Duke Players by NBA Team
The Brotherhood’s footprint across the league
Which NBA Teams Have the Most Duke Players?
Every NBA franchise a Duke player has ever suited up for, counted. The archive records 271 player-franchise relationships across 41 different franchises — which, once relocated teams are merged into their modern identities, is effectively the entire league several times over. There is no NBA team without a Duke connection somewhere in its history.
Four franchises tie at the top with 13 Blue Devils apiece: the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Atlanta Hawks and the Memphis Grizzlies. The Cleveland Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers and Milwaukee Bucks follow with 12; the Philadelphia 76ers, Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves with 11. The distribution is strikingly flat. No single team has become a Duke outpost the way certain franchises have with certain agencies or certain college programs — the Brotherhood is spread thin and wide across the league.
Relocations Are Merged
Historical franchises are folded into their current ones so the counts mean something: the Vancouver Grizzlies count as Memphis, the New Jersey Nets as Brooklyn, the Seattle SuperSonics as Oklahoma City, the Washington Bullets as the Wizards, and the Charlotte Bobcats and New Orleans Hornets as the Hornets and Pelicans respectively. Without that merge, a player like Alaa Abdelnaby would scatter across half a dozen names that no longer exist.
The Journeymen Inflate the Map
The count is player-franchise pairs, not players, and that distinction matters: 23 Duke alumni have played for five or more franchises. Christian Laettner, Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, Mike Dunleavy Jr., JJ Redick, Shelden Williams, Luol Deng, Mason and Miles Plumlee, Austin Rivers, Tyus Jones, Marvin Bagley III and Cam Reddish all belong to that group. A long NBA career in the modern league is usually a well-travelled one, and those journeymen are why the totals stay so even across the map — one player can leave his mark on a quarter of the league.
Toggle between the all-time view and the current season to see the difference between accumulated history and present-day representation. The all-time chart rewards franchises that have simply existed a long time and churned rosters; the current view is a much shorter list, and it changes every summer. Click any franchise to see which Blue Devils wore that jersey and in which seasons.