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Draft: Will the Duke curse ruin Deng?

By Chad Ford NBA Insider Send an Email to Chad Ford

Wednesday, February 4 Updated: February 5 9:50 AM ET

Luol Deng is a cursed man.

Despite overcoming every imaginable obstacle in his life, will an imaginary one bring him down?

A former political refugee from the Sudan, he fled with his family to Egypt and then England when he was a child. He moved to America to play high school basketball and by the time he graduated last spring, was widely ranked as the second-best basketball player in the country behind a kid named LeBron.

Deng shocked some NBA scouts by giving up a likely lottery selection in the 2003 NBA Draft to attend Duke University -- the home of many NCAA champions and very few NBA ones.

Somewhere along the way, the fact that playing for Duke comes with a terrible curse when it comes to the NBA was lost in translation.

Deng is a Dukie now. If you buy into the conventional wisdom, that means he'll likely go on to have a stellar college basketball career. He'll compete for numerous national championships. He'll be adored by the media. When he decides to come into the draft, he'll most likely be selected in the high lottery. And then, if the legends are true, he'll turn into a decent, but soft player, one who'll have to join onto a team as a sixth or seventh man if he ever wants to win an NBA championship.

If curses are real based solely on the fact that people believe they're real, then Luol Deng is screwed.

The evidence, at first blush is pretty staggering. Under Coach K, 16 Blue Devils have earned All-America honors. Since his arrival in 1980-81, six Duke players have been national Player of the Year -- Johnny Dawkins, Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner, Elton Brand, Shane Battier and Jay Williams. All six were lottery picks in the NBA Draft.

Duke has won three national titles and reached nine Final Fours in Coach K's tenure. This enormous amount of success in the college ranks has meant a lot of love for Dukies in the NBA. Coach K has produced 17 first-round draft picks since 1986 -- the most of any active NCAA coach. Since 1999, Duke has produced eight first-round draft choices and six lottery picks.

Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends.

	No matter what it says on Luol Deng's chest, NBA scouts see the the freshman as a lottery pick when he decides to leave Duke.

Apparently success at Duke doesn't necessarily translate into success in the NBA. Thus, the origins of the curse of the Blue Devil. Of the 10 current Dukies in the NBA, Hill is the only Duke player ever to be named to the first team, All-NBA. Hill and Brand are the only two NBA Rookie of Year winners. Only three current NBA Dukies have ever played in an All-Star Game (Hill played in five All-Star games; Laettner in one, '97; Brand in one, '02). Only Farry has won a NBA title (San Antonio, 2003).

A few Dukies like Laettner, Ferry and Battier have been solid, but unspectacular for former national players of the year. Other's, like Brand, Corey Maggette and Carlos Boozer have very promising futures, but all three are stuck on some of the worst teams in the league. Hill was the one player from Duke who looked like could completely transcend the curse, but that was before disaster struck.

To make things just a bit spookier, Dukies have had their share of bad luck in the injury department. Hill, who at one time looked like a possible heir to Michael Jordan, broke his ankle in 2000 and never recovered. Williams, who went No. 2 in the 2002 NBA Draft, was injured in a motorcycle accident and most question whether he'll ever play again. Another top Duke prospect, Bobby Hurley was involved in a near-fatal car accident just 19 games into his rookie season. His injuries included collapsed lungs-one ripped from his trachea-broken ribs, a shattered shoulder blade, and a partially torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee. Though he went on to play five seasons in the NBA, he never regained the form that he had at Duke.

All of these events have lead to the urban legend that Duke players can't play in the NBA. The facts are bolstered by theories that Duke, because of high academic standards, can't recruit the top athletes in the game, and must instead rely on heady team players that can mesh seamlessly into a system.

Others point to Coach K's system and claim that it's too different from the pro sets run by NBA teams. Offenses based on teamwork are often foreign to the NBA, where the individual athleticism and speed of a player matters more. The fact that Coach K discourages his players from lifting weights also fuels the myths that Duke is a finishing school -- as in finishing a guy's NBA career.

No here's the bad news for those of you eating this stuff up ...

It's all bull.

Make believe.

You've got a better chance of finding aliens in Roswell and Bigfoot in your local wildlife preserve than you do of proving that Dukies suffer from a curse.

For starters, and this may be the most significant, GMs and scouts are adamant that they don't even pay attention to a player's school when making an eval‎uation.

"It really doesn't matter," one GM told Insider. "Either a kid can play or he can't. Do you think Tim Duncan, who's a pretty smart, stoic player, would have been less of a pro had he played four years at Duke? Would Trajan Langdon have been an NBA superstar had he played at UConn? It's really pretty ridiculous if you think about it. Duke is a great school, which plays in a competitive conference and has a fantastic coach. That's the extent that we eval‎uate the school. I don't believe in curses."

Neither do the other five league executives and scouts Insider talked to. All six sources claimed that they would not hesitate to take a Duke player with the top overall pick in the draft if their scouting process deemed a Duke player to be the best. So why does the urban legend persist?

"A couple of things," one scout said. "First of all, it's about jealousy. In professional sports, when one team has an inordinate amount of success, folks try to poke holes in them. Second, there were a string of Duke guys -- Laettner, Hurley, Ferry -- who did have a lot of hype coming out of college and basically bombed. But with the success of guys like Elton Brand and Corey Maggette, I just don't think the bad rap fits anymore."

Only one knock seemed to stick. Several GMs agreed that Duke's emphasis on teamwork saps the individualism out of players who stay there all four years. "You've got to have a little edge, a killer instinct to be the best in the NBA," one GM told Insider. "Coach K does his best to extinguish that fire. Look at the Duke guys -- Hill, Brand, Maggette, Dunleavy -- they're all good players that just seem to lack that edge. Boozer, may be the exception to the rule, but he was a black sheep at Duke."

Even from a factual standpoint, the Duke curse rests on a pretty shaky foundation. The fact that Duke players haven't won a lot of rings, All-Star berths or spots on the first team All-NBA team, isn't that unusual. Insider looked at the players from four other college basketball schools -- North Carolina, Arizona, Kentucky and Kansas -- and found similar numbers.

North Carolina has more current NBA players than any other college, but now that Michael Jordan is out of the equation, former Tar Heels look pretty human, too. Only three current UNC grads -- Vince Carter, Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse -- have played on an All-Star team. Only one player, Carter, has been on an All-NBA team (second team). Only one, Carter, has won Rookie of the Year. Rick Fox and Scott Williams are the only Tar Heels with NBA rings -- and I don't think anyone is quite ready to credit either guy with having a significant role in getting the ring. As for duds, how does Joe Forte, Shammond Williams or the marginally effective Jeff McInnis or Brendan Haywood sound?

Kentucky also has a number of NBA players, but doesn't fare any better. Three Kentucky grads -- Jamal Mashburn, Antoine Walker and now, Jamaal Magloire -- have been named to All-Star teams. Only one, Mashburn, has been on an All-NBA team (third team). They have no Rookie of the Years and no one wearing a championship ring.

Arizona also is hurting. Despite 10 current NBA players, and four lottery picks, no current player from Arizona has ever played in an All-Star game or won an NBA title. The best they can offer is Damon Stoudamire, who won Rookie of the Year honors well before his career hit rock bottom in Portland. There are nice young players like Mike Bibby, Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas and Jason Terry in the league, but according to the lofty standards by which Duke players are measured, they haven't done jack squat.

Things aren't any better in Kansas. Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz and Drew Gooden all struck gold in the lottery. But with the exception of Pierce, who's now been named to three all-star teams and two All-NBA teams (second team) they're not exactly turning out NBA superstars either.

None of the top five schools have a current player with an MVP trophy to their name. You'll have to go to Wake Forest, LSU, Georgetown or Louisiana Tech to get that award.

If you've made an All-NBA first team recently, you went to Wake Forest, Michigan, LSU, Georgetown, Cal, Lousiana Tech, Oregon State or jumped directly from high school. NBA Championship? Unless you're lucky enough to play with the Spurs or Lakers the past four seasons, no luck there either.

So what does all of this have to do with Luol Deng? Absolutley nothing. NBA scouts love Deng and believe that he'll be a top 10 selection if he declares for the draft after this season -- Duke notwithstanding. Are scouts just burying their heads in the sand?

Uh ... no.

Deng already has drawn comparisons to Hill for his versatility, athleticism and basketball IQ. Deng has a 7-foot wing span and is an off-the-charts athlete. He's an above average passer, shot blocker and rebounder for his size. The last Blue Devil to leave as a freshman was Maggette. Deng is a much more complete player. If he can lead the Dukies to an NCAA Championship, scouts believe there's a good chance he'll follow in Carmelo's shoes and become one of the top-three picks in the draft.

Duke haters, I rest my case.

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