Duke has a tradition of great college players. But Coach K doesn't recruit for the NBA, he recruits college players.
cheesebeef would probably be proven correct if we looked at each top programs, and where each player was chosen in the draft. I'll offer up my own team to sacrifice
.
Say what you want about our program now, but it was tied with Arizona for the winningest record during one ten year stretch.
For the sake of brevity, I'm not going back to the Joe Klein era:
Off the to of my head,
Todd Day 10th or 11th pick-bust
Lee Mayberry first round bust
Oliver Miller 25th pick-you know
Corliss Williamson-16th pick great college player but a situational bench player in the NBA,solid pick at 16th
Scotty Thurman-great college player. Beat the shot clock to when Arkansas a National Championship. Signed w/agent and went undrafted.
Joe Johnson-10th one of only 2 or 3 lottery picks to pan out in that draft
Janerro Pargo-Undrafted and doing well for himself at Chicago-continually improving.
So, our best team with Day, Mayberry, and Miller were all busts. Our Championship with Williamson produced 1 solid NBA player and one "lesson" to not sign with an agent if you don't know you are getting drafted.
And when we went on a terrible downhill slide we produced our best NBA player at least since Sidney Moncrief.
So when we were playing "forty minutes of hell" at our peak, we produced busts.
The Williamson team (Nolan Richardson referred to them as playing forty minutes of "heck" because college teams just could recruit as deep) produced one solid role player and one guy who screwed up.
The team that won us the SEC Championship got beat by 12th seed Miami because JJ got scouted (Brandon Dean won then MVP of the SEC Championship mainly because nobody knew what to do with the late arriving JJ except double and triple team him-Dean made it only to the Globetrotters). And Pargo was a shooter who just refuses to play himself out of the NBA.
So the players from our heyday were all busts (But Miller was a weight problem from being a great center-He gave Shaq hell in college).
Corliss was on a weaker team that won it all and is the only one off that team to have a productive NBA career.
And the Team with Pargo and JJ weren't very good. But produced one of the better lottery picks that year and one of the better undrafted rookies.
Now that I look at what I've typed, I can see how players get overrated by being on good teams. So maybe that's Dukes problem.
But I bet accurate statistical analysis would show them as having the same success rate as anyone else.