Kyle Singler often speaks one murmur above a whisper, but his game is loud and deep and trained for March.
College-basketball season opens this week with Duke’s Singler on the cover. In a sport battered by early exits, he won the national title and the Final Four’s top player award yet stayed behind for a senior run at another championship.
He tested the NBA waters in much the same way a wary winter vacationer tests the ocean’s edge — quickly, with his toenails — and stuck around for the day-by-day lifestyle more than the NCAA destination.
“That all kind of feeds into my experience,” Singler said. “I wanted to experience my senior year. I don’t know what that has in store for me, but I think that’s what makes it interesting, not knowing what to expect.... I was a late first-round pick, but it didn’t really matter where I was positioned in the draft. If I was going to go, if I wanted to go, I would have gone regardless.”
He didn’t want to go for reasons that include his visual-arts studies and the artistry of Duke’s expanding talent pool. Point guard Kyrie Irving and sharpshooter Seth Curry join Singler and senior Nolan Smith on a roster with 10 potential contributors, which will let Coach Mike Krzyzewski impose a full-court style or devise powerful options.
Singler fits any style. At 6-8 and 230 pounds, he has the strength to rank sixth on Duke’s career chart in offensive rebounds and the range to rank 11th in 3-pointers. He should become the third alumnus with three 600-point seasons, joining Art Heyman and Christian Laettner, both named America’s best as seniors.
“I do want to be national player of the year,” Singler said. “I want to win as many awards as possible, but nothing comes in front of that besides winning as a team.”
A year ago, the personal ambitions would have seemed out of character, inordinately blunt for the inward Oregonian with a taste for bland public dialogue.
“Well,” Krzyzewski said, “he’s never been afraid. At times, he’s a little bit in his own world, which is cool. It’s such a great world. It’s a world where you’re not afraid. You have big dreams, high expectations, but you’re not afraid of failure and you’re completely focused at going after those things. It’s very pure, genuine.
“When he talks, it’s just very innocent. There’s no agenda except what he wants to tell you: ‘I’m going to have fun. I’m going to go for it.’ I was never that way. I mean, I admire who he is. My goal is to have him be great as a player and not change. I’ve been lucky. I think he’s learning to be a little bit of a leader, but I don’t want him to talk all the time because it gets him out of his focus.
“Everybody will listen if Kyle says something.”
Despite some rough shooting nights early last season, Singler averaged 17.7 points, hitting 43 percent from the floor and 38 percent from the 3-point line.
“He’s really become a very good shooter,” Krzyzewski said. “He has great poise and he’s a warrior, so he’s not distracted. You get hit in basketball, and they’re not fouls. You just get hit. Some guys get hit and react. He gets hit and doesn’t react, so his focus is really good. He’s not afraid of getting hurt, like: ‘Oh, I got a scratch’ or ‘I just got hit in the nose.’”
The wayward slaps don’t deter Singler, nor does the implication that Duke must repeat to find fulfillment.
“Someone asked me: ‘If you don’t win the national championship this year, will it be a disappointment?’” Singler said. “You just don’t know. We don’t want to solely base our season on anything like that, on the national championship, but it is a goal of ours.... There’s going to be a little pressure on us to succeed and achieve, but we just have to understand we’ve got to be ourselves and things will take care of themselves.”
Singler thus can become the leader by example. He’s always himself, however quietly.
lrawlings@wsjournal.com
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