Cassius Stanley Continues to Tease Duke Fans

Will he stay or will he go?

Apparently, online courses at Duke aren't keeping Cassius Stanley busy enough, because the Duke freshman has been filling time posting cryptic messages to social media, leading to speculation that he might be considering a return to Duke for a second season.

The first bread crumb was dropped last week, when Stanley posted a photo of himself in uniform on Instagram with the caption "What's next?"

The post seemed very similar to a Tom Brady post during Super Bowl week that had the NFL world breathlessly speculating as to whether it meant he was leaving New England or staying.

That turned out to be a precursor to a Super Bowl ad. Brady announced he was leaving the team a month and a half later.

Stanley's post raised a similar furor on Duke social media as fans speculated as to its meaning.

At roughly the same time, he tweeted a gif of Batman thinking, which fans interpreted as him saying he was still deciding what to do.

pic.twitter.com/hWjKQXXKgm
— Cassius Stanley (@cassius_stanley) March 25, 2020

Stanley continued to post gifs of people thinking, winking and falling down stairs, at one point tweeting "I love gifs," none of which shed any light on his intentions.

Then, on Tuesday, teammate Joey Baker reached out publicly, asking Stanley to stay.

2TAY 👀 @cassius_stanley
— Joey Baker (@Joey_bvker) March 31, 2020

Stanley responded with, of course, a gif, which depicted someone saying, "Call me," leading to another explosion of Duke Twitter trying to read the tea leaves.

https://t.co/0AuvUejDoA pic.twitter.com/ZdQxb3ijou
— Cassius Stanley (@cassius_stanley) March 31, 2020

Without a pandemic, odds are Stanley would be NBA bound. The draft is expected to be a weak one, and Stanley's athletic ability (he broke Zion Williamson's vertical leap record at Duke in the preseason) and his play would make him attractive to pro teams.

He's also old for a freshman--he'll turn 21 in August--and the NBA is a league that places a high value on youth. It's doubtful he could do enough in year two at Duke to improve his draft status more than another year on the calendar would hurt it.

At the very least, Stanley would have gone through the process to get feedback, but with the league shut down for the forseeable future, he could be having second thoughts.

It's possible that Stanley, like the rest of the world, is simply bored and a little stir crazy from the social distancing of the last few weeks and is just as frustrated with the lack of any detail that would help him make a decision.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that he would take to playing cat and mouse with Duke fans about the decision if there was a strong chance he would later tell them he was leaving. It also seems unlikely that a school with such a keenly developed social media presence as Duke would allow that to happen.

All of which adds up to plenty of uncertainty, at least until the next posting on Twitter or Instagram.