Rasheed Sulaimon of Duke Dismissed From Team

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The Duke Blue Devils made a somewhat unusual move tonight, dismissing junior guard Rasheed Sulaimon from the program. According to head coach Mike Krzyzewski, the dismissal had nothing to do with Sulaimon’s academics, but simply the fact that he wasn’t living up the team’s high standards. Since Sulaimon’s freshman year when he averaged 11.6 points per game and 1.9 assists while playing around 29 minutes per game. Back in his freshman year, Sulaimon was considered by many to be a potential first round pick in the NBA draft someday. However since then, his stats have consistently dropped off. In his sophomore season, Sulaimon’s minutes dropped to around 26, while his scoring average went down to 10. He was still a useful part of the rotation though. This season has been his worst by far. He’s playing just around 20 minutes per game while only averaging 7.5 points per game. Despite this drop in stats, he was still the first man off the bench for Duke and that makes his dismissal a bit suspicious still. Yes, there are younger players such as Tyus Jones, Matt Jones and Grayson Allen making their voices heard out on the court. There’s also senior guard Quinn Cook that is putting up great numbers for Duke, so, it’s not as if they’re lacking guards. Something tells me this wasn’t just about his level of play in game, but possibly something more along the lines of Sulaimon’s work ethic in practice. He surely wasn’t the player he was freshman year or anything, but he was still a valuable member of the Duke team, which makes me think that something else is up here. Sulaimon has a couple different options in front of him. He can transfer, although that would almost assuredly include a redshirt season, or he could just enter the NBA draft and hope to get drafted. For Duke, They will look to improve their record to 18-3 against the University of Virginia this Saturday.