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Holy fucking shit. I knew the mono and eye poke cost him an initial shot in the pros, and I knew he had to wear glasses from then on while playing. I had no idea he literally can't see out of half of his eye-- how incredible that he was able to play any sort of professional ball at the level he did.
Glad he's back home and at peace with the event ending his chances at a pro career. It takes a lot to not be bitter at that shitty hand the fates dealt him.
http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/story/2013-05-13/jon-scheyer-duke-assistant-blind-in-one-eye-blue-devils-2010-champions-coach-k
Jon Scheyer’s return to Duke as a special assistant shouldn’t surprise anyone, considering Mike Krzyzewski has long stocked his coaching cabinet with former players. But Scheyer’s transition to coaching came a little quicker than he hoped.
An eye poke—something that happens frequently in basketball yet rarely results in anything but the affected player blinking out the pain—changed the course of Scheyer’s basketball life.
Just three months after helping Duke win its fourth national title in 2010, and just two games into the NBA’s summer league season, Scheyer was inadvertently poked in the right eye by Golden State’s Joe Ingles, and blindness immediately set in.
“I knew it was really bad,” Scheyer said. “I think my whole body went into shock.” Some of the sight returned within hours, but not all of it.
He suffered optic nerve damage, a slight tear in his retina and a scratched cornea. The latter two could heal with a doctor’s attention, but no surgery can improve the optic nerve.
So now Scheyer sees out of half of his right eye. What he can see in the eye comes in at 20/400, legal blindness. That didn’t stop Scheyer from pursuing his dream of playing in the NBA—a dream that took him through months of relearning every part of his game to deal with depth perception issues, and eventually took him overseas for two seasons.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish with that,” Scheyer said. “It’s been a continuing process. Mentally and physically, it took a lot of hours in the gym just to get my skill back.”
ONE HOOP DREAM CUT SHORT
Scheyer’s eye injury wasn’t the only medical issue he had blocking his path to the NBA. He played the most minutes in ACC history in 2009-10, and he lost weight during the season because of it. On top of that, he contracted mono after the season and lost 15-20 more pounds.
He went undrafted but worked hard to rebuild his strength, and he got a shot to play with the Miami Heat’s summer league team. And then the eye poke happened. He concedes now that it cost him a shot at the NBA career he very much wanted.
“I’m gonna say yes (to that assertion),” Scheyer said. “I would say it was a definite uphill battle, no question. It was an uphill battle to begin with, and that made it even more of an uphill battle.”
But as his days at Duke showed, Scheyer is a worker, not a quitter. His tireless efforts in the gym—“trying to shoot with my bad eye, trying to shoot with my good eye, dribbling and doing everything, just trying to get a feel back passing”—in the following months eventually landed him a spot with Rio Grande Valley, the Houston Rockets’ D-League team, in early 2011.
In 24 games, he averaged a respectable 13.1 points and 4.0 assists. But further NBA opportunities did not come, so he took his game across the Atlantic Ocean, where he played for Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel in 2011-12, and then for Spain’s Gran Canaria 2014 this past season, where he averaged 5.6 points on 31 percent shooting—10 percentage points less than what he averaged in four years at Duke. His free-throw shooting percentage over the two seasons was 69 percent, a striking drop from the 84 percent he averaged from the stripe in any of his four seasons at Duke.
Nonetheless, that’s damn good for a player with essentially monocular vision, but it also was not entirely fulfilling either, especially for a player who was a consensus All-American in his senior season at Duke, averaging 18.2 points.
ANOTHER DREAM BEGINS
Scheyer's time overseas did come with benefits, however. He learned nuances of the game he wouldn’t have otherwise, and the time away from friends and family got him to assess life goals.
“For me, I always dreamed about having a great professional career as well as a collegiate career, and I think this opportunity by myself has made me realize that I want to be back in what I’m most passionate about,” Scheyer said. “And that’s the college basketball ranks and being able to give the most impact. That’s something that I would enjoy most, and having a family.
“You have to weigh everything in perspective when you’re overseas and by yourself. It’s hard, and it’s not for everybody. It’s something where I’ve grown a lot as a person in what I want, and being overseas the last three years has really helped me.”
His break came when Duke needed an assistant after Chris Collins left to take the head coaching job at Northwestern. Krzyzewski elevated Nate James to a full assistant role, creating an entry-level spot for Scheyer.
Krzyzewski brims with pride in having Scheyer join his staff.
“Jon Scheyer is one of the amazing champions we’ve had in this program and he’s certainly one of the greatest young men to ever wear the Duke uniform," Krzyzewski said when the hiring was announced. "He’s universally loved by Duke fans. It is incredibly exciting to be part of his journey to become a coach."
Getting the job could pave the way for Scheyer to become a head coach. Former Duke players-turned Blue Devils assistants Johnny Dawkins (Stanford), Tommy Amaker (Harvard) and Collins are currently heading their own programs, and Quin Snyder (Missouri) has had his turn running his own team. Jeff Capel started his coaching career outside of Durham, getting head coaching gigs at VCU and Oklahoma before returning to Duke as an assistant. It's clear that learning from a Hall of Fame coach has its advantages. But Scheyer has earned his opportunity, and like always, he’ll be working to get better.
“Of course I want to be a head coach one day, but really, I’ve always felt as a player, when I came into college as a freshman, I tried not to think about the next step before being really being good at the current thing,” Scheyer said. “So for me, my main goal is to just be as great as I can in this position I’m in this year.”
Scheyer’s duties will include developing game strategies, breaking down game film and planning practices. For a point guard who played a good game and thought it just as well, the role is a great fit, especially when he’s working for the coach that recruited him nearly 10 years ago out of Northbrook, Ill.
“The chain of events that’s happened, it’s pretty cool how it leads you now to be able to be on his staff with him,” Scheyer said. “I know I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, and those are all things that I’m ready to do.”
One very different thing from when Scheyer was last in town is that the ACC will add three new members this season in Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pitt. He’s curious and excited to be part of a conference with more competition. One thing he won’t miss, perhaps, is games at Maryland, where Terrapins fans loved to hate him. Maryland is heading to the Big Ten as part of conference realignment.
“I’m very popular at Maryland,” Scheyer quipped. “J.J. (Redick) is probably the most popular ever, but I think at Maryland, I gave J.J. a run for his money. I think they’re more sad (about the breakup) than I am.”
In returning to campus, Scheyer will see an appreciative community ready to welcome him back. And he’ll see lines at the DMV when he gets his driver’s license. And he’ll see a Duke roster considered to be a top-10 team in 2013-14.
Life is much clearer now to Scheyer, even though he has just one good eye from which to view it. My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide
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