Tyus Jones won a national title at Duke and could be a senior there now. Instead...

Tyus Jones should have been in a basketball jersey Monday night – it’s just that he was wearing a uniform unfamiliar to many Tobacco Road ACC fans.

The former Duke standout, a reserve point guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was in Charlotte Monday as the Wolves visited the Hornets for an NBA game.

But watching Jones dribble around in that dark navy jersey Monday didn’t seem entirely right. Probably because if you took a two-hour drive east of Charlotte, another team was playing in a different shade of blue ... and Jones could have been with them.

Jones is in his third NBA season, all of them with Minnesota, after being a late first-round draft pick in 2015. But he was a freshman when he was drafted out of Duke, meaning he had three seasons of eligibilty left. Three seasons of eligibility, three seasons of NBA play – Jones very easily could have been playing out his senior season for the Blue Devils with current star Grayson Allen on the same night he and Minnesota lost to the Hornets 118-102.

“That’s my brother for life,” Jones said of Allen. “We have a bond that’s unbreakable ... but I’m definitely happy where I am and I’m living out my dream.”

Now, Jones isn’t necessarily the force for Minnesota that he was in his lone season at Duke.

As a freshman in Durham, Jones was the maestro of the Blue Devils’ high-powered offense, pulling the strings and setting up easy baskets for future NBA players Jahlil Okafor and Justice Winslow. He was valuable enough on offense in his own right, too – he averaged 11.8 points and had his occasional scoring outbursts, for 24 against North Carolina and then 23 against Wisconsin (and current Hornets big man Frank Kaminsky) in the 2015 NCAA championship game.

Then that trio from Duke – Jones, but also Okafor and Winslow – left for the NBA after one season of college, taking championship rings with them.

Since then, Jones has been in Minnesota, where he has developed into a reliable second point guard. His physical limitations (lack of top-end foot speed and a generously listed 6-foot-2, 195-pound build) aside, he’s known for his high-level understanding of the game and a penchant for being in the right place at the right time.

Like he was midway through the second quarter Monday, when he scored his only basket of the game. Instead of swiping at the players he was defending, Kemba Walker and Michael Carter-Williams, Jones watched them from a foot away. Then when Carter-Williams went to make a pass out of the paint, Jones jumped in front of the ball, stole it, and ran the length of the floor untouched for a layup.

“I thought he had made up his mind to keep going and turn that pass, so I just reacted to it and made a play,” Jones said. “Knew when I got the steal that it was just 90 feet the other way for the layup, just had to push it.”

So on the same night Jones could have been starring at Duke alongside Allen, instead he was mostly on the bench for Minnesota. When he was in the game, though, he played decent defense and made smart passes, finishing with three assists.

So, is there any part of him that wishes he had been in a Duke blue jersey Monday instead of his Timberwolves one?

“It’s weird to think I could still be there, that’s for sure” Jones said. “Obviously I love Duke, and that’s my second home, but I’m definitely happy with where I’m at.”

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 11:22 PM with the headline "Tyus Jones won a national title at Duke and could be a senior there now. Instead...."