The end of the era is coming.
It might come as early as Thursday, when Duke runs up against top-seeded Oregon in the Sweet 16. It might come two days later in the Elite Eight, or it might not come until the Blue Devils board a flight home from Houston with a second straight national championship in tow.
Whenever that day does arrive, the last season of Plumlees at Duke will draw to a close. After eight straight years with at least one brother patrolling the sidelines, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski will not have that luxury next season.
"Coach has done good job of treating every season like it’s your last. That being said, it’s hard to completely do that until it is your last," Marshall Plumlee said earlier this year. "There’s time after the season to get sentimental. I just hope Duke’s enjoyed eight years of Plumlees at Duke."
The Warsaw, Ind., natives have been fixtures in the state of North Carolina for the last decade—first at Christ School in Arden, N.C., in the western part of the state—before making the leap to Durham, where at least one brother has started 193 of Duke's last 293 games.
But the era nearly did not get off the ground.
Now with the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA, Miles Plumlee is the oldest brother, but he was not the first Plumlee to commit to Duke. Mason—now a Portland Trail Blazer—blazed the trail to Durham by announcing his decision in late February 2008, and later made room for his brothers to join him.
Miles had signed a national letter of intent to play at Stanford, but things changed once then-Cardinal head coach Trent Johnson left Palo Alto to take the job at Louisiana State. Stanford filled its vacancy with former Blue Devil star Johnny Dawkins, but the upheaval was enough to make Plumlee reconsider, and he wound up in Durham instead.
Marshall—two years younger than Mason—got the benefit of watching his brothers learn and grow—literally and figuratively—into fixtures on the block for the Blue Devils, and tried to translate some of what he saw into his own game at Christ School.
"I thought ‘Holy crap, what have they done to him?’ They beefed him up," Marshall Plumlee said of watching a more-muscular Miles play. "I’d come back and try to emulate what Coach wanted at the high-school level. I thought it was so cool, I felt like I had an advantage over my peers. I never thought my motivation would ever be higher than after watching a Duke game."
That motivation helped put Marshall on the map, drawing interest from the class of the ACC and Big Ten. Although his brothers had both chosen to come to Duke—Miles via a somewhat round-about path—there was no guarantee the youngest Plumlee would follow in their footsteps.
Marshall's parents, Perky and Leslie, gave Marshall space and told him to do what he felt was best for him. But as the time to decide drew nearer, his brothers weighed in.
"Miles was the one who kind of pulled me aside and said ‘Come on Marshall, it’s time to go to Duke,’" Marshall said. "Miles was a little more no-nonsense about it, and I think I needed that kick in the pants a little bit."
Miles and Mason started games in each of their four years at Duke, improving their season-averages every season and combining to provide Krzyzewski with nearly 14 feet of Plumlee in the paint to dissuade opposing teams from looking to score inside. By his senior season, Mason had turned into an All-American and Player of the Year candidate, averaging a monstrous double-double of 17.1 points and 10.0 rebounds per game while leading the Blue Devils to the Elite Eight.
Marshall's development was more methodical—he redshirted his freshman season and before this year had never started a game in a Duke uniform. He reached double-digit points just twice in his first three seasons on the floor, but has erupted this season to average 8.4 points and 8.7 rebounds per game—an emergence that has been the product of both necessity and consistent development.
"Marshall’s journey is a five-year journey and interrupted by injuries, especially timely injuries. He’s probably been our most important player this year, especially after Amile [Jefferson] got hurt," Krzyzewski said earlier this season. "The amount of minutes he’s had to play in comparison to what he has played in his career is pretty remarkable."
Early in his career, Plumlee seemed to be too excited or moving too quickly for the game, and has acknowledged this season that the game has slowed down for him. But with Jefferson out for the year, Plumlee has been at times the player Krzyzewski can least afford to have off the floor, forcing the graduate student to learn to play through foul trouble and develop the same on-court smarts and self-control that he has learned through his ROTC training for service in the U.S. Army reserves.
"He’s learned that, the discipline. I think that comes with understanding your importance like you can’t foul out. You cannot foul out," Krzyzewski said. "There’s a discipline in the training room, in the recovery, a protocol that a player needs to learn that a team does, that you individually need to do.... Some kids will say ‘I don’t need to do that today.’ But before practice, he’s in there and he’s really taken great care of himself.”
With eight years of home games in Durham, Perky and Leslie Plumlee have made plenty of road trips to watch their sons play at Duke. There may be at least one more—the fourth Plumlee sibling, Maddie, is a sophomore volleyball player at Notre Dame. When the Fighting Irish visit Durham, there will be one more opportunity to watch a Plumlee take the court at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
"[They've put] a lot of miles on the car—and then the car gets too many miles and they pass it down to me," Marshall Plumlee joked.
If all goes well for the Blue Devils this week in Anaheim, Calif., the Plumlees may be able to fly to Houston, trying to secure a third ring in their eight-year run.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.