Jon Scheyer has Duke in the Final Four — his success is not a coincidence

The first time I saw Jon Scheyer play — when he was a touted 15-year-old freshman on the Glenbook North varsity at the Proviso West Holiday Tournament in 2002 — I was writing a column on him for the Sun-Times that was tinged with just a bit of of skepticism.

We’ve had our share of freshman basketball prodigies in the Chicago area. Some have lived up to the hype, others have not. But they were rarely white and never from Northbrook. 

I noted Scheyer’s uneven performance against Schaumburg in his Proviso West tournament debut, but also gave him credit where it was due:

“Scheyer lived up to his pre-tournament billing in one respect: The kid is one cool customer. He never lost his composure or gave in to the pressure.

“But for those who expected to see a phenom, his opening performance left two questions unanswered. How good is he? How good is he going to get. A Corey Maggette at 15 might be headed for the NBA. But a kid from Northbrook?”

This objective look at a freshman basketball prodigy was accurate, I thought, but didn't go over too well ("Freshman struggles in spotlight" didn't help my cause!) I had to talk my way into writing a second column on Scheyer the following season. I'm glad I did. Chronicling the Jon Scheyer era was a career highlight.

As it turned out, Scheyer lived up to the hype and then some — on multiple levels. He kept exceeding high expectations on the court. He handled the over-the-top attention — from those who adored him and others who envied him — with a maturity beyond his years. He embraced the massive publicity he received without letting it consume him. 

And he managed the ups and downs of a delicate dynamic on the Glenbrook North team — the ballyhooed superstar with an otherwise ordinary group of good suburban high school players — well enough to earn a huge payoff: an Illinois Class AA state championship in 2006 that Glenbrook North earned as a team. I only saw the games and not the practices, but my guess is that Scheyer was not just a good teammate, but a good friend. 

He learned some valuable lessons at a young age about people and human nature that seem to be paying off for him — as a manager of people — today. A year after that first column, the hype was the subject, and it was clear he was learning some tough lessons, at 16.

“It’s a tricky thing,” he said. “Some people have your best interests in mind and some don’t. Some just want to come along for the ride. And some don’t want to see you succeed. There are some jealous people out there. 

“Even in eighth grade people were jealous. They would’t say it to me, but I’d hear it around that I’m not that good. Why would you try to bring down an eight-grader? Some people are just jealous or they think their kid is better and just don’t want you to succeed.” 

I had intended to write a detailed deep dive into the recruitment of a prep superstar for the junior-year edition of the Scheyer series, but Jon's mom wasn't crazy about that — which I understood. This story on Jon's grandmother — his biggest fan — turned out to be a good Plan B.

Scheyer was a second-team All-American as a senior at Duke but not a superstar — not like he was at Glenbrook North. He’s that rare McDonald’s All-American who doesn’t make the NBA but yet still overachieves — he makes the most of every situation and hasn’t lost his knack for being at the right place at the right time. 

He was the leading scorer on Duke’s 2010 NCAA tournament championship team — a team that, while loaded with talent, had to work harder to get better more than any of Mike Krzyzewski’s championship teams. To grow up in Northbrook, be a McDonald’s All-American and play at Duke, and still realize how hard you have to work to be successful — that might be Jon Scheyer’s greatest gift of all. 

So it’s no surprise that with the kind of good fortune that could be a blessing for some and a curse for others — replacing Krzyzewski as Duke’s head coach — the 37-year-old Scheyer is making the most of it. In his third season, Duke (35-3) is in the Final Four with a team that is averaging 91.7 points a game, but relied on its defense to spark an 85-65 rout of No. 2 seed Alabama in the Elite Eight. 

Scheyer, in fact, is the first McDonald’s All-American to coach a team to the Final Four. Sure, he’s had the wind at his back as the coach of Duke. But if you think Jon Scheyer’s success is just good fortune, you don’t know him. 

I wrote four columns/features on Jon Scheyer during his Glenbrook North career — one during each of his four varsity seasons — and covered several Glenbrook North games, including most of the state championship run in 2005. To wrap it all up in this 2006 column, I put Scheyer in a class by himself as the state's all-time MVP — the player who was most instrumental in leading his team to a state championship.