Intro

HE WON TWO STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS, GATORADE NORTH CAROLINA PLAYER OF THE YEAR AND A GOLD MEDAL IN HIGH SCHOOL. IF YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT DUKE FRESHMAN WENDELL MOORE, LET THIS BE YOUR WARNING.

- Alex Squadron

IT WAS AUGUST of 2014 and Wendell Moore was just a 12-yearold kid, but Dominic Bishop saw something special in him.

Bishop, a former player at Creighton turned trainer and coach, approached Moore during an open gym near Charlotte, NC.

“When I first met him, I asked him, ‘What’s your dream school?’ And he said, ‘Duke,’” Bishop remembers.

In that same conversation, Bishop outlined five goals for Moore: To make the U.S. national team, to be the leading scorer at Cox Mill High School, to compete at the Nike camps, to participate in the McDonald’s All-American Game, and to one day commit to Duke.

Moore looked at him like he was crazy. And yet, five years later, he’s achieved them all.

AMID THE FRENZY of rush hour in midtown Manhattan, Wendell Moore is casually posing for pictures. He’s visiting for a few days from his hometown in North Carolina. Things move a lot faster here, but Moore is in no rush. He holds a basketball in one hand, rests the other on a green banister that leads down to the subway and smiles big.

In just a couple weeks, he’ll be off to Durham for the next stop on his journey. It could be a brief one.