The five-star scorer who was supposed to anchor Duke's 2017 perimeter rotation chose Kentucky instead. Kevin Knox spurned Mike Krzyzewski in mid-May 2017 — and four days later, on May 13, the program announced its replacement: a 6'7 wing forward from Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia named Jordan Lewis Tucker. He committed and signed with Duke within a single week. He had taken official visits to Syracuse and Indiana. He had been pursued by Georgia Tech, Oregon, and Villanova. The Duke offer arrived on a Wednesday. He committed on a Saturday.
Jordan was born April 3, 1998 in White Plains, New York, the son of Lewis Tucker and Lori Land. The basketball lineage was already in place. His father had played at Tuskegee University and earned a finance degree, then built a career most basketball fathers don't have: Lewis Tucker served as president of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs's Sean Combs Enterprises, was an executive at Uptown Records and Universal Music Group, and eventually became a sports agent representing NBA players including Ben Gordon, C.J. Miles, Charlie Villanueva, and Daniel Gibson. The elder Tucker had spent his professional life in the worlds where music and sports and money meet. The hip-hop artist Dwight "Heavy D" Myers — Lewis's good friend and the former president of Uptown Records — was Jordan's godfather. Diddy's son Christian Combs was born one day apart from Jordan. The two grew up together. Jordan had been around LeBron James and Michael Jordan as a kid. Sports and entertainment royalty was the daily norm.
Jordan started at White Plains High School, where Villanova became the first major program to offer him as a freshman. He transferred to Archbishop Stepinac in Westchester County for his sophomore and junior years — averaging 15.6 points as a sophomore (NYSSWA all-state) and 17.8 points and 9.6 rebounds as a junior (NYSSWA Class AA all-state honors). Then in summer 2016, his father relocated to Atlanta, and Jordan transferred for his senior year to Joseph Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia — reuniting with his friend Darius Perry. He helped Wheeler to a 22-6 record and a No. 8 ranking in the state of Georgia. He was selected to the 2017 Jordan Brand Classic Regional Game and chosen to compete in the American Family Insurance 3-Point Championship at the 2017 Final Four in Phoenix.
By the spring of 2017 he was ranked No. 40 overall by ESPN, No. 68 by Rivals, and No. 78 by Scout. He was the No. 8 small forward in the country. He was a four-star recruit with five-star tools.
Then Knox went to Kentucky, and Duke called. The phone call from Krzyzewski — and the implicit promise that Tucker would have a real chance at minutes in a class headlined by Marvin Bagley III, Wendell Carter Jr., Trevon Duval, and Gary Trent Jr. — was, for a 19-year-old wing who had grown up around basketball royalty, irresistible. The narrative was clean. Take Knox's slot. Show what you can do. The coaches said the right things. So he committed.