YouTube Gold: Coach K And Bob Knight Discuss Jon Scheyer
This was almost 15 years ago too.
This is a pretty great small video of Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight talking about Jon Scheyer.
It’s from January 2010, before Duke surged to the Final Four, where it would win its fourth national championship.
Scheyer was the point guard of that team, although Krzyzewski challenges the label somewhat here.
But what impressed us most watching Scheyer as a player was just how long he would go without making a mistake. To be clear, there are fan-level mistakes, like a bad pass or a double-dribble, and there are coach-level mistakes, which many of us might not realize.
Coach K says that Scheyer has “a good heart..he feels the game.” And Knight says “he wants to win,” to which K says: “only.”
But what’s important is when Coach K says that Scheyer instinctively reacts not only to his stuff...but to what the game dictates.”
It’s a brief clip, but what you see here is two legends of the game recognizing someone who has the potential to join their ranks. Their respect is unmistakable.
Incidentally, Dean Smith became the winningest coach in 1997. Knight passed him and retired with 902 wins in 2008.
Smith has also been surpassed by Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, his former assistant Roy Williams and, course Krzyzewski, who retired in 2022 with 1,202 wins.
Scheyer has 27 wins so he has a long ways to go before he can be in that conversation. Still, it’s got to be nice for him to know that guys like Knight and Krzyzewski think highly of him.