LET “THE WHITE LOTUS” POKE FUN, BUT SCHEYER AND FLAGG EYE A NATIONAL TITLE
Duke is referenced often on the outrageous HBO show, and as producer Mike White laughs, he wasn’t aware that Jon Scheyer has a grand plan for Cooper Flagg and might win the school’s sixth championship
Not that good people were concerned, but Duke’s basketball program continues to be larger than Mike White’s surly imagination. In “The White Lotus,” the creator asks actor Jason Isaacs to wear a Duke shirt as he contemplates suicide. He also presents Patrick Schwarzenegger, involved in a threesome with brotherly incest, as a Dookie.
The university isn’t thrilled. Jon Scheyer just shrugs, at 37, as an aspiring coach who might accomplish in his third season what legendary predecessor Mike Krzyzewski didn’t achieve until he almost was fired. He approached Cooper Flagg’s only year on campus as his own litmus-test agenda, saying, “Ultimately, I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t follow my instincts and do what had to be done.” So far, Scheyer has done just that, leading Duke to its 18th Final Four appearance.
“It’s our time, right f—ing now! Right f—ing now!” he said late in an 85-65 victory over outclassed and shot-jumbled Alabama.
That wasn’t all Scheyer injected into the San Antonio sky. “I have a bunch of guys, man, they’re killers,” he said. “They’re fearless, and they weren’t afraid of this moment.”
His words were magic for Flagg, who selected Duke over other schools because he respects the head coach. Think he cares about HBO and White or anyone else but the next opponent, either Houston or Tennessee? While not shooting well, Flagg performed every other skill and nuance Saturday night, particularly on the defensive end. “It’s just a credit to coach Scheyer, the vision that he laid out for me,” he said. “It just feels like the right place with the right people. Having so many talented guys on the team, it’s not going to be your night every night. Just not letting the shots affect anything else you do and just knowing the rest of the guys got my back.”
Did White know about March and April? Why Duke?
Why not Florida? Why not Michigan State? Why not Auburn?
Because Duke always is lethal in the American glossary — though, we’ve seen nothing in the character of Flagg or Scheyer that suggests they’ll be less than admired if they win the national championship. The Blue Devils are charmingly balanced, with Flagg off to the NBA as the No. 1 draft choice while billionaires plot ways to tank games. Those tuning in saw another star freshman, Kon Knueppel, whose mother was interviewed during the pre-game program beside Flagg’s mother. Anyone troubled about college basketball’s future should understand Duke is a sweet program, minus the rude tactics from the Christian Laettner era and decades of after-hatred.
Curious scenarios only develop when Flagg listens to Scheyer, who doesn’t want him postponing his greatness at a raw 18. "What I’ve wanted from him is not to defer,” the coach said of his East Regional performances. “I’ve just wanted him to fully be him, and I thought he was that. He was in his element. He was ‘him.’ He had just a great personality. He was loose, talking, competitive, the whole thing. So yeah, he impresses me all the time. We need more.”
Which led Flagg to hit a 38-foot shot, just before halftime Thursday night, and finally not react like a kid from Camden, Maine. The population in his hometown is 3,665, with people closer to Bangor and maybe New Brunswick than, say, Boston. “Let’s f—ing go, man!” he screamed in the first postseason exhortation of what’s known as The Maine Event. He does not have to control proceedings, with Knueppel winning the roommate scoring game Saturday with 21 points while Tyrese Proctor had 17 and Khaman Maluach had 14. Flagg scored 16 on 6 of 16 from the field, despite hitting the game’s first three pointer, and added nine rebounds and three assists. Duke won with flowing ease and shut down Alabama’s shooting wizardry. Knueppel even stole the night’s best quote, telling a TV reporter who said Duke didn’t start slowly.
“I’m a slow guy. I try to make it slow,” he said.
Don’t defer, Scheyer keeps telling Flagg. The friendly young man in media settings will turn into a beast. “It’s like a different guy. He’s just like an animal out there,” Maluach said. “He has a different mentality.”
“He’s going to do whatever it takes to win,” Knueppel said. “He’s a great passer, locking down a guy on the other end, rebounding — I’ve never seen a guy that plays as hard as does in all sorts of areas. His motor is ridiculous. I think that’s probably his best attribute is his motor. He can just do so many things.”
“A dawg,” Proctor said. “It’s win by any means, and he doesn’t care if he has 30, 40, 10 — as long as his team is winning, that’s all that he cares about.”
Said Flagg’s mother, Kelly: “That competitive drive comes from within. He won't accept any other way than being the best at what he's doing. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be baseball, football, soccer — heck, even cornhole! He makes everything a competition. Everything that we try to do, he wants to win, and he wants to destroy his competition.”
America’s Next Great Basketball Player has a bit of acne, as we all did, and smiles like he’s 13 or 14. He senses anxiety to win a title and enjoy a glorious NBA career. “There’s definitely pressure,” he said. “There’s pressure with everything. But it’s how you handle it, leaning on your guys, your teammates, coaches, to kind of handle that pressure is kind of what I fall into.”
How does he have fun? “I used to fish, used to hunt, all those different sort of things that you do growing up as a kid, with your parents, friends. I used to go up way north all the time with my family and go bird-hunting. Things like that I used to enjoy.” Today, he doesn’t have time, saying, “I know what I need to do and when it’s time to be business. Once I step on the court, it’s all basketball. I don’t really know about flipping a switch but it’s just about being locked in all the time doing my job.”
Said Knueppel: “He’s a great guy. He’s super chill off the court. Maybe just back at the dorm, watching basketball together, just shooting the crap a little bit, talking, cracking jokes. He’s pretty one-track minded on hoops. He takes care of his schoolwork, and he’s a good guy to be around.”
There is no doubt Flagg will enter the league in late June. He might be stuck with Charlotte, Washington or Utah — or maybe he lucks out with Philadelphia — but he’ll sign monster endorsement deals in his new city. “Cooper is about to move on with something incredibly special with the next step he's going to go after this,” Scheyer said.
So when “The White Lotus” makes fun of Duke, visuals are viewed as fiction. Ken Jeong, the comic actor and fan of the program, could make fun of White himself. You’ll see nothing nastier than a slogan on the Duke mascot’s head: “Alabummer.” Let them tweak, as the school officials comment.
“The White Lotus not only uses our brand without permission, but in our view uses it on imagery that is troubling, does not reflect our values or who we are, and simply goes too far,” said Frank Tramble, Duke’s vice president for communications, marketing and public affairs, in a statement to Bloomberg. “Suicide is the second-leading cause of death on college campuses. As imagery from the show is being shared widely across social media, we are using our brand to promote mental health awareness and remind people that help is available.”
After scoring 30 points with 7 assists, 6 rebounds and 3 blocks against Arizona, Flagg was described with magnificent praise. It arrived from Scheyer. “It sure looks that way to me, that he enjoys it. That was one of the best tournament performances I’ve ever coached or been a part of,” he said.
Saturday night, Scheyer said of his defense: “To hold them to 65 points is incredible. We watched them play the other night. They scored 113 and made 25 3s. The biggest thing for us was not taking the bait of getting so spread out. Our team is loose, confident, competitive and not fazed by this environment.”
Be shocked if Duke doesn’t triumph for the first time in 10 years. The winning streak is 15, with a 35-3 record. Thus far, Jason Isaacs is alive in the show. If he doesn’t head to jail for his financial improprieties, he should celebrate April 7. Some people want Duke to lose, but crazy how it never happens.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.