Biggest “What if’s” in Duke basketball (BK-Before K)
- Thread starter Quavarius
- Start date
What if Duke had won the national championship in 1964 and 1978?OFC
What if Tom Butters wasn’t the A.D.
Wasn’t Art Heyman supposed to go UNC? what if he never came to Duke?
What if he didn’t knock out Larry brown
What if Vic Bubas retired after the 79-80 season?
(Can’t mess up this scenario).
(Can’t mess up this scenario).
What if Tom Butters had hired Tom Davis of B.C. instead of Coach K? I actually wanted it to be Davis. He was a really good coach and had a few 20 game winning seasons under his belt. OFC
I'm glad he didn't. Never cared for him at all. There was just something about him. If he had came to Duke I'm not sure we would ever had got Coach K. It would have been the timing and how everything would have went when Rupp left. Things turned out for the better with Duke. We got Foster who did well. Then that opened the door for the G.O.A.T. OFC
Also, didn’t Bob Knight call Butters and recommend K for the job? What if he never did that!
Yes, Knight highly recommended K. Might be one of the biggest reasons K got the job
Last edited:
That doesn’t get mentioned a lot. Yes Butters made the final decision, but Knight—at that time—was just a big as K is today and was able to convince Butters.
He told Butters something to the effect of “He has all my good qualities but none of my bad.”
Knight was joking and said he was asked if he’d be interested. He said he told Butters Duke is different than Indiana, and that they wouldn’t like him throwing someone out a window.
If he was able to keep Hubie Brown and Daily on as assistants or comparative coaching talent who knows...it’s a great question!
I cant remember all the details, I read it years ago in a book, but he almost did come to Duke after Kentucky, but Foster came instead, some of the OFC could probably give more detail.
Billy Packer reported that. It's been a while but for the life of me I don't remember a thing about it. Not even a rumor. If anyone on this board knows it's Jim Sumner. OFC
It might have been Tales From the Blue Devils Locker Room, if I can find it when I get home I'll check.
Oh trust me at the time I was upset we lost those 2. It was just funny how it worked out. We had such a balanced team. Williams took a lot of shots his sophomore season at Memphis. It just worked out chemistry wise. But yeah, at the time I thought we were one injury away from trouble.
The result of those two leaving triggered Dre coming to Duke early. We only had “four” guards and i think that included Kyle haha.
Similar threads
