A finalist for the North Carolina sportswriter of the year, Brendan Marks joins us on the Adam Gold Show. How are you, sir? Hey, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. The pleasure is mine. Congratulations on finalist honors.
I wish you luck. Alright, let's get to last night's game. Duke came in coming off a rather, maybe humiliating is not the right word, but a thorough beating at the hands of Purdue.
And Purdue might be the best or one of the best teams in the country to be perfectly honest. They look really good again. But Duke's offense had not been good at all for their last two games.
Did they turn it around or did they just play much better defensively and it made it easier? I think that they're starting to figure out the formula. And I think that, you know, you look at this team and the offense is still not beautiful.
It is not a thing of art by any means. You know, I think Duke is still shooting, you know, well under the national average from three. Yeah, they're not even shooting 30% from three as a team right now.
That's obviously not going to cut it in the long run. But also they realize like, hey, look, we've got three different guys who are all, you know, very capable post players that are bigger than six foot 10. Duke is the sixth biggest team in the country. So we're going to live inside. You know, we're going to go to the glass.
We're going to attack it. And even if we miss a bunch of shots, we're going to eat the offensive boards. And that's really what you saw last night. That's how Duke was able to be effective. And I think that is sort of going to be the formula for them, at least in the interim until they're able to get some of their guards going.
But obviously a very tough physical win last night and sort of a reversal of what we saw against Purdue. Also, two of these players that have not, you know, that maybe haven't hit their stride yet are really just coming into the season. Lively, Derek Lively hasn't, you know, didn't really practice for a while. He's slowly been working into it. I'm not sure last night wasn't his best game.
Derek Whitehead, obviously, also because he had missed more time and it's going to take him maybe a little bit more time. But I thought there were moments where both guys looked really comfortable. How close are we, you think, to seeing what they can really provide? We're definitely close.
We're as close as we have been. I would say more so with lively even than we are with Whitehead right now. I mean, you know, lively's best game of the season, you know, clear by a clear mile last night. You know, he was actually getting involved offensively, had his first, you know, converted his first non dunks of the season, which is wild that that's a stat we had to track. But, you know, you saw some of the touch that made him such a highly sought after recruit. Obviously, defensively, he is, you know, starting to become a little bit of an anchor. We saw flashes of that against Purdue, but more consistently yesterday. And, you know, as for Whitehead, this is a guy who had a broken foot, he missed three months.
And for somebody who really relies on that athleticism, that's something that takes some time to get back. So he is the guy who really raises the ceiling of this team, in my opinion. He's the one who has the potential to be a leading scorer, has the potential to be a lottery pick. But he's got to sort of, you know, get out of this tunnel vision mode of driving recklessly into the lane and not having any sort of backup option. Once he gets to that point, I think that's we're going to see him sort of start to grow into his role.
But but certainly encouraging from lively, especially last night. Brendan Marks from the Athletic is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show at Brendan R Marks on Twitter. Jeremy Roach is the leader. He's the primary ball handler, but he really shares those duties with Tyrese Proctor.
How does how is that working together? Almost like they have to take turns initiating offense. Is Proctor getting better at that? I think he is getting better.
And again, I think it's about getting better within the confines of what Duke wants to do. Like Tyrese Proctor is not by any means a knockdown shooter right now. I think for the year he's shooting 20 percent for three. You know, his offensive efficiency is the worst on the team and it's not really close. So so I know I don't want to get too carried away, but he is certainly starting to figure out that look, if I can get the ball inside and if I can basically put the attention into our post players at that point, when they kick it out to me, I am quick enough and I am fast enough to break somebody down off the dribble and to get into the lane. And once he gets the free throw stripe, he's actually very efficient. So, you know, I think for for Tyrese, you know, he's shooting. He's only missed one free throw all season.
He's about ninety four percent. That's going to be the formula until he can get the outside shot to fall. And, you know, I think with Jeremy Roach, too, you know, he is a guy who is familiar with the past couple of years of sharing primary ball. Like this year, we were expecting him to step into more of that role, obviously, because everyone left. But this is the same thing he did last year with Trevor Keels and Wendell Moore. He did the same thing the year before with D.J.
Stewart and Jordan Goldwire. So it's a role that I think he is comfortable with. And really, you know, you're starting to see Proctor slowly incrementally come along. Again, Duke is so young, like it's crazy how young all these guys are. There's a lot more basketball for them to get better at. As young as they are, they still rely on some guys who have been around a while, maybe not here. You know, Ryan Young off the bench gives them really good minutes and eats up a lot of space and scores. And Jacob Grandison is a nice little player. They've got they've got some some interesting players at their disposal that kind of blend in and can fit in a lot of different roles, whether it's Mitchell or Grandison and Jalen Blake's has been good. ends November 28th cannot be combined with other offers.
See additional terms at one peloton dot com. He hasn't. You know, I was actually talking to obvious about this last night at the game and he walks up and he goes, Brian Young should not be good at basketball. Look at him.
You know, this is this. He looks like he should be a lawyer right now. You know, he should be out practicing.
And, you know, maybe one day. But the dude is just a baller. I mean, he's fourth nationally in offensive rebounding rate right now.
Like that is an incredible, incredible statistic. And, you know, especially for what Duke wants to do in the way they want to play right now. They need him to be that way. Jacob Grandison comes in yesterday, gives Duke a nice little seven point run of his own. You know, I this is a team that is going to need nine guys. You know, it's not like last year where they could really rely on that starting five and the draft picks and roach like this is a team that's going to need contributions down the line. You see Jalen Blake's he's a guy who plays great, plays with great intensity, plays great defense. Occasionally he'll knock in the corner three.
Mitchell had a big three last night, despite probably not having his best game like it is. It is very much to me, at least it feels like this Duke team is so much the sum of its parts individually. Maybe these guys aren't going to win one on one matchups. But when you put them all together and you have the versatility and you can mix and match, you're going to be able to find some combination of parts that fits and works against any given opponent. So I think they have sort of their model of how they want to play. And obviously it relies heavily on Ryan Young and Jacob Grandison and some of the experienced guys.
But the mix and match ability that this team has that John Shire has, I think is one of the things that, you know, gives them such a long runway for the rest of the season. Brendan Marks is joining us here from the athletic covers. Duke also covers Carolina. We're just going to talk about Duke here because he was at the game last night. You strike me as a big geometry guy and in geometry there were theorems and in every theorem there was a given. Whatever combination that Duke has on the court is the given Kyle Filipowski. Yes.
Yes. And it's bonkers that it is. But this dude is crazy skilled. I mean, people that are as big as he is are not supposed to be able to do the things that he does. Like, I was always really impressed last year, obviously, by Paulo Vancara. We see what he's doing in the NBA right now. I saw last night, you know, I think he passed Shaq's first 15 game scoring mark with the Magic. We knew that that guy was going to be good.
Kyle Filipowski, not the same case. You know, he was a top five recruit, but we heard over the summer maybe he was struggling. Maybe he looked a little sort of behind the eight ball. Didn't necessarily play with the intensity and the speed that Duke needed him to. Garbage.
It's all garbage. I mean, the guy is the number one option, you know, especially, you know, when I was out in Portland watching them. There were certain stretches of the game, most of the Oregon State game, where if he didn't get a touch, it was a wasted offensive possession. So you look at what he does shooting the ball. You look at what he does attacking the rim. You look at him, you know, getting to the free throw strike. Obviously, the rebounding he continues to improve. You know, to me, he looks like Duke's best pro prospect right now. And frankly, I'll be interested to see if he can sort of maintain this standing as lively and Whitehead get back to, you know, sort of the pedigree that we expected of them.
But Filipowski, absolutely. He's the focal point. He's option a one and everything else Duke does stems from him. What do you think, Duke? This is in terms of their offense. What does Duke miss the most that you think they need or not have enough of that you think they need? It's three point shooting.
It's not even close. I mean, right now you go and you look at these guys who were sort of hailed as shooters coming in. Tyrese Proctor was supposed to be, you know, a plus shooter for them. Seven of 35, 20 percent of the year. You know, Jalen Blake's had hit a couple in the first few games of the season. You thought, OK, you know, maybe this is sustainable.
Maybe it's not. He drops to 31 percent. Jeremy Roach hit, I think, four threes in the first game of the season. He's now down to 30 percent. So we haven't really seen the strides from him that we expected.
You know, Filipowski has sort of been as advertised about 36 percent. That's, you know, for everything else that dude's given you, you take that. But this is a team that's still without the threat of a three point ball. Teams are going to continue to sag off them. They're going to continue to ask them to take those shots.
And, you know, it's funny. Somebody asked Chris Holtman last night, not not disrespectfully, but like, you know, Whitehead made that three and Mitchell made that three. And are those shots that you guys can live with?
And you can see him sort of figuring out, like, what is the most PG way that I can say? Absolutely. We'll let them take those shots. So, you know, until Duke is able to do that, we're not going to see this offense at its full efficiency. But if they're able to add even a little bit more floor spacing, if just a little bit more, and you combine that with the offensive rebounding and the inside scoring they have, it's going to make Duke a really tough offensive out.
But but they're just not there right now. The assists are getting better. The ball movement is getting better and it will continue to with with, you know, three pointers opening up driving kick lanes. But that is the biggest thing I think that's holding back to each offense right now. And quite frankly, we don't know if that's something that's going to, you know, progress to the mean or not. If this is what they are, this is what they are.
Then John Shire is going to have to get really creative and finding guys open looks. No question. In 2010, when they won the national championship with Shire playing point, they had three point shooting because it was Shire because it was Nolan Smith because it was Kyle Singler. And everything else that was about them, they were not a super athletic team. They were big, great rebounding team and strong defensively to a point. They were not the same old Duke defense that would press you and turn you over. They just kind of stayed in front of you.
But if if this is a team that doesn't have great shooting, it's going to take a lot of creativity to help their offense continue to flow or flow because it really hasn't continued to flow at this point. Brendan Marks, again, finalist for the North Carolina sports writer of the year. I wish you well, my friend. Thank you very much for coming on. Appreciate it. Yes, I appreciate you and thanks for the well wishes and hope you had a good holiday. You too, man.
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