Amile Jefferson is leaving for the Celtics -- here's the story with the basics.
I'll be honest, this one caught me off guard. Part of that probably has to do with Wake's baseball team swallowing up a lot of my time these days ... but part is just timing and not hearing anything about this coming down the pipe. Certainly not like Nolan Smith's departure, which seemed to lean heavily for a day or two before news could be confirmed.
Anyway, per that story I did back in the season about offensive and defensive coordinators, I'd expect Duke to hire a young coach more adept at relating to players and whose main objective is skill development. C-Well runs the offense and Jai runs the defense, and it's not like the new assistant couldn't help in one or both of those areas, but Amile's main focus was development. The stories at the end of the season about Dereck Lively II's development and comfort almost always started with some version of him and Amile plugging early or late hours in the practice facility together.
Amile and Jeremy Roach were really close, too. Jeremy's strong play down the stretch in '22 was partially credited to long hours with Amile when he was director of player development.
Those are the best two examples I can think of to illustrated the impact Amile had as a coach.
As far as a replacement ... we'll see what we can dig up. As I said, I'd expect to be a player development angled hire. I don't think that automatically means it'll be somebody under 30 or anything; just somebody who can log hours of practice gym time.
I'll be honest, this one caught me off guard. Part of that probably has to do with Wake's baseball team swallowing up a lot of my time these days ... but part is just timing and not hearing anything about this coming down the pipe. Certainly not like Nolan Smith's departure, which seemed to lean heavily for a day or two before news could be confirmed.
Anyway, per that story I did back in the season about offensive and defensive coordinators, I'd expect Duke to hire a young coach more adept at relating to players and whose main objective is skill development. C-Well runs the offense and Jai runs the defense, and it's not like the new assistant couldn't help in one or both of those areas, but Amile's main focus was development. The stories at the end of the season about Dereck Lively II's development and comfort almost always started with some version of him and Amile plugging early or late hours in the practice facility together.
Amile and Jeremy Roach were really close, too. Jeremy's strong play down the stretch in '22 was partially credited to long hours with Amile when he was director of player development.
Those are the best two examples I can think of to illustrated the impact Amile had as a coach.
As far as a replacement ... we'll see what we can dig up. As I said, I'd expect to be a player development angled hire. I don't think that automatically means it'll be somebody under 30 or anything; just somebody who can log hours of practice gym time.
