Sources & Methodology

What This Project Is

Duke’s Brotherhood is an independent narrative journalism project. Each profile is a deeply researched biographical essay that synthesizes dozens of sources into a coherent story — following a player from their childhood through their Duke career, their professional life, and where they are today. The goal is to tell human stories, not to produce encyclopedia entries.

The writing style is narrative and literary, in the tradition of longform sports journalism. Think Wright Thompson, Marc Spears at Andscape, or the best profiles in Sports Illustrated and The Athletic. The profiles use specific detail, direct quotes, and emotional texture to bring these stories to life.

Our Sources

Every profile is built from multiple published sources. We do not conduct original interviews (yet), but we draw on an extensive range of published material, including:

How Quotes Are Handled

Every direct quote in a profile comes from a published source — a newspaper article, a broadcast interview, a press conference, a social media post, or an official statement. We do not fabricate or reconstruct quotes. When a profile says a player or coach said something, that quote appeared in a published source that we identified during research.

Quotes are sometimes lightly edited for clarity (removing verbal tics like “you know” or “um”) but never altered in meaning. When we paraphrase rather than quote directly, we indicate this through narrative framing rather than quotation marks.

How Statistics Are Verified

Career and season statistics come from official sources: Basketball Reference for professional careers, Sports Reference for college careers, and GoDuke.com for Duke-specific records. When sources conflict on minor statistical points, we default to the official university or league source.

How Profiles Are Built: AI-Assisted Research & Writing

This project uses AI-assisted research and writing as a core part of the production process. Specifically, profiles are researched and drafted using Claude (by Anthropic) — a large language model that conducts web research, aggregates source material, and produces narrative first drafts. The site’s code, data architecture, and design were also built collaboratively with Claude.

Every profile is directed, reviewed, and approved by the project’s human creator before publication. The human editor chooses which players to profile, sets the quality standard, directs the research, evaluates the output, and makes all final editorial decisions. All direct quotes come from published sources — the AI does not fabricate quotes or invent biographical details.

That said, AI-assisted work has limitations, and we have found and corrected errors — wrong dates, misattributed facts, statistical inconsistencies, and formatting bugs. When errors are identified, they are fixed promptly. The source lists at the bottom of each profile exist in part so that readers can verify claims independently. If you spot something that doesn’t look right, please let us know.

Part of the intent of this project is to explore the potential and limitations of AI as a creative and research tool — to celebrate a passion for Duke basketball by building something that would have been impractical for one person to produce before the current generation of AI tools. A project of this ambition and depth, covering250 players across 45 seasons of basketball history, with deeply researched narrative profiles, season-by-season statistics, and interactive data visualizations, simply could not have been built by a single person working alone.

As a Duke friend put it: “I don’t know how you’re able to do that, but the world’s a better place.”

We think that’s the right test. The AI is the tool. The passion is the engine. The players’ stories are the point.

Source Lists Per Profile

Each completed profile includes a curated list of key sources at the bottom of the page. These are not exhaustive bibliographies — they represent the most significant sources that informed the narrative. We prioritize original reporting (newspaper features, longform profiles, documentaries) over aggregator sites, and we link to source material where available so readers can go deeper.

Corrections & Contact

We take accuracy seriously, and we are transparent about the fact that errors happen. Across hundreds of profiles and thousands of data points, we have found and corrected factual errors, statistical inconsistencies, misattributed details, and formatting issues. When an error is identified — whether by our own review or by a reader — it is corrected promptly. We do not pretend to be infallible. We do commit to getting it right.

If you find an error in a profile — a wrong date, a misattributed quote, a factual inaccuracy, or a player whose story we’ve gotten wrong — we want to hear about it. These stories matter to the players and families involved, and getting them right is our responsibility.

A Note on Completeness

This is a living project. As of March 2026, we have completed 241 of 250 profiles across eight eras of Duke basketball. New profiles are added regularly, and existing profiles are updated as players’ careers and lives evolve. The “Where Is He Now” section of each profile reflects the most recent information available at the time of writing.

Duke’s Brotherhood is an independent project and is not affiliated with Duke University, Duke Athletics, or the NCAA. All content is original research and commentary. Player statistics are sourced from public records.