Duke owes its loaded roster to Mike Krzyzewski’s USA Basketball connection

INDIANAPOLIS -- When Mike Krzyzewski took over as head coach of USA Basketball in 2005, his stated goal was to get the United States back to playing like the best basketball country in the world.

It had been a few rough years for the national team, first with a sixth-place finish in the 2002 FIBA World Championships and then with an embarrassing bronze medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Interest in Team USA was waning, and it was the job of Coach K and chairman Jerry Colangelo to earn a more serious commitment from the top players in the NBA.

In the decade that has passed since, the United States has two Olympic gold medals and exactly zero losses. Krzyzewski’s involvement with USA Basketball has been an unconditional success in every level. Some of those triumphs are just more transparent than others.

It’s no coincidence the Duke team that will play for the national championship on Monday features three key starters who spent their formative years playing next to each other on the youth levels of Team USA. Duke wouldn’t be here without Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow, and the three players might not be at Duke if not for Krzyzewski’s immense influence on USA Basketball.

“It was very valuable for us to play together on one of the bigger stages overseas,” Okafor said of his Team USA experience the day before the title game. “Winning a gold medal. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to play so well in situations like playing at Wisconsin and playing at Louisville. We’ve been on big stages together.”

SB Nation presents: Why Duke has what it takes to win it all

Okafor and Jones first entered the national team program for the 2011 FIBA Americas U16 Championship, where they won a gold medal. The next year, Winslow joined the pair for the 2012 FIBA U17 World Championships for another first-place finish. One year after that, Okafor and Winslow were the only two high school players on the the gold medal-winning team at the the 2013 FIBA U19 World Championship, playing alongside current NBA rookies like Aaron Gordon, Marcus Smart and Elfrid Payton.

Okafor was always dominant, even when competing against players a year or two older. On the U19 team in 2013, he finished the tournament shooting 77.2 percent from the field with an astonishing PER of 40.2. The reputation he’s staked as the most polished low post scorer in years can be attributed more to his work with USA Basketball than anything he did in high school or on the grassroots circuit.

From the earliest days of his recruitment, Okafor talked openly about a packaged deal with Jones. Okafor and Jones followed through by committing to Duke, and Winslow gave his verbal soon after. Jones was from Minnesota, Okafor was from Chicago and Winslow was from Houston, but the connection they formed playing for USA Basketball was clearly influential. The expectations were immediately high:

“It’s a little early to talk about a national championship,” Winslow said the day he committed, in November 2013. “But I think we’ll have the team and the caliber of talent to get it done.”

There was a thought that packaged deals would become more popular in the wake of LeBron James’ run with the Miami Heat playing next to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. It isn’t as easy to pull off as it might seem, though.

Class of 2015 stars Malik Newman and Diamond Stone also openly talked about a packaged deal after playing together in USA Basketball, but it fell apart before long. Stone will play at Maryland next year in part because of a connection to Under Armour on the grassroots circuit, while Newman, who played on Nike’s EYBL tour, remains uncommitted.

Which is to say: there are plenty of advantages hidden throughout the weird world of college basketball recruiting, and Krzyzewski has one of the biggest. That doesn’t mean he’s abusing his power, though. Just listen to James talk about playing for Krzyzewski and it’s evident Coach K has a unique way of connecting with young athletes. LeBron never needed Coach K and Coach K probably could have won gold even without LeBron, but a mutual respect endured nonetheless.

The 2014 recruiting class Duke put together, with four McDonald’s All-Americans (add guard Grayson Allen to the mix, as well) and three freshmen starters, is the type of coup only Kentucky is supposed to pull off. A decade ago, a team of one-and-dones at Duke seemed unthinkable. This is the same coach who once shamed William Avery’s mom because the guard decided to leave school early, but his mindset with potential early-entry players has changed dramatically.

Why? Being around the best players in the world has a way of making a person realize raw talent usually trumps everything else -- even experience. Duke will play for the national title on Monday night, and it got here thanks to work Krzyzewski started a decade ago. Every leg up helps in recruiting, and Duke has leveraged its biggest asset all the way to the championship game.