The moment someone compares college basketball (and not having a PG) to an NBA team without a PG.......SMFH.
Lol. Basketball is basketball. The teams with the better players who perform best in pressure moments will normally win -- regardless of the exact position makeup. That's the point. We saw that with the two Duke NC teams in 2001 and 2010, which had far less depth and more glaring holes, and we saw that last year with a Nova team that basically only had one player over 6'7 who was any good -- and yet defeated clearly bigger KU and UNC squads. Even that 38-1 UK team made it that far starting a guy (Andrew Harrison) who was certainly no more of a true PG than Frank, and Wisconsin nearly won a national title with a PG (Bronson Koening) who was averaging all of 2.5 assists that year and a roster that was otherwise devoid of any other real playmaking guards (in view of Jackon's health at the time).
But, if you want to ignore all the positives, go for it. Duke has so many guys who can create offense for themselves and others that I just don't think DT's departure is going to make that much of a difference if guys stay healthy. And, in fact, I think the major reason DT is leaving is that he pretty much could see that, even if he won the PG spot (which was far from certain), his role was not going to expand much from last year after Grayson elected to return -- as K's likely plan would have nonetheless been to hand the ball over to Grayson, Tatum, and Giles to create most of the offense. In fact, IMO, defense is really the only area where I think DT will be missed -- b/c I do worry if we have someone who matches up well with smaller, lightning quick guys. K builds his teams to accentuate the strengths of his best players. And, in an offense designed to highlight the playmaking at the 2-4 spots, Jackson may actually fit better offensively b/c he's an indisputably better shooter who can do a better job spacing the floor than Thornton.
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