HOMECOMING: Duke Basketball HIRES Javin DeLaurier, Staff Experience BOOSTS Blue Devils Hopes

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is the Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day.

**JJ Jackson** (0:11)
It's a welcome addition back to the Duke basketball staff, Javin DeLaurier, welcome back home as Duke basketball has a new coach. This is Locked On Blue Devils.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:28)
You are Locked On Blue Devils, your daily podcast on the Duke Blue Devils, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

**JJ Jackson** (0:38)
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Locked On Blue Devils podcast. My name is JJ Jackson. Thanks so much for being here with us today on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026, Locked On Blue Devils is your one stop shop where we discuss everything going on inside the life of Duke Athletics. And on today's show, we've got big news. Javin DeLaurier is back. He joins the Duke coaching staff. We'll get into some of the recruiting updates from over the course of the past few days with Peach Jam and all the big time showcase events. All of that with our pal, Kevin Connelly from Ball Durham, who joins us each and every week. Kevin joins us now. So good to see you, my friend. Hope everything's going well in your world. It's the chaos of talking season in college football. But here on this show, Kevin, you know we love talking hoops.

**Kevin Connelly** (1:21)
Absolutely, JJ. Glad to be here. Seems like you got a lot of busy stuff going on behind you right now. But yeah, certainly always love the content.

**JJ Jackson** (1:31)
Yeah, the broadcasting job can take you everywhere. So really enjoyed the time in Charlotte last week for ACC Media Days and now at SEC Media Days in Tampa. But Duke Basketball, the focus of course here on Locked On Blue Devils, our number one priority. And how about Javin DeLaurier, an assistant development coach added to the staff, a late news dump from Duke on a Monday night. Here he is joining the team. And this one just came out of nowhere, Kevin. But hey, welcome back.

**Kevin Connelly** (2:01)
Absolutely. It's always great because we've talked about this in the past JJ, right? These coaching staff hires that haven't necessarily had the connection to Duke since Jon Scheyer has taken over as head coach. I mean, you could go through the list of the Emmanuel Dildes and the Jay Lucas's, and the list goes on and on. But anytime you can add somebody back to your coaching staff in a player development type role, certainly as a bonus, you look at Justin Robinson, right? He was added in that player development type role. And now Javin DeLaurier kind of takes over that role for him when he left, obviously, to pursue opportunities at the NBA level. So you certainly look like Javin DeLaurier. You would think he's going to kind of fill that role of working with the big men and helping develop them. Also, I think it shouldn't be understated, like, good guy to go against in a scout team setting, right? We know Justin Robinson did that when he was at Duke, that he would be on the scout team at times playing against the starters and the second unit, getting them ready for games. Put a 6'10 guy who has played professionally overseas, put him on a scout team certainly could make things a little bit more difficult for that top unit, which then kind of prepares them for a game down the road.

**JJ Jackson** (3:14)
Yeah, Big Jav, of course, just finished up that playing career, now kind of transitions into this coaching role. A timeline that was posted by Duke highlights his career playing for the Blue Devils from 2016 until 2020 He played in the G League with the Greensboro Storm and the Wisconsin Herd. But then how about these stops that he's had along the way? A well-traveled man from Canada to Greece, Israel, Lithuania and Turkey. He's all over the place with his playing career.

**Kevin Connelly** (3:42)
He's all over the place and I'm sure this will kind of segue into what you want to talk about a little bit later. But when you're somebody who has had all these stops and all these different countries, you build all these relationships. And who knows if that relationship down the line could help in a recruiting battle for an international prospect? Because we've seen so many of these international prospects, not just go to Duke, but also come over to the States and play college basketball. That seems like it's the pathway right now, whether it's the Euro League or all these other top leagues in different countries like in Germany, the Bundesliga. And then I know I'm gonna leave out a bunch in France and Italy and all this stuff. But yeah, those connections certainly could go a long way.