The 1982 recruiting class that saved Mike Krzyzewski’s career at Duke was assembled from all corners of the country. Jay Bilas came from California. Mark Alarie came from Arizona. Johnny Dawkins came from Washington, D.C. Bill Jackman from Nebraska. Weldon Williams from Illinois. And David Henderson came from Drewry, North Carolina — a crossroads community in Warren County, an hour north of Durham, population counted in the hundreds. He was the local kid in a nationally sourced class, and he was the last to commit.
Duke Basketball Report later explained the sequence: Krzyzewski had missed on major targets in 1981, most notably Chris Mullin. So he built the 1982 class piece by piece — Williams first, then Jackman (‘touted as the next Larry Bird’), then Bilas just before Christmas, and finally the late additions of Dawkins, Alarie, and ‘last of all — Henderson.’ The class was celebrated before it deserved any plaudits. It became one only because of those final three commitments. The four who stayed — Dawkins, Alarie, Bilas, and Henderson — combined for 7,324 career points, more than any single recruiting class in NCAA history at the time.
Henderson graduated from Warren County High School and enrolled at a program that had won only 10 games the previous season. He was joining an ACC that boasted back-to-back national champions in North Carolina and NC State. In the pre-Internet era, the classmates didn’t even know what each other looked like. Bilas later noted they knew each other ‘only by name and reputation.’