On Thursday, Jon Scheyer announced who would replace Jai Lucas on Duke’s staff and he made an interesting pick: 31-year-old Evan Bradds. Here’s a little background.
Bradds played collegiately for Belmont, where he was coached by the legendary Rick Byrd.
He was pretty good there but not good enough to play in the NBA.
Since then he has coached with the Maine Red Claws, the G-League affiliate for the Boston Celtics. He also spent two years with the Celtics as a video assistant and then was with the Utah Jazz for the last two years as a player development coach. As such, he also worked with their G-League team, which is coached currently by former Blue Devil Steve Wojciechowski.
So, given that Scheyer and Stevens are good friends, and we understand that Scheyer and Utah head coach Will Hardy are also close, we’re guessing that Bradds got strong referrals from Wojo, Hardy, Lawson and most importantly Stevens, who is one of the best basketball minds in the business.
And of course he got valuable training in college from Byrd. You might think that Byrd wasn’t a great coach because he spent his career at Belmont, but his colleagues think very highly of him and we’re guessing Bradds soaked up a lot of knowledge at Belmont.
By the way, Bradds had an outstadnign career there, winning OVC Player of the Year twice and also being named Honorable Mention All-American twice as well. He finished as Belmont’s all-time D-I leading scorer
Bradds is also the grandson of Ohio State great Gary Bradds, who played for the Buckeyes in the early ‘60’s glory era, where he was teammates with Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Bobby Knight and Don DeVoe. He was the #3 pick in the 1964 draft, two picks ahead of Duke’s Jeff Mullins. Both Evan and his grandfather played at the same high school, incidentally.
Like Lucas whom he replaces, Bradds comes from a basketball family. His experience with NBA player development will be a major asset. What we don’t know is how recruiting responsibilities will work now and who will work primarily with the defense. Lucas was terrific at both.
However, Bradds brings some major assets to Duke and Scheyer has established himself as an elite recruiter. And don’t overlook what player’s families have said about him, most recently Cooper Flagg’s mom Kelly, who said that “Cooper would run through a brick wall for that man. I’m kind of gushing, obviously, but Jon really is the greatest.”
Kon Knueppel’s family seems pretty happy with his experience as well. We’re sure there are others.
Scheyer is a player’s coach and he’s made really smart hires so far too. We’ll know more later, but from here, Bradds looks like another intelligent move.
