The #1 Recruit Who Chose Duke Over BYU — Now He Coaches for the Cougars

All right.

We are here with Coach Chris Burgess.

Thank you for being here and taking this time to talk.

No, of course.

Thanks for having

me.

Excited to

do it.

I was trying to think of who in the world I could bring on here that would better resemble or at least has been there for high school kids, parents, coaches, all of that.

And so thank you for being here.

And we were talking offline of as a coach, I see it's my responsibility to push the day when basketball is no longer in your life.

Organized basketball is.

as far out as possible for our athletes.

And so I think that you bring really good perspective around this and how to approach it.

So I guess the first question to start out is they could make a 30 for 30 about your life and you were the number one recruit coming out of high school.

I have all kinds of questions about that.

So what did that look like physically day to day and training for that and also going against teams always wanting to take you down, but also kind of the emotional aspect of all that?

You know, this is a world back in the 90s before social media.

So, you know, publications that came out were like USA Today or, you know, Sport Illustrated.

And so you'd read those and you knew those.

But honestly, what it looked like was I was 6'10", 230 pounds, and in an era and a time where, like, bigs didn't stretch the floor, right? So I could dribble, I could pass, I could shoot.

I was athletic.

I wasn't an elite athlete, but I was a mobile athlete for my size.

And so when you see that and you check those boxes – it's just like, it's almost like a unicorn.

I hate to say that, but like not a lot of big guys did that.

Right.

They were comfortable to, you know, shoot from outside, run the floor, catch lobs, play makers.

Like I would come up all screens.

I've come up triple handoffs.

So no one really did that back then.

So that's kind of what it looked like from just a physicality standpoint.

I'm sure there were other bigs that could do that.

They just were not allowed.

I will give my high school coach and my AAU coach so much love because they allowed me to play to my strengths.

They weren't very conventional in terms of no stay down there for 32 minutes a game.

And so that's kind of what it looked like.

From every time you compete, right, you were targeted, right? Because if you played well against, you know, first of all, we were a really good team, both high school and club.

But if you played well against a top recruiter, the top big, you were put on the map, right? You were talked about.

You were in Next Blue Chips magazine or whatever it was back then.

Yeah.

Man, I was kind of the circled game, which was great, right? It made me understand that I had to be at my best, had to play my best, but also still be me as best I could and not worry about everyone trying to really go at me.

But I got everyone's best shot, right? And then I would have teammates that at times – You know, there was definitely some jealousy here and there and things you couldn't control.

But for the most part, the physicality, that's kind of what it looked like every day I was trying to get it.

And then emotionally, it was sometimes really, really hard mentally.

It was just really hard sometimes to live up to that every single day, especially in high school.

It just felt like you were not allowed to have a bad day.

All right.

We are here with Coach Chris Burgess.

Thank you for being here and taking this time to talk.

No, of course.

Thanks for having

me.

Excited to

do it.

I was trying to think of who in the world I could bring on here that would better resemble or at least has been there for high school kids, parents, coaches, all of that.

And so thank you for being here.

And we were talking offline of as a coach, I see it's my responsibility to push the day when basketball is no longer in your life.

Organized basketball is.

as far out as possible for our athletes.

And so I think that you bring really good perspective around this and how to approach it.

So I guess the first question to start out is they could make a 30 for 30 about your life and you were the number one recruit coming out of high school.

I have all kinds of questions about that.

So what did that look like physically day to day and training for that and also going against teams always wanting to take you down, but also kind of the emotional aspect of all that?

You know, this is a world back in the 90s before social media.

So, you know, publications that came out were like USA Today or, you know, Sport Illustrated.

And so you'd read those and you knew those.

But honestly, what it looked like was I was 6'10", 230 pounds, and in an era and a time where, like, bigs didn't stretch the floor, right? So I could dribble, I could pass, I could shoot.

I was athletic.

I wasn't an elite athlete, but I was a mobile athlete for my size.

And so when you see that and you check those boxes – it's just like, it's almost like a unicorn.

I hate to say that, but like not a lot of big guys did that.

Right.

They were comfortable to, you know, shoot from outside, run the floor, catch lobs, play makers.

Like I would come up all screens.

I've come up triple handoffs.

So no one really did that back then.

So that's kind of what it looked like from just a physicality standpoint.

I'm sure there were other bigs that could do that.

They just were not allowed.

I will give my high school coach and my AAU coach so much love because they allowed me to play to my strengths.

They weren't very conventional in terms of no stay down there for 32 minutes a game.

And so that's kind of what it looked like.

From every time you compete, right, you were targeted, right? Because if you played well against, you know, first of all, we were a really good team, both high school and club.

But if you played well against a top recruiter, the top big, you were put on the map, right? You were talked about.

You were in Next Blue Chips magazine or whatever it was back then.

Yeah.

Man, I was kind of the circled game, which was great, right? It made me understand that I had to be at my best, had to play my best, but also still be me as best I could and not worry about everyone trying to really go at me.

But I got everyone's best shot, right? And then I would have teammates that at times – You know, there was definitely some jealousy here and there and things you couldn't control.

But for the most part, the physicality, that's kind of what it looked like every day I was trying to get it.

And then emotionally, it was sometimes really, really hard mentally.

It was just really hard sometimes to live up to that every single day, especially in high school.

It just felt like you were not allowed to have a bad day.