Four Blue Devils Are Seen As Rising Stars In NBA Management

This article looks at rising stars in the NBA’s General Manager profession and four former Blue Devils are either mentioned or quoted: Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon, Shane Battier and Mike Dunleavy.

Brand, who is the Philadelphia 76ers’ GM, said this about how demanding the job is today: “[a]s a player, you don’t know what this is. You don’t know you’re responsible for people with dreams, aspirations, raises, who want to feel safe. You don’t know about the actual management of people.”

Langdon of course is the GM for the New Orleans Pelicans, but the team is basically run by David Griffin.

The other prospects mentioned are Shane Battier, who is trying to do other things for now, and his former roommate Mike Dunleavy, who is an assistant GM with the Golden State Warriors.

It’s an impressive thing that all four guys went to Duke but it’s not like Duke is entirely responsible for their success although obviously there’s no one better to learn from than Mike Krzyzewski. The other side of that though is that Duke identified some brilliant basketball minds who took full advantage of both educations they got in Durham.