Kyrie Irving wasn’t a Duke Blue Devil for very long, but the Boston Celtics point guard has lived up to the prediction of his former head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
The legendary Duke coach recruited the electric point guard when he was a 16-year-old playing in West Orange, N. J., and he knew right away how special Irving was going to be.
The Undefeated’s Aaron Dodson recently published an oral history of Irving’s 11-game run at Duke. The piece opens with Coach K and Irving remembering the first words the Hall of Fame coach told the then-16-year-old.
“I told him he was going to be one of the players of his era,” Krzyzewski told Dodson. “I saw everything in that kid.”
Irving remembers the encounter as well.
“He told me I was going to be one of the best of my generation,” Irving said.
So far, so good.
Irving was drafted with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft after playing just 11 games at Duke due to a toe injury. In his seven-year NBA career, the 26-year-old has all but proven his college coach right, hitting one of the most memorable shots in NBA Finals history while cementing himself as one of the league’s top point guards.
For his NBA career, Irving is averaging 22 points per game on 46.2 percent shooting. He’s just entering his prime and under the guidance of Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, who was the coach at Butler when Irving broke his toe against the Bulldogs in 2010, he should be able to fulfill the projection that Krzyzewski saw in him.
Say what you will about Coach K, but he knows generational talent when he sees it.
