He would, on more than one occasion, greet the day with strangers.
“I remember waking up Christmas mornings, I remember waking up Sundays, some Saturdays, with a different kid in my house or in my bed,” Galen Duncan said last week. “It was because my father was a servant. He had a server’s heart. My mother’s the same way… Growing up in a house like that, you’re humbled. You spend a lot of time realizing this world is not about you. The mark you leave on other young men is truly what you will be remembered for.”
Duncan’s father coached high school basketball in Michigan for 35 years, and was always bringing in a stray from his team to the family’s home to stay for a spell. Providing structure, safety, privacy — it all matters to a kid who’s just learning to navigate the world around him. Galen Duncan took those lessons to heart, and has applied them throughout his professional life, working with athletes to better themselves off the field.
Now, Duncan will be helping them off the court.
Sacramento hired Duncan away last week from the Detroit Lions, where he’d spent the last 10 years as senior director of player development, to head their new “Kings Academy,” a comprehensive program designed to help the team’s young players make the often overwhelming adjustment to being pro basketball players, with all the potential pitfalls and opportunities that jump entails.
“Well, without giving up too much competitive advantage, it is a player-centric program,” Duncan said. “It’s comprehensive, (and will) meet players where they are, it’ll make them better people, it’ll bridge the gap between them and the community. It’s our owner’s vision. It’s using all of the wonderful resources we have and taking everything to the next level.”
The Kings had a great offseason, drafting promising Kentucky point guard De’Aaron Fox fifth overall in June, then working a trade with Portland that got them two more first-round picks, with which they took North Carolina junior forward Justin Jackson and Duke freshman Harry Giles — a former potential Lottery pick trying to come back from multiple knee injuries. They then added veteran mentors for their young players across the board, spending judiciously to get George Hill from Utah and Zach Randolph from Memphis.
They then raided Memphis again for Vince Carter, who still has enough tread on his tires at 40 to be credible on the floor and whose exploits as a superstar in this league give him credibility in the locker room and on the plane.
The hope is for the Academy to build on both the strong summer and the player development programs the Kings already had in place, and for it to become a model for enhanced outreach to players around the league — while also, along with the team’s new Golden 1 Center, ultimately becoming a recruiting tool for Sacramento with potential free agents.
“We had (a team with young players) before, but obviously Galen with his experience with a couple of different leagues, I think he’s a great fit for us, especially with the young players we have,” Kings General Manager Vlade Divac said. “I think 10 of them are less than 24. So with that experience, he can really help us out, what we are trying to achieve.”
Duncan got on the Kings’ radar through Brandon Williams, Sacramento’s new assistant general manager, who replaced Scott Perry; Perry left the Kings in June to become the Knicks’ new GM. Williams knew Duncan through the NBA’s Rookie Transition Program, where Duncan had helped consult teams’ doctors and counselors on best practices for working with players. Over the next decade, they kept in touch.
And when Williams, who’d run the 76ers’ G League team in Delaware and had worn several hats in Philly — player development, crisis management, Draft evaluation (Williams had a cup of NBA coffee in San Antonio after his college career at Davidson) — had a chance to make hires upon taking the job in Sacramento, Duncan was high on his list.
“One of the biggest challenges for all of our programs is we know our players, when we scout them, we know they come with certain backgrounds that’s going to make it difficult — whether it’s a challenge with authority, whether it’s trust issues, whether it’s managing confidence,” Williams said. “How do you get somebody on your staff who can address all of those things, that just gives you a professional resource to try and help the assistant coaches? He kind of brought together the sociology, the psychology, as well as the professional development.”
With a Ph.D in health psychology and a Master’s in social work, Duncan has the tools to be a conduit for players in multiple areas. On becoming a pro athlete, a young man or woman has any number of things thrown at them immediately — where to live, what to wear, how to become conversant in languages like high finance that few of us are comfortable speaking.
But the biggest issue is, often, who to trust. A rookie or young player thrown into sudden wealth has a lot of new best friends, the worst of which, sadly, are often family. Saying no to people you love is hard; knowing when to do that, harder.
Duncan wore all of those hats with the Lions, advising players on continuing education programs, financial development, life skills they didn’t have time to develop while in the cocoon of high level athletics.
“Galen, in particular situations and facing issues during my time in Detroit and after, is always available to maintain an open dialogue,” said five-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, who played for the Lions from 2010 through 2015, when he signed with the Dolphins, via e-mail.
“Regardless of the situation, Galen understands my thought process first and foremost and then presents the situation from other vantage points. He is very direct and transparent in regards to letting me know how certain situations should be handled, and this process has allowing me to learn about finding middle ground when an issue arises. I am viewed in a different light a lot of times and held to a higher standard, but having Galen to let me know if I dealt with a situation in the wrong way and offer lessons about how to handle it better as a professional has been a tremendous asset for me.”
Ironically, many of Suh’s hangups came on the field, not off it. He was fined multiple times while in Detroit for various incidents, including kicking Houston Texans quarterback Matt Schaub in the groin, stomping on the arm of Green Bay Packers guard Evan Dietrich-Smith after banging his head into the turf and low blocking Minnesota’s John Sullivan during an interception return. They all created a reputation for Suh as a dirty player, and reputations are hard to shake in today’s instant judgment society.
Duncan says Suh is “probably the most misunderstood guy in sports in my opinion. Quality individual and a great young man, and natural leader. In that, him like many other people, had to be directed in the right path. Just like anyone else, he’s going to test. He wants to see what you’re about. If you spend enough time with him, if you’re always there, you’re genuine, you’re always the same, you’re consistent, consistency is the one piece that has allowed me to work with players like him.
“When you’re consistent, they get it. It shows, them, one, you’re not a fan, you’re not a groupie, you’re not somebody who’s chasing him around who wants an autograph. Two, you’re not asking them for anything. I don’t need your help; I don’t need your money, I don’t need certain things. All I do is have a genuine interest in you being the best you can be, and that’s my championship right there.”
Suh said in the e-mail that Duncan has a unique ability to diffuse situations and keep them from escalating further. The two have stayed in touch since Suh left for Miami and still have dinners in Detroit when Suh returns to town.
“He instills the importance of always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone,” Suh said. “I can recall having dinner with Galen and some folks in Royal Oak, MI during my second year in the league and hearing him speak on the value of putting myself in an environment to grow as a person, to think about things other than football. That conversation drove me to meet new people on my own, expand my network and mature as a person.:
And Duncan did a lot more than crisis management in his role with the Lions.
“I remember one thing that stood out to me, and it was pretty profound at the time,” said former Lions wide receiver Nate Burleson, now an analyst on CBS’ The NFL Today pregame show. “He looked at me when I was sitting in his office after a long day of work and he said, ‘if you keep your head on straight, stay on the path that you’re on — chasing the different things that are available to you — you’ll make more money outside of football than you made when you were in it.’ And that was my mindset as a player, and it was equally important to me now that I’m done.”
There are, though, significant differences between NFL and NBA players. The former almost all perform on non-guaranteed contracts and have, on average, much shorter careers — and thus are much more vulnerable and fungible. The latter almost all have guaranteed contracts, and as one of 15 players as opposed to the 53-man NFL roster, an NBA player has significantly more leverage with his NBA team. And an NBA superstar, by virtue of the familiarity with which many have from their fans, is almost untouchable.
Duncan, though, says he didn’t depend on that leverage that management has in the NFL over most of its players when working with them.
“My hope and desire is to make them better people, which translates into better basketball players,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a guy out there who doesn’t want to be a better basketball player. I can help them from the early-on standpoint and moving forward from there. You just have to be present. When you’re present, when you’re available, when they see what you do for others, they see you’re genuine. And I’m not going anywhere. It’s one of those things where you see a guy every day. I’m pretty good at breaking wills when it comes down to guys who are pretty adverse to help. It’s through a structure of being available.”
In Sacramento, his office has been strategically placed right by the team’s locker room and player lounge; players will literally have to go through him to get to work and to the food. “So the organization had strong intuition and ideas about where I needed to be,” Duncan said. “Secondly, I’ll travel. I think that’s important for those guys to know I’m part of this team, I’m part of what they’re going to do every day, and I’m available and consistent.”
Duncan had his own mentors and heroes, like Harry Edwards, the Cal-Berkeley professor, sociologist and civil rights activist who organized the 1968 boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City by African-American athletes. And his doctoral internship coordinator was Greg Harden, the associate athletic director and Director of Athletic Counseling at the University of Michigan, who has mentored and impacted hundreds of Michigan athletes during more than three decades at the school, from Tom Brady and Desmond Howard to Jalen Rose and Nik Stauskas.
“I was a young man when I met Greg,” Duncan said. “Greg taught me how to be patient. He talked to me about patience. He talked to me about being spiritual. When I first got into this thing I was a knock down the door kind of guy. That technique doesn’t always work. He definitely taught me how to be a patient individual.”
That is one of many tightropes someone in Duncan’s position has to traverse. A player development person on any pro team who doesn’t respect the confidences of his or her players can quickly be dismissed by them as a snitch, someone who runs to management and discloses their vulnerabilities. That wasn’t an issue for Duncan in Detroit, but he had a reputation built over 10 years there. He’s starting off from scratch in Sacramento.
Divac knows the potential for good intentions to go awry, but believes Duncan will quickly make a connection, and will give him latitude to make decisions independently.
“Galen’s going to build a relationship with the players,” Divac said. “He’s supposed to be at players’ service, not management’s service in that regard.”
Williams believes the makeup of the Kings’ front office — filled with former players like Divac, assistant GM Mike Bratz and himself — will help players understand that there is organization-wide empathy for their unique status in the world, and the unique problems and obstacles that they’ll face during their careers, and after.
“Where (Duncan’s) positioned, it’s going to be clear over time, what his priorities are,” Williams said. “Players see it, even if they can’t articulate it. It’s been two days that he’s here, and I just left the court. He’s downstairs with four players, talking about life and where they’re from. He’s building relationships in the key areas already, with Vince, and George Hill. He just spent an hour watching Buddy (Hield) work out. Players see that. They understand who means well.”
One thing that Duncan can’t change, though, is the march of time. Now 46, he’s in the prime of his career as a professional, but he’s on the back nine as a peer with players. Fox and Giles are19 years old; Jackson 22, Hield, 23. And the players, seemingly, stay that age, while you tend to get older. But Duncan is ready for the challenge.
“It’s funny; when I started out I was almost the same age as these guys,” he said. “Father Time waits for no one. It’s kind of transitioned. When I first started I was more of a peer. Now I’m more an experienced guy. I’m seasoned. I don’t look that old; the grey in my beard is starting to give me away. But I’m young at heart. You just kind of stay young. I also have a 17 year old son and a 15 year old daughter, so I can keep up.”
Longtime NBA reporter, columnist and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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