PROVIDENCE — Brandon Ingram did not want to go.
Donald Ingram had arranged for his son — not even in high school yet — to play for Jerry Stackhouse’s AAU team, and he was supposed to join them for a tournament in Richmond.
Like Stackhouse, the North Carolina star who had an 18-year-career in the NBA, the Ingrams are from Kinston, N.C., a town of 22,000 people an hour and a half southeast of Raleigh where basketball is king.
Donald and Stackhouse had met on the court, playing fierce pickup games when Donald was in his 20s and Stackhouse was playing anybody bigger and stronger he could find to prepare between high school and college seasons. They forged a friendship, and as it became obvious to Donald that his son could be a special player he decided Stackhouse was the person he would trust to guide the process.
But Brandon was fiercely loyal to his friends in Kinston, and to the city itself. An introvert, he initially balked at the idea of joining an Atlanta-based team made up of stars from throughout the region.
“His dad had to pretty much beg him to go,” said Stackhouse, an assistant with the Toronto Raptors. “And when he got there it was like, there’s no turning back. He became one of the guys. You saw the talent start to grow and he worked at it.”
Now Ingram is the driving force behind a Duke team that will face Yale in a West Regional second-round NCAA tournament game at 2:40 p.m. ET Saturday at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. The 6--9, 190-pound freshman wing is averaging 16.9 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists a game and is a 41% three-point shooter. The 18-year-old’s late-season play has put him in contention to be the No.1 pick in the draft (NBA Draft Express now has him in the top spot of its mock draft.)
Stackhouse believes the pick will depend on what the team that wins the lottery needs.
“It probably comes down to him and Ben Simmons” an LSU freshman forward who is not playing in the tournament, Stackhouse said, “and I don’t think you could go wrong. At the end of the day I’m a little biased. I think (Ingram) has a tremendous upside because he’s so young — a year younger than Ben Simmons — and already shoots the basketball.”
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has acknowledged this will be Ingram’s only NCAA tournament, but he’s also gushed about this one-and-done — who has the ball-handling and passing skills to take the ball up court and operate out of isolation sets.
“We give him a lot of freedom, and he's earned it, but he's not a nervous kid,” Kryzewski said Friday, the 36th anniversary of his hiring at Duke. “He's had an amazing, a terrific year. A no-maintenance kid, beautiful kid, just a beautiful kid.”
Duke won a frenzied recruiting battle for Ingram, who did not commit until April of last year. The Blue Devils made him a priority last spring after losing three freshmen to the NBA draft. It also helped that Ingram had grown up a Duke fan — a fact he hid from Stackhouse for as long as he could — and that North Carolina was being investigated by the NCAA over widespread academic fraud among athletes. That, Stackhouse admits, was a red flag for a kid who wanted to be sure he’d have a chance to play in the tournament during his one year in college.
Though their schedules conflict now, making phone calls infrequent, Ingram did talk to Stackhouse recently about playing in March; Duke, despite being the defending champion, had only one player on the roster who had started a tournament game, and Stackhouse has some valuable experience, having led North Carolina to a Final Four in his sophomore year.
“He just told me that every game is a championship,” Ingram said. “You’re playing championship teams. Just try to go hard on every possession, have your teammates’ backs and talk on the floor.”
There have been some concerns about Ingram’s ability to be assertive, both with teammates and opponents. When talking to the media he can come off as shy. And his small frame doesn’t appear built to go into the paint.
Both concerns are unfounded, Stackhouse said. He recalled a time when they were playing in the backyard and Stackhouse grabbed Ingram’s wrist, then challenged him to do something about it. Ingram was hesitant for 20 seconds.
“He knocked one hand away and that was the beginning of something,” Stackhouse said. “We come from a basketball country in Kinston where we’re taught how to play basketball the right way. I don’t know if anyone has the package that he has with the size, the length, the ability to put it on the floor, the ability to shoot it as well as he does right now.”
And Ingram, when he’s with his teammates, is a leader, according to Stackhouse. Players naturally look to him.
“I’d ask him something and it was always one- or two- or three-word answers,” Stackhouse said. “Then one night I walked downstairs where they were all in the basement, just kind of snuck down there, and who was the loudest one in the room making more noise than anybody? The class clown of the whole group was Brandon.”
Said Donald: “He kind of opens up, and you can really get to know him. In the media or in the public, he has that demeanor where you just can't read him. Even on the court he doesn’t have that excitement. Whatever he does, whether it’s a dunk or a great play, he doesn’t have an emotional change.”
The transition to college basketball wasn’t easy for Ingram, who did gain 20 pounds and has been told by Stackhouse — and others — that he’ll need to add at least that many before next season.
He dominated the season opener against Siena and next vs. Bryant, scoring 15 and 21 points, before scoring only 17 points over his next three games against Kentucky, VCU and Georgetown.
It was after those games that Stackhouse made sure to call to offer encouragement. He also took to Twitter, searched Ingram’s name, and took a screenshot of the “doubters, the naysayers.” He hasn’t shown them to Ingram yet, but he has shared his message.
“Those are the types of things that are going to be part of your life going forward and you can’t lose any confidence,” he said. “You have to be able to trust that the work and time you put in and continue to put in will produce the fruits that you look for.”
Ingram came off the bench in his next game — an 80-61 win over Yale — to score 15 points. When asked about that resurgence, he deferred and credited his teammates. But on a team that relies on six players to handle most of the minutes, Ingram is clearly the one who will have the biggest impact on this tournament run.
Guard Grayson Allen is crafty and can score, forward Marshall Plumlee has gotten better every year and Matt Jones does many of the things that go unnoticed on winning basketball teams. But Ingram is a transcendent talent, the kind that draws so much attention from opponents that he ultimately is the one who makes teammates better.
He’s also won big games: he led his high school to four state championships, and never missed a free throw in the fourth quarter of any of those games.
Allen will match up with Yale’s breakout star, Makai Mason, so the offense will likely run through Ingram more often than usual.
“You know, we try to give he and Grayson a chance to be players and not over-systemize it, and it's worked where they make good plays,” Krzyzewski said. “Brandon is going to keep getting better. … There's no one like him. I'm not saying he's the best, but he's unbelievably unique, and we've tried to work with him like that.”
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