I cant believe this is even a question. Of course it does not hurt us. If you think it hurts us, you are confused about what " the brotherhood" actually is.
The brotherhood is a support system created by the duke basketball program. It's meant to connect player around the nation who have been through the program and create a family bond. Thats why recruits love it as a pitch, its something cool to be a part of and yes it does have some NBA pull but thats not the whole program.
What kills us is player development and giving everything to #1 prospects with basically guaranteed 30+ mpg.
Case in point, look at the case of joey baker. Dude messes up almost as much as anyone on the team but gets put in the dog house. guys like banch and roach struggle, but never see that dog house and what happened? they developed and improved throughout the year. I'm not saying baker should play 30 mpg, but we tend to give up on him ALL the time. It would've been nice to have a 40% 3 point shooter out there as our guys were chucking bombs against unc. Look at Theo John. Dude came in as a grad transfer with only 2 big men with actual talent to play ( looking at you bates jones) and he averaged 11 minutes a game... There were a lot of games I thought he should've played more.
Look at what happened to last years class. Why did they all leave? because they knew it was going to be really tough to see minutes on the court with the studs we had coming in. Why would anyone stay at duke with the way we play our bench? How many guys have we really developed over the past few years? and the guys that do develop... roach, moore, jefferson... all have three things in common. They developed, stayed more than one year and oh yeah... played consistently. It's not that hard to see why it isn't attractive to stay at duke depending on who we bring.
look at the posts on the board. how many times, throughout the years, have you read " so and so is going to have to think about leaving because we have the top rated sf coming in and he's going to eat up minutes"... shoot we have a joke of a thread arguing that keels can't come back and improve his draft stock. We're so used to seeing players who stay only one year, that we forget that it's possible for players to improve their games. How many posters on here said that wendell moore would never sniff the nba because his game sucked. He's now flirting with a 1st round pick. That's what I'm hoping changes in the Scheyer era. The Bancheros of the world don't have to play the entire game to win. I'm hoping Duke starts to develop as a team again and mix in young stars with true experienced veterans.