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From the outside looking in, it’s easy to picture Duke’s Jon Scheyer being the head coach of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.
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Cooper Flagg, the NBA’s rookie of the year for 2025-26, is about to start his second season with the Mavs. Kyrie Irving is a league icon, a nine-time NBA and former champion. All-Star. Dereck Lively II, is also with Dallas, adding to the strong Duke connection on the Mavs.
The Mavs were interested in making Scheyer their coach after Jason Kidd was fired in May, according to media reports. But Scheyer could not be pulled away from Duke, from his team, from Durham.
The Mavericks hired Dusty May, who left Michigan after leading the Wolverines to the national championship. Scheyer is set for his fifth season as Duke’s head coach, set on winning the school’s sixth national title.
Appearing on the Glue Guys Podcast on Monday with former Duke star Shane Battier, former NFL quarterback Alex Smith and business entrepreneur Ravi Gupta, Scheyer said: “Anybody that knows me, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself not seeing this thing through. I mean, that’s just the bottom line.”
“I’m at a one-of-one place where not often you get your dream job when you’re 33, and that’s what happened to me,” he added. “I’m really proud of the start we’ve got off to, and the continuation of what has been built here. But I think we’ve got so much left to do. I just think we’ve got so much left to accomplish.”
The Blue Devils, led by Flagg and Kon Knueppel, reached the NCAA Final Four in 2025 but lost in the semifinals. Scheyer then coached the twin sons of former Blue Devils standout Carlos Boozer this past season, and Cameron Boozer followed Flagg in being named the national player of the year.
But again, the Blue Devils fell short of their goal, building a 19-point lead before losing to Connecticut on a last-second 3-pointer in the regional final, a step short of the Final Four.
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Duke could be ranked No. 1 nationally entering the 2026-27 season after Scheyer and his staff reshaped the lineup with such additions as transfer guard John Backwell and five-star recruits Joaquin Boumtje Boumtje, Cam Willams, Deron Rippey Jr. and Bryson Howard.
Scheyer, a Chicago native, smiled and noted he had lived in Durham longer than in Chicago. He played at Duke. After a short pro basketball career cut short by an eye injury, he was on Mike Krzyzewski’s staff as an assistant, then took over as head coach.
“This is where my family is. This is home for me,” he said on the podcast.
Scheyer and his wife, Marcelle, have three kids and soon will have a fourth, Scheyer said, with the due date soon.
Scheyer said on the podcast that he grew up with three goals: being a McDonald’s All-America while in high school, a national champion in college and then playing in the NBA. He accomplished the first two, winning an NCAA title with Duke in 2010, but not the third.
But winning an NBA title as a coach, at what Scheyer called the “highest level” of basketball.? That’s always enticing and could be for Scheyer at some point in his coaching career. Just not now.
“I know this is where I’m supposed to be now, doing what I’m doing with our guys,” he said on the podcast.
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