Notes From The Blue Devil Club

“With Kyrie in the lineup, we’re rich. We don’t look at the prices on the menu, and we don’t look in the newspapers for coupons.”

Coach K spoke to a packed Blue Devil Club meeting at Croasdaile Country Club in Durham on Friday on a wide range of topics spanning from road games to selling chocolate to classic rock, but obviously knew what everyone came to hear as he addressed the injury to our star point-guard Kyrie Irving. “Without Kyrie,” Coach said, “we’re still going to order the steak. We just might look for specials in the newspaper first.”

K did not speak in specifics about the injury, the diagnosis, or the chosen treatment plan, but did speak as a coach who was preparing his team to play differently. “No one is going to feel sorry for us,” he added. Just like Nolan said about the tough stretch of games to start the season, this is not K’s first rodeo. He made it clear that losing is not an option for him, his players, or for the Duke program and its fans. As coaches clearly communicate more candidly with the Blue Devil Club group, I’m going to respect that by not going into too many specifics, but in short we can expect Kyle to shoot more, for our guards to work harder without the ball to find an open shot, and for our bigs to have more of an emphasis on rebounding than we’ve had to start the season off. Possessions will be treated with more respect than in previous games. He clearly spoke in certain terms about Kyrie being unavailable, but the context was talking about the team right now. He just simply never looked ahead past the St. Louis game to give any indication of what to expect moving forward. Read more