Duke’s Jay Bilas talks about why he chose to go to Durham, his star-studded teammates and how his marriage is the reason he’s an ESPN analyst today (run time is 9:08; transcript below the jump).
….
Lost Lettermen: This is Jose Bosch from LostLettermen.com and I’m joined by Duke’s Jay Bilas, a member of the 1986 Final Four team and currently a college basketball analyst for ESPN. Jay thanks for joining us.
You had a pretty successful career at Duke with an amazing class. There was you, there was Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson. Just what was it like playing with such a great group of players?
Jay Bilas: Well I was really lucky. I was recruited out of Los Angeles and very fortunate to be a highly-rated player. I had my choice of some pretty good schools and I just … Coach K was in his early years at Duke and I really trusted him and really got to like him right away.
He recruited some really great payers; Dawkins and Alarie and Henderson and those guys became my best friends. And we spent so much time together. We all started as freshman because Duke wasn’t really particularly good at that time. So we grew up together as players and as people I was really lucky to be around those guys.
You know if the quality of your life is determined by the quality of people with whom you associate, the quality of my life has been pretty darn good because those are some unbelievably good people.
LL: What was it about Coach K that you did trust? Because again he didn’t have the resume that he does now when he’s recruiting players.
JB: Yeah, that’s right. I can’t really give you sort of a laundry list of things. It was just a feeling that after having spent time with him in the recruiting process. He got to know everything about me and my family and the situation I was in and kind of who I was and what I was about. I just had complete trust in him. And even though there were some coaches who had recruited me who had Final Fours on their resume and had done very well and were more established and more secure, I felt like I really wanted to play for him.
And you look back on it. I was 17-18 years old when I was making that decision. You look back on it and you think, “Boy that was kind of a risk.” But at the time I didn’t think there was anything risky about it. I was absolutely certain I was doing the right thing.
LL: It’s clear just by talking with you the players that you played with and came up with in college, you really got close with. And I’m sure there are many moments on the court that you remember. But what’s a moment not related to basketball that really stays with you, with you and your teammates?
JB: Wow, there’s so many. The guys I played with were and remain extraordinary people.
Johnny Dawkins was … I still think he’s the best player that Duke’s ever had. And certainly the most important player that’s played there in the last 50 years. He’s not your typical star in that he doesn’t act like one off the court. You would never know that he played and played at such a high level if you just met him off the floor. But on the floor he was an incredible competitor and the same is true of Alarie and Henderson.
Dave Henderson is the toughest person I’ve ever been around, anywhere. But also he flashes that smile and he’s an incredibly nice person. But on the floor he can tear your heart out. And the same thing’s true of Alarie.
I think Mark is the guy who … there’s two things that I would change if I could in the way things are done, sort of in the way players are honored. One, I think David Henderson should be in the Duke Hall of Fame. If he had gone somewhere else in the ACC he would’ve been a First Team ACC player but because he played with Dawkins and Alarie he was overlooked, I think.
The other thing is I think Alarie’s number should be retired at Duke. When he left Duke in 1986, Mark Alarie was the third-leading scorer all time behind Dawkins and Giminski and one of the time five rebounders and I don’t think there has been a player that played with somebody else like Dawkins and put up the numbers that Alarie’s put up.
I think it was a mistake that his number wasn’t retired in his senior year.
LL: You guys make the Final Four in ‘86, make it to the championship game. At the time did you realize that you and your teammates kind of became the base for what would become a powerhouse in college basketball?
JB: No, we didn’t. We thought … we were just trying to be the best we could be. We were conscious of what we were doing would have an impact on the younger guys we were playing with so we were conscious that we wanted to be good leaders for them and set a foundation that they could build on. But in winning 37 games that year, that was a record at that time and I think it’s still tied for the record… Memphis might’ve beaten it a couple of years ago but we weren’t sitting there saying, “Boy this place will really take off after that.”
Who could’ve imagined the incredible success that Duke would have after and the incredible consistency they would have. They’ve won 37 games a couple times since then and have averaged … in the last decade Duke won 294 games. That’s the most ever in a single decade.
So who could’ve imagined that? I don’t think anybody could.
LL: Four years after your playing days you became an assistant under Coach K from ‘90-’92, then you went into broadcasting. I think we can all say what happened there. Was there something about coaching that you didn’t like compared to broadcasting? What was it that made you make that jump from coaching to broadcasting, then stay there?
JB: I got married and my wife was not particularly keen on the instability of a coaching life. She probably had a pretty good intuition that I wouldn’t be that good at it, maybe.
I thought that I would get into coaching and stay there, but when we sat down and I explained to her what coaching would entail, the look on her face let me know that she wouldn’t be in with both feet and I wanted her a lot more than I wanted to be a coach. And so I think the best for our family was for me to go in a different direction and I was fortunate that I’d paid good attention to my studies and had gotten my law degree, so I had some options, and I chose just for our family that the best thing would be to practice law.
And I accepted a job at a big law firm in Charlotte, North Carolina and started work as a commercial litigator.
LL: So how did you get your foot in the door in broadcasting? How did that all begin?
JB: Yeah, I was one of those guys that when I was in college I said I wanted to get in to broadcasting but I didn’t know really what it entailed. And I had worked a little bit during the summertime as a runner for different broadcasts. I worked the ‘84 Olympics for ABC, had done some Monday Night Baseball, things like that, but just did gopher work.
So when I accepted a job as a lawyer I didn’t really have any realistic expectations that broadcasting would follow. But I got a call from a guy named George Habel who was the president of the Capitol Sports Network, a big radio network, and he asked me if I’d be interested in doing some radio commentary for Duke basketball games. And I thought … I was sitting there at lunch and I thought, “You know what, I should say yes to this because it’ll get be out of the office a couple times a week and it’ll be fun.”
My philosophy has always been, “Don’t say no to an opportunity right away because you can always say no later or quit later.” You don’t quit at the beginning. So I took the job and I think I made $200 a game, but it was fun. I mean I would drive to the games and then I would go to the away games and all that and I had a blast, I really enjoyed it.
And I think starting in radio really helped me understand what broadcasting is all about and I was lucky I worked with some great people and learned a lot. And one thing led to another and I started doing some TV work and after that I was working so much it became … I had to choose. I couldn’t keep practicing law and doing broadcast work because I wouldn’t be able to be good at either one.
LL: I think a lot of people see you on ESPN, which is the cream of the crop in sports coverage, and think you’re one of the better analyst at ESPN but when you started were you … how good were you when you started? Did you make mistakes early on?
JB: Oh I’m sure I did. I just was trying to do my best to enjoy what I was doing and I never really looked at myself as a broadcaster. I kind of look at myself, right or wrong, as a basketball guy.
I’ve kind of said this and I don’t mean this to be disrespectful to broadcasting, but I don’t really like broadcasting. I like basketball. And if I was offered a job broadcasting another sport, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not interested in other sports, I’m interested in basketball. Does that mean if I can do basketball all the time and they said, “If you want to keep doing basketball, you have to do this bowling tournament during the summer,” I’d do it just to stay around basketball.
But I don’t aspire to do anything other than basketball. I enjoy it so much.
Got a question or comment? E-mail him here
Liked this story? Click here for Lost Lettermen’s RSS feed and receive all our great content
Click here to start scontributing to our wiki database of over 150,000 former college athletes and help us answer the question, “Where Are They Now?”
One Comment
Jay was also the good cop in I Come in Peace. Which is a top 5 action movie ever.