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The ESPN NBA Rank includes seven Duke basketball alums for 2024-25

The ESPN NBA Rank includes seven Duke basketball alums for 2024-25

Thanks to legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski and his successor Jon Scheyer, the Duke men’s basketball program has dominated the recruiting industry for decades, and that means the Blue Devils are also represented throughout the NBA.

Three former Duke basketball stars took part in last year’s NBA Finals. Rookie Dereck Lively II wanted a championship to start his career with the Dallas Mavericks (and teammate Kyrie Irving wanted a second), but Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum helped lead the Celtics to their first career championship won.

Tatum also became the first Duke men’s basketball player to win two Olympic gold medals when Team USA won it all in Paris weeks later.

While those three names grabbed most of the headlines in the postseason, the Orlando Magic and New Orleans Pelicans, in their prime, are both led by the former No. 1 overall pick from Durham.

After ESPN ranked the top 100 NBA players ahead of the 2024-25 season, here are the seven Blue Devils who made the list.

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Tatum finished the best year of his career in 2023-24 and was named to the First Team All-NBA squad for the third consecutive year after averaging 26.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.0 steals scored per game. He led the Celtics in points (25.0), rebounds (9.7) and assists (6.3) throughout their championship run, joining a short list of NBA legends who have achieved this feat, and he is rightly ranked among the league’s top stars.

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Banchero, the first overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, led the Magic to the playoffs for the first time last season. The 6-foot-2 forward averaged 22.6 points per game in his second season, along with 6.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists, which is one of the most comprehensive statistics in the league. Orlando’s true highlight came in the first-round series against Cleveland, when he scored at least 30 points with two double-doubles in three of seven games.

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Now 32 years old, it has been more than eight years since Irving won his first championship with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. In his 13th career season last year, the Duke basketball alum still averaged 25.6 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.2 assists while hitting 41.1% of his 3-pointers.

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If Williamson can just stay on the court, he would likely secure another dozen spots on this list. The 2019 No. 1 overall pick has only played 184 games in his NBA career, an average of 36.8 per year, but he is averaging 24.7 points per game over his career. He finished last season with 5.8 rebounds and a 57% field goal percentage, both career lows, but he added a personal best 5.0 assists.

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It’s crazy to think that this will be Ingram’s ninth season in the NBA, and the former Blue Devil has spent the last five of those with Williamson in New Orleans. Ingram has averaged at least 20 points per game over the last five seasons, with at least five rebounds and five assists in each of the last three seasons.

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Midway through the 2023-24 season, the New York Knicks traded Barrett to the Raptors as part of a package for Toronto star OG Anunoby, and the former Duke star responded with some of the best basketball performances of his career. In 32 games with the Raptors, he averaged 21.8 points, 6.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists while shooting 55.3% from the floor.

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Lively, last year’s breakout star of the postseason, scored 8.8 points and grabbed 6.9 rebounds in just 23.5 minutes per game as a rookie. He recorded four double-doubles on Dallas’ way to the finals, two of which came in a comfortable win over the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference semifinals. He finished the playoffs with 7.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in 22.0 minutes per game.