This story begins back in 1998, when Keith Dambrot was named the head coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. Until this point, St. Vincent-St. Mary was your run of the mill private Catholic school in Northeast Ohio, but that wouldn't be the case for much longer, because soon enough a transformative freshman named LeBron James and his friends Sian Cotton, Willie McGee, Dru Joyce III and Romeo Travis would be joining the team, giving St. Vincent-St. Mary the same sort of name recognition as a perennial powerhouse like Oak Hill Academy.

Keith Dambrot would coach the Fighting Irish to a pair of state titles before departing to take an assistant coach job at his alma mater, the University of Akron. Dambrot eventually took over as the head coach at Akron in 2004, a position he held until 2017, when he left Akron to become the head coach at Duquesne. This year, Dambrot led the Dukes to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1977, and on his staff was a familiar face. A face that Dambrot had won a championship with before… Dru Joyce III.

Now with Dambrot retiring to take care of his wife Donna, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, it will be Dru Joyce III who takes over as the Dukes' head coach. And of course, it was LeBron James who was the one who broke the news on Twitter:

The university would make the announcement official six minutes later:

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Who is Dru Joyce III? 

Well, as we've already established, Dru Joyce III was a childhood friend of LeBron James, and one of the members of the “Fab Five” at St. Vincent-St. Mary that would win three state championships during their four years wearing the green and gold. After high school, Joyce played four years of basketball at the University of Akron, three of which were under his former high school head coach Keith Dambrot. While at Akron, Joyce twice led the conference in assists and was named an All-MAC 2nd Team performer during his senior season. After college, Joyce enjoyed a successful 12-year career playing in Germany's Basketball Bundesliga, where he would retire as the league's all-time leader in assists.

Joyce served as an assistant coach at Cleveland State for a handful of seasons before joining Keith Dambrot's staff at Duquesne in 2022. And now that the program will be run by one of his childhood friends, you have to imagine that LeBron James will continue to support the Dukes after voicing his support for the team during the 2024 NCAA Tournament, even gifting the team new Nike's ahead of their opening round game versus BYU.