Ranking the Most Talented Duke Basketball Teams of All Time

College basketball history is full of great teams. Legendary squads that make you wonder how it all worked to such perfection on the hardwood.

This is not about those teams.

This is about the ones that make you squint at the roster years later and wonder how it all fit in one locker room—squads where the talent level bordered on absurd and future pros were sometimes stacked two-deep.

You can win a title without that kind of depth. You can even dominate a season without it. But when it's there, it leaves a different kind of imprint.

So we set out to find those instances.

Bleacher Report writers and editors started with a massive pool of candidates and cut it to 68 via a staff vote, enforcing a simple rule along the way: No overlapping cores. That meant no two teams from the same school could share more than one rotation player.

From there, we focused on what these rosters became, counting only players who actually reached the NBA or WNBA, and weighing how many made it, how long they lasted and how much they accomplished as pros. Individual NCAA accomplishments were also considered, but amateur team success was not.

A first-place vote garnered 68 points, on down to 1 point for a last-place vote.

The result isn't a ranking of the best college teams ever. It's a catalog of talent at its most concentrated—rosters that, in hindsight, feel almost unreasonable.

Below is a collection of Duke's most stacked teams that appeared in our overall ranking.

Team summaries by Andy Bailey

5. 1998-99 Duke Men (37-2)

Overall Ranking: 38

Pro Seasons (50): Elton Brand (17), Corey Maggette (14), Shane Battier (13), William Avery (3), Trajan Langdon (3)

Pro All-Stars: 1 | Top-10 Picks: 2

NCAA Tournament: Lost National Final

Duke has had several star-laden rosters over the course of its history, and this is one of its absolute best.

Elton Brand spent nearly a decade with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Clippers as the prototypical 20-and-10 guy. Over the first seven years of his career, he averaged 20.3 points, 10.2 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.1 blocks.

One of his Blue Devils teammates, Corey Maggette, averaged 19.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists from 2003-04 through 2009-10.

And Shane Battier, who was a scoring star in college, went on to become one of the NBA's ultimate glue guys and three-and-D forwards.

Add the fact that this Duke team had two other pros, and it's still hard to fathom how it fell short in the national title game.

High Vote: 8

Low Vote: 66

4. 2016-17 Duke Men (28-9)

Overall Ranking: 36

Pro Seasons (42): Luke Kennard (9), Jayson Tatum (8), Grayson Allen (7), Frank Jackson (5), Harry Giles (5), Marques Bolden (3), Amile Jefferson (2), Jack White (2), Javin DeLaurier (1)

Pro All-Stars: 1 | Top-10 Picks: 1

NCAA Tournament: Lost Second Round

Another Duke team that was absolutely loaded, this one sent a whopping nine players to the NBA (tied for the highest among those sampled in this exercise).

And though six of them are already out of the league, the remaining three are all important players for their current teams. One is a superstar.

Luke Kennard and Grayson Allen are among the league's top three-point threats and have been for years.

And of course, Jayson Tatum was the best player on a championship team.

That this team is already in the top 40, despite the fact that much more of the legacies of Tatum, Kennard and Allen are on the way, is somehow both impressive and unsurprising.

High Vote: 16

Low Vote: 55

3. 2000-01 Duke Men (35-4)

Overall Ranking: 29

Pro Seasons (51): Mike Dunleavy Jr. (15), Carlos Boozer (13), Shane Battier (13), Chris Duhon (9), Jay Williams (1)

Pro All-Stars: 1 | Top-10 Picks: 3

NCAA Tournament: Won National Title

Duke's ability to reload after losing pros has always been impressive, and that was especially true in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Not long after Brand left, the 2000-01 team still featured Battier in a larger role. It was also loaded with shooting and scoring from him and Mike Dunleavy Jr., dominant interior play from Carlos Boozer and savvy guard play from Chris Duhon and Jay Williams.

All but Williams went on to have long and successful NBA careers. And had an injury not derailed Williams, he may well have wound up the best of them all.

High Vote: 11

Low Vote: 48

2. 2010-11 Duke Men (32-5)

Overall Ranking: 20

Pro Seasons (60): Kyrie Irving (14), Mason Plumlee (13), Seth Curry (12), Kyle Singler (7), Miles Plumlee (7), Ryan Kelly (4), Nolan Smith (2), Andre Dawkins (1)

Pro All-Stars: 1 | Top-10 Picks: 1

NCAA Tournament: Lost Sweet 16

Eight pros is a ton for any college team to produce, and this one had five that made it at least seven seasons.

It also boasted Mason Plumlee and Seth Curry, both of whom have been solid role players for over a decade.

But this Duke team making it to the top 20 in the vote is largely about its lone All-Star, future Hall of Famer Kyrie Irving.

Like AD, Kyrie was the No. 2 on a LeBron James title team. And in the year he won it with Cleveland, Irving averaged 27.1 points, 3.9 assists, 2.1 threes and 2.1 steals in the Finals.

Years later, he also helped Luka Dončić make it to the Finals with the Dallas Mavericks.

Ultimately, though, Irving's legacy may have as much to do with the way he played the game as it does his actual numbers. He's one of the most dazzling and effective ball-handlers and self-creators in league history.

High Vote: 18

Low Vote: 51

1. 1991-92 Duke Men (34-2)

Overall Ranking: 19

Pro Seasons (53): Grant Hill (19), Christian Laettner (13), Cherokee Parks (9), Antonio Lang (6), Bobby Hurley (5), Brian Davis (1)

Hall of Famers: 1 | Pro All-Stars: 2 | Top-10 Picks: 3

NCAA Tournament: Won National Title

This particular Duke team won the national title and gave us one of the most iconic plays and shots in basketball history (Christian Laettner's buzzer-beater to down Kentucky) on the way to it.

Then, it gave us a pair of NBA All-Stars, one of whom would eventually make it to the Hall of Fame.

Laettner was a well-rounded big man who averaged 16.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.0 blocks in his first six seasons.

Hill, who's now in the Hall of Fame, is one of our best examples of a star powering through terrible injury luck and emerging as a role player afterward.

Over his first six seasons, he put up 21.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 6.3 assists. Over the next four years, he appeared in just 47 games while dealing with various injuries. Then, somehow, he played in nine more seasons after that.

With those two and four other pros, it's no wonder this Duke team made it into the top 20.

High Vote: 5

Low Vote: 37