Wendell Carter Jr.’s parents weren’t happy with their son’s time at Duke

Wendell Carter Jr. was drafted No. 7 overall to the Chicago Bulls last week, and it marked his entrance to the NBA after one season with the Duke Blue Devils.

His mother, Kylia Carter, wants him to get a degree, but according to her, the Carters’ experience with Duke in one year was enough to help the family agree that a jump to the NBA after one year was the right decision.

We’ve already addressed that Carter made comments about Duke’s system not highlighting his strengths, but his mother’s remarks to Charlotte Wilder of Sports Illustrated are far less subtle than Carter’s were.

“They treat you like a piece of property. Period. Point blank. They take things away from you, they talk bad to you, they’re disrespectful to you,” Kylia Carter said about their experience with NCAA basketball, according to Wilder. “The act of getting paid is not what makes a difference, the difference is that in the NBA [players] are respected in the role that they’re in. Whatever it is they’re doing, they have a voice and they’re respected.

“In college, you have no voice. It’s a system set up that they drop you in and tell you what to do—you be a rebounder, shot-blocker, you take all the shots, nobody else can shoot. My child never got to show his full set of skills. He never got to do that.”

Kylia also wasn’t happy about Marvin Bagley’s Duke commitment either so late in the process and Carter having no knowledge of it being in the works. She gave more thoughts on Duke to Vincent Goodwill of NBC Sports Chicago.

“My initial reaction, I was pissed. And it wasn’t pissed because Marvin was coming. To be honest, I felt like that was information that was kept from us,” Kylia said, according to Goodwill. “It felt (shady), it felt like my baby was gonna get kicked to the curb. I felt like all of that.”

Playing on the same team, Bagley averaged 21 points and 11.1 rebounds while Carter averaged 13.5 points and 9.1 rebounds. Bagley was top of the team in each category, Carter was second in rebounds and fourth in scoring. Wendell Carter Sr. wasn’t happy about Bagley’s commitment either.

“I tell people. People make promises they can’t keep. It didn’t bother me,” Wendell Sr. said, according to Goodwill. “I was concerned because I felt like we were lied to. ‘Oh, Wendell’s gonna be the man’ and then the rug was pulled from under us.”

Carter was subtle in his comments about Duke during the NBA Draft process, but his parents have all but named Mike Krzyzewski and his program as the reason they didn’t like their son playing college basketball.