How the 2025 NBA Draft evoked memories of Glenbrook North legend Jon Scheyer: Telander

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A lot of things cross your mind when you ponder an NBA draft. The most recent one on June 25, oddly, took me straight to thoughts of Jon Scheyer.

You remember Jon Scheyer: the former 6-foot-4 guard who led his Glenbrook North High School team to the Illinois State 2A Championship in 2005, was named Illinois Mr. Basketball in 2006, played college ball at Duke, was the captain of the Blue Devils 2010 NCAA Championship team, leading that team in points, assists, and steals per game, and now is the head coach at Duke.

What’s the connection here? Quite simply: Duke.

I couldn’t help but go into full Dukey mode when I saw this astounding result from Wednesday’s event: three of the first ten players chosen in the draft were from Duke. That’s three of the 10 best, non-professional basketball talents on Earth, all at one college last season. Numbers one, four, and ten. Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach.

I mean, talent hording?

And I thought of Scheyer because I can guarantee you one of the main reasons all three players went to Duke was because of its coach. In 2023, Scheyer took over for the legendary Mike Krzyzewski, the man Scheyer played for and the man who anointed Scheyer as his pedigreed and philosophical baton-carrier. Coach K had 42 first-round picks during his 42 years at Duke, with 28 of those players being lottery picks, meaning the best of the best.

Nobody has more No. 1 overall NBA picks than Duke, with six, starting with Art Heyman in 1953 and including the 18-year-old Flagg this year. Talented young players go where they think they’ll get the best teaching and the most exposure and the surest path to winning. And, of course, where they have the best chance at big money in the pros. If that means a certain college, so be it. Education is nice but mostly irrelevant. You think phenom Zion Williamson chose Duke for scholarly purposes in his few months in Durham, North Carolina, before heading off to the New Orleans Pelicans?

Duke is a fine, near-Ivy League-level school, and many bright students attend there. But a certain kind of skilled basketball player also digs it, for hoops reasons. Consider that Northwestern University, a private, elite, high-priced D-1 school in a major conference just like Duke — the Big Ten to Duke’s Atlantic Coast Conference — has never had a first-round pick in NBA draft history. (And don’t count Rex Walters, who started at NU but transferred and played his final two years at Kansas before getting drafted No. 16 in 1993 by the New Jersey Nets.)

At any rate, Scheyer is the heir to the Duke mystique, and it brings back a ton of memories for me. I don’t know Jon well, but what I do know I like a lot. I remember being at the Loyola University gym and watching him score 48 points in a win against Waukegan in the 2005 IHSA Super-Sectional. I’ve watched the astounding video of him scoring 21 points in 75 seconds in a loss against Proviso West.

What I remember most are two other things.

First, I wrote in a column for the Sun-Times in 2006 that he was choosing Duke over Illinois, before he had announced his college plan, and everyone was speculating. He was still at Glenbrook North, and I got a phone call from one of his older sisters, whom I didn’t know (didn’t know he had two sisters, for that matter; didn’t know him, either), and she asked me if it was okay if Jon could to talk to me. I said sure, put him on. He was very polite, and all he wanted to know after introductory courtesies was how did I know for sure he was going to Duke? How could I write that?

Well, I didn’t tell him, but I knew guys who knew guys. North Shore guys. Sources. I blew his cover a little, I guess, and I was sorry for that. But I wasn’t wrong. If anybody was made to play for Coach K, it was Jon Scheyer.

The second thing was I played a ton of pickup basketball back in the day, noon ball, Y-league stuff, anywhere and everywhere. Loved it. Ruined my knees, but so what. One of the guys I sometimes played with at the Multiplex gym in Deerfield was a guy named Jim. He was dignified and had a nice jumper, and sometimes he just shot by himself at one end of the gym while others played games. I talked to him occasionally and I’d bring up this kid named Jon Scheyer and how amazing he was and blah blah. Jim had told me one time that his last name was Shire or Share or something like that, and I thought nothing of it.

Then one day, at O’Hare Airport I saw him and his wife at a flight gate and it all hit me like a load of bricks. ``You’re Jon Scheyer’s dad, aren’t you?’’ I said.

He nodded. Of course. The two looked so alike, I realized now, except for maybe seven inches in height. Kind of like Michael Jordan and his dad James. I was so embarrassed. Not for the first time in my life.

There’s my Jon Scheyer story, and I guess the wrap-up is this decent man has a load of young talent flooding through his university’s hoops system, which then heads on to the NBA. The only question is, Mr. Good Guy Jon Scheyer, back in March, how did you and your boys lose to Houston in the Final Four?

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