Kenny Anderson put up slightly better numbers in his first eight games, but he did it against an array of mediocre opponents.
Irving also had better start than Kenny Smith, although after the injury, Smith is the player I most relate in my mind to Irving.
He was a freshman in 1983-84, joining a veteran North Carolina team that was built around senior forward Sam Perkins and junior wing Michael Jordan (both would be first-team consensus All-Americans that season). It also included sophomore center Brad Daugherty (a future first pick in the NBA draft) and senior forward Matt Doherty. Off the bench, Dean Smith could call on future NBA big men Joe Wolf and Dave Popson, plus talented guard Steve Hale.
It was a great team with Smith fitting in nicely at the point. "The Jet" attracted attention early when he out-played New York schoolboy legend Pearl Washington in an early game at Madison Square Garden. UNC won 16 straight games to open the season and was as dominant during that stretch as any team I've seen in 50 years of ACC watching.
But in game 17, UNC was routing LSU when Smith was tackled from behind on a breakaway layup. The freshman point guard left the game with a broken wrist and missed the next nine games. UNC regrouped with Hale at the point, losing only a one-point game at Arkansas the rest of the way.
Smith returned for the last week of the regular season, wearing a cast on his wrist. Smith re-installed him as a starter for the ACC Tournament, but Smith was not the same player with the cast on his wrist. His return disrupted the '84 Heels worse than his departure had and spoiled what could have been a historic season as UNC lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinals and to a much inferior Indiana team in the Sweet 16.
We're just going to have to trust K to handle Irving's absence - and, hopefully, his return -- better than Dean dealt with Smith.
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