Gene Banks put Duke and Coach K on the map for great Black players

Gene Banks had put in three excellent seasons at Duke, helping lead the Blue Devils to consecutive NCAA Tournaments, including the 1978 men’s national championship game. Individually, he became the first African-American player in program history to earn All-American honors in 1979.

For his senior season, however, the Philadelphia high school legend needed to adjust to a new head coach, someone named Mike Krzyzewski, who played for Bobby Knight at Army and spent five years coaching at West Point before taking the Duke job in March 1980.

Banks was visiting family in West Philadelphia when he heard the news and didn’t know what to think. His previous coach, Bill Foster, recruited him and allowed him to be a big part of the team, representing the school, his family and people in the African-American community who had become Duke fans seeing Banks play for the championship on national television.

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Now with Foster gone, he flirted with the idea of leaving but knew he would stay because of what his mother told him, “Listen, you have to finish what you’re doing. They’re relying on you, the team’s relying on you, the school’s relying on you.”

It wasn’t just for wins and points scored. Banks had a bigger mission once he chose Duke, a school that never had recruited an elite Black basketball player before, and a school that Banks never thought about visiting until he was urged to do so by his English teacher at West Philadelphia High.

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“People at the school were kind of looking at me on the side but as the No. 1 player in the country, you’re the Messiah, so to speak,” Banks said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “They let me do a lot of things so I opened up relationships between the whites and the Blacks there at the school. They were appeasing me, there’s no doubt, so being able to do that was great.

“Then we started winning, that helps. To me, it wasn’t even about the concepts of bringing Blacks and whites together. But in my mind, with my play and my display of what I do, it would definitely change the whole climate, and it did.

“It made me smile. It made me feel good. But it was all in what God had planned to happen and I just rolled with it.”

So did Krzyzewski, who Banks said allowed him and fellow senior Kenny Dennard “to do certain things as long as we did everything in structure,” noting the coach’s military precision in everything he did. He adjusted the offense to give Banks the ball more, and Banks led the ACC in scoring that season ahead of Albert King, James Worthy, and Ralph Sampson.

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The coach, who will retire after the Final Four after 45 seasons, was new and young then, but he knew what was happening and that change was coming.

“TV was not yet big then,” Krzyzewski said in a November 2020 article in the Duke Chronicle. “TV became big in the mid-80s with ESPN and that. But it helped our university a lot during that time, just like the kids who have played for me once TV hit have helped this university in that regard with a number of African-American players that we’ve had who are amazing guys and outstanding players also.”

Krzyzewski brought talented Black players into his program – Johnny Dawkins and Dave Henderson in 1982, Tommy Amaker in 1983, former 76ers general manager Billy King in 1984. And the new decade introduced the nation to Grant Hill, who helped lead the Blue Devils to back-to-back national championships his first two years.

“A guy like Gene Banks, who could have gone anywhere, and an African-American athlete and basketball player at that, him choosing Duke, I think it was certainly significant for the program,” Hill, a CBS television analyst, said Tuesday in a conference call talking about this weekend’s NCAA Final Four.

“I think the impact and the influence it had on guys like Johnny Dawkins and Tommy Amaker, they committed to Coach K and Duke. In 1982, right after Gene left, I think that helped validate things in a lot of ways, that you could go to Duke and potentially win a championship, which Gene and his team almost did in ‘78.”

Banks said he and Krzyzewski have a good relationship. He particularly likes the coach’s annual fantasy camp where the “brotherhood” of past Duke players get together and share memories.

“He’s really reached out to get the African-American player to be on his team,” Banks said. “He’s learned how to balance it, to get both white and Black, so I commend him on that. Our relationship is moreso the way he treats my family, my kids. It’s just so amazing. He’ll look at me and say, ‘I commend you for the way you’ve raised your kids after your wife passed away.’ ”

Banks, however, has been struggling with the succession plan to Krzyzewski, who chose top assistant Jon Scheyer to take his place. According to a recent book about Krzyzewski written by New York Post columnist Ian O’Connor, the president of Duke wanted Amaker to be the coach, and that Coach K had a “very difficult conversation” with Amaker about his final decision to tab Scheyer.

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“Do I agree with the hiring of Jon Scheyer? I love Jon Scheyer. He’s great. I like that they bring a person up through the program,” Banks said. “But the other 50% of it was, yes, he could have really put a major strong stamp on his legacy by hiring a Black coach,” referring to Amaker.

Banks pointed out that Duke has two African-American women in high-profile positions – women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson and director of athletics Nina King – and that it would have been “interesting” to have a Black coach in charge of the university’s most prominent program.

Still, Banks admires Krzyzewski for what he has achieved, his relationships with his former players, Black and white, and his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

“As far as when I was there, he allowed me to be expressive,” he said. “He allowed me to do the things that I was still doing. I just had to tone it down a little bit but he was open to that. And he never looked at me like I was a Black player.”