Stumble It!DURHAM, N.C. – The defining moment of Nate James’ career at Duke wasn’t when he tipped in the game-winner against Maryland in the 2001 ACC Tournament. And it wasn’t even the defensive blanket he put on Juan Dixon in the second half of that dramatic Final Four rally against the Terps in Minneapolis.
No, James’ finest collegiate moment came in the off-season – in the spring of 1999, when Mike Krzyzewski’s Blue Devil program appeared to be in disarray. In the weeks after Duke’s NCAA runner-up finish in St. Petersburg, three underclass stars had declared for the NBA draft and a fourth announced that he was transferring. Coupled with the team’s normal graduation loss, the 1999-2000 roster was reduced to three veteran role players and a bunch of freshmen.
To top off all the uncertainly, Krzyzewski himself was laid up after hip surgery, unable to leave his bed.
That’s when Nate James stepped up.
“A lot of things were happening – it was kind of like the teacher has left the classroom and a substitute has come in and things just kind of get out of hand,” James said. “I took it upon myself to call Chris [Carrawell] and call Shane [Battier] and tell them we should go see Coach and let him know that with everything going on, we had his back. We were going to prepare and we were going to work hard and we were going to be a lot better than people thought we would be. We just had it upon ourselves to prepare for that.”
That promise that James and his two teammates made to Krzyzewski the next afternoon were fulfilled the next season. Duke, relying largely on the three veteran role players and three talented freshmen, won 29 games in 2000 – winning the ACC regular season and tournament titles and finishing No. 1 nationally in the final AP poll.
“That was probably my favorite season at Duke,” James said. “It was the year all the guys left. To go into the season and accomplish all we did was a great thing.”
Krzyzewski may have been thinking of that spring promise when he named Nate James to fill the vacancy on his coaching staff that was created when associate head coach Johnny Dawkins left to take the head job at Stanford.
Or he may have been thinking about the role James played the next season, when he made a key personal sacrifice to help propel Duke to the 2001 national title.
The powerfully built, 6-foot-6 James was a top player for the ’01 Blue Devils, starting the first 29 games and averaging over 12 points and five rebounds a game. But when star center Carlos Boozer was injured and lost in the final week of the regular season, Krzyzewski was confronted with a daunting problem – how to rebuild his team in time for postseason.
He came up with what proved to be a brilliant scheme, replacing the injured Boozer with offensively challenged big man Casey Sanders and inserting super-quick freshman Chris Duhon into the starting lineup, while using the versatile James as a sixth man.
“Nate is going to be the key in making this work,” Krzyzewski told his assistants, according to author Donald Phillips. “He’s got to accept his new role without reservations. Having him come off the bench will give us a big punch.”
The Duke coach called his fifth-year senior co-captain into his office and broached the idea to him.
“Looking back on that, I remember that conversation with Coach,” James said. “The relationship we had made the transition a lot easier. It wasn’t something where I was in a dog house or I was doing something wrong. It was for the betterment of the team. And I was always about what I could do to make the team better.”
Those were not just words to James. He embraced the sixth man role with the kind of passion he brought to his play under the boards. Starting or off the bench, he was the same tough, passionate player. As a sixth man, he played a major role as Duke reeled off 10 straight victories in the wake of Boozer’s injury – first winning a share of the ACC regular season title with a victory at North Carolina, then winning a third-straight ACC championship with three wins in Atlanta (including the semifinal win over the Terps on James’ tap-in), and finally racing through the NCAA Tournament with six straight double-figure victories.
With Duke down 22 points in the first half of the NCAA semifinal game against Maryland, James started the Devils on the road back with a clutch 3-pointer.
“The biggest spark we had was Nate,” Krzyzewski said after the game.
He wasn’t just thinking about that timely 3-pointer. At halftime, Coach K asked his players if anybody could guard Maryland star Juan Dixon. James volunteered to do the job. Dixon, who had 16 first-half points, scored three in the final 20 minutes as Duke rallied for a 95-84 victory.
“It was one of those things where you don’t get caught up in what’s going on with you,” James said. “Had I had a different mindset about not playing, about not starting ... [I was] not worried about Nate James, but about what’s good for Duke.”
The payoff was the 2001 national championship in his final game at Duke.
“To this day, people come up to me and say, ‘You won a championship.’ [It’s not] ‘You won a championship but you came off the bench.’ When I come into Cameron and I see that banner, that’s all that will ever matter to me.”
That’s a message that James is hoping he can pass on to the players he’s now coaching.
“My experiences can definitely help me with these guys,” James said. “I’ve been there. I’ve been through every possible scenario you can imagine ... coming in as a McDonald’s All-American, having to compete against other McDonald’s All-Americans, having to fight for playing time, injuries, being a role player, coming off the bench, starting, becoming a national champion ...
“I can relate to all the players in every possible way.”
Indeed, James has played a dizzying variety of roles in his career.
His first two years at Duke were frustrating as he battled a variety of injuries – eventually sitting out most of his sophomore season due to ankle problems. He returned to be a small cog on an extremely talented Duke team in 1999, averaging 14.7 minutes and 5.0 points a game for a 37-2 team.
It was the next year when James stepped up and became a key player, averaging 11.0 points and 4.5 rebounds as a starter for a 29-win team. He followed that up by averaging 12.3 points and 5.2 rebounds for the 2001 national champs.
For his career, James played in 117 career wins, tied for the fourth best total in Duke history. His career winning percentage of 86.7 (117-18) is also sixth best in Duke history. He played on three ACC Tournament championship teams, two Final Four teams and is the only player in ACC history who was a part of five teams that won or shared the ACC regular season title (thanks to his hardship year in 1998).
James never got beyond preseason training camp in the NBA, but he spent seven seasons playing pro basketball in the United States and overseas. He was the Most Valuable Player in the Carolinas Basketball League in 2003 and he teamed with former Duke teammate Casey Sanders to lead his Hungarian team to its league championship two years ago. James also played in Bosnia, Brazil, France, Greece, Germany, Holland, Poland, Russia, Japan and the Philippines.
James points out that as the son of a career Marine, he learned to enjoy travel as a kid. Still, he admits that his pro experience wasn’t always glamorous, complaining of “a cold gym in Bosnia”, bumpy beds with the springs coming up through the mattress, stealing ice from restaurants to soothe aching joints and a constant hunt for decent food.
“In Russia, they served cow tongue,” James said, making a face. “In Japan, I was eating rice and noodles for seven months. In Hungary, the food was so horrible that Casey and I found this one little Italian Restaurant and we were eating spaghetti every day for six months.”
James finished his pro career in January, returning to Duke to accept a job as assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Blue Devil program.
But this will be James’ first real coaching job at any level.
“It’s almost like a dream,” he said. “I’m still pinching myself, saying, ‘Wow, I’m a coach here now ... I’m an assistant coach for Duke basketball.’ It’s been a surreal feeling almost.”
James said that he’s always wanted to coach, dating back to his days playing for Stu Vetter at St. John’s Academy in Maryland.
“When I was in high school – from the time I was 13 or 14 years old, I worked my high school coach’s basketball camps,” he said. “When I came to Duke, in the summers, I would always come back and work the Duke camps.”
James also teamed with Carrawell to run a summer camp in Durham, where he and his former Duke teammate taught youngsters fundamentals and life lessons.
He’s not sure yet exactly what specific responsibilities he’ll take on as Coach K’s newest staff member. He brushed off suggestions that he’ll take over big-man instruction from veteran assistant Steve Wojciechowski. Instead, he vowed to learn coaching techniques from Wojo and Chris Collins.
And from Coach K.
“He’s the most passionate and driven person I ever met,” James said.
But James also brings a unique passion and drive too – at least he did as a player.
“I still have that same fire,” he insisted.
James has already made himself an important part of Duke basketball history. Now, as Duke’s newest assistant coach, he has a chance to build on that legacy.