Knicks Draft Duke’s Trevor Keels, Who Dropped 25 Points At Madison Square Garden

Back in November, Duke guard Trevor Keels scored 25 points when the Blue Devils beat Kentucky in the Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden.

Playing alongside eventual No. 1 pick Paolo Banchero, the 6-foot-5 Keels was the biggest surprise of the evening as he dominated his defenders by using his Ron Dayne-like frame to get to the basket a 10-of-18 shooting night.

“This kid right here is going to be a great player,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said that night. “Trevor is going to be a great player, he weighs 230 pounds and if he was a running back he would know how to pick holes. He gets fouled, he doesn’t charge very much because he’s so low and has great body control. For three straight years, he was probably the best player in the DC area.”

Seven months after that game, the Knicks drafted Keels with the No. 42 pick in the NBA Draft and are bringing him back to the Garden. The Kentucky game was arguably his best performance of the season, as he finished with averages of 11.5 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.7 assists while shooting 42% from the field and 31% from deep.

One scouting service said of Keels: “He’s a great defender when engaged, a good secondary playmaker, can play out of ball-screens, and has real shooting upside. He has a NBA ready body and is one of the youngest prospects in the entire draft.”

“In three, four years, you can have a player who with his body type, he gets in great condition, improve in those areas, you’ve got a really good player by the time he’s 22 years old,” Duke assistant Chris Carrawell said recently.

Keels is the fifth Blue Devil selected by the Knicks, joining Ronnie Mayer (in 1956), Art Heyman 1st overall in 1963), Vince Taylor (34th overall) in 1982 and RJ Barrett (3rd overall) in 2019.

The move was overshadowed by a flurry of Knicks moves that saw them trade the No. 11 pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder and also deal Kemba Walker to the Detroit Pistons with four second-round picks to obtain three future first-round picks.

The Knicks freed up about $20 million in cap space and now have eight first-round picks to use to go after someone like Jalen Brunson or Kyrie Irving, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported on “Get Up.”

Keels went right up until the deadline on whether to return to Duke for his sophomore season to improve his stock to a possible first-round pick or come out this year.

“Really torn, he was torn, man,” Carrawell said. “When these guys make the decision, I just try to support them. Of course, we want you back, I one hundred percent said that plenty of times, like we want you back, but once they make the decision to test, I’m one hundred percent in support.”

Keels was a star player at Paul VI in Chantilly, Va, and won a state championship with Brandon Slater (Villanova) and Jeremy Roach (UNC). The trio reunited at the Final Four this spring, where North Carolina beat Duke in the national semifinal before losing to Kansas in the championship game.

On one of Krzyzewski’s visits to see Roach, head coach Glenn Farello called Keels into his office so the younger player could meet the Hall of Fame coach. Farello knew Duke was Keels’s dream school.

“He walked in and he was wide-eyed,” Farello recalled. “And as he walked out, I turned to Coach K and I said, ‘I just wanted to make sure you knew who he was, because at some point, I think you might want to circle back with this one.’ And sure enough, they did.”

Keels ultimately committed to Duke in April 2021 and joined a class that included the 6-9 Banchero, who became Duke’s fifth No. 1 overall pick when he was chosen by the Orlando Magic, and 6-6 guard A.J. Griffin, the N.Y. native who went No. 16 to the Atlanta Hawks.

All told, five Duke players were selected, including first-rounders Mark Williams (No. 15 to Charlotte) and Wendell Moore Jr. (No. 26 to the Mavericks).