Duke hires former Nike executive Rachel Baker as general manager

Duke coach Jon Scheyer is making an interesting hire to his support staff,.

The Blue Devils hired Rachel Baker, a former Nike executive, to be the program’s general manger, the program announced Tuesday. Baker spent eight years at Nike, helping lead the Elite Youth Basketball event strategy and working with the company’s WNBA and NBA athlete integration. Among her responsibilities is helping athletes with NIL as it becomes a big part of the college athletics landscape.

“I could not be more excited to join Jon Scheyer and the entire Duke Basketball family,” Baker said in a statement. “We’re in the middle of such a transformative moment — not only for Duke, but for the college basketball landscape — and the chance to be part of it is the opportunity of a lifetime. Duke Basketball has remaiend rooted in honoring our storied history while writing the future of the game. I am humbled and honored to join this tradition and can’t wait to get started.”

Scheyer is getting ready for his first season as Duke head coach and takes over for Mike Krzyzewski, who retired after the 2021-22 season. The Blue Devils made it to the Final Four in New Orleans before falling to rival North Carolina. That ended the Coach K era — and Scheyer prepared to take over. Now, he’s making a hire that helps move the program toward the future of college basketball.

“The state of college basketball is growing and changing at an exponential rate,” Scheyer said in a statement. “Rachel is a one-of-a-kind talent with unique experience that will provide our players and their families with an unparalleled resource and partner as we navigate new frontiers of college basketball together.

“Through her work in the NBA and at Nike, she brings nearly a decade of expertise in the business of basketball to our staff, as well as her gifts in relationship and community building, leadership development, and experiential marketing. We can’t wait to see all she brings to our program in this newly-created position.”

As he gets ready for the 2022-23 season, Scheyer has a talented recruiting class coming in. Duke brought in the No. 1 group in the country this year, according to the On3 Consensus Team Recruiting Ranking. The Blue Devils have three of the top-five recruits in the country coming in, as well.

Five-star center Dereck Lively II leads the way as the nation’s No. 1 prospect while five-stars Dariq Whitehead and Kyle Filipowski are also making their way to Durham as the No. 3 and No. 5 prospects in the country, respectively, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.