Rather a strange turn of events, even by UAE standards. Duke University’s men’s basketball team running and dunking at a small, stuffy gym at the Al Wasl Sports Club in Dubai as Mike Krzyzewski conducted an impromptu coaching clinic with about 30 guys sitting in the stands. “Sorry, I’m a little hoarse from yelling at Chinese refs,” Coach K said.

And to think, a week or so ago, I wasn’t even sure that basketball as an organized sport really existed in the UAE.

Now, we have the Dukies in-country, up the road from Abu Dhabi, and tomorrow night they will play the UAE national team (who knew they had one?) in an exhibition game at Al Wasl, known to the rest of the world for employing Diego Maradona as its soccer coach.

Exotic stuff, but fun, too, for a Yank who had pretty much gone cold turkey on hoops since reaching these shores nearly two years ago.

For example:

It was highly entertaining, and totally unexpected, to sit in the stands with the coaches, interviewing them while they waited on Duke’s arrival after another long day of travel on their round-the-world tour, and talk to some of the guys about hoops in the UAE.

Turns out a sort of low-grade hoops culture exists here, mostly promulgated by Yanks but with some European (but not British) influences. Seven sports clubs in the UAE have basketball teams (Sharjah is the reigning champ), but none of the three big clubs in Abu Dhabi plays hoops, and that probably contributed to my lack of knowledge about basketball in the UAE.

(Well, that, and the fact that the UAE basketball federation doesn’t have a website, and not even the sports editor of The National had heard even one word about a national team until this Duke game was announced a few weeks ago.)

Most of the coaches were Americans who somehow or other ended up over here coaching for schools or clubs and making a living at it. (More examples of Yanks going to where the jobs are.)

One guy was from San Diego (“long way from home, man”) and had played at Sonoma State; his friend ragged on him for his Division II background, but I had no doubt he was probably one of the best dozen ballers in the country — when Duke wasn’t in town.

Another was from New York City and had been in the UAE seven years. A third was from Baltimore and a fourth, an assistant coach with one of the pro (!) clubs in the country, hailed from Washington DC.

What was fun was just talking hoops in a distinctly American way. The jargon. The knowledge that we all knew what we were talking about. The realization, later, that probably 99 percent of the people in the UAE would have had severe trouble finding any meaning in what we were saying.

“Rashid is the man. The bomb. Amazing wing span. Great hang time. He’s like Rajon Rondo with a jump shot.”

“They’ve got this guy, Omar Somebody, kind of a combo guard, who is good, so they’ve got a backcourt that can play a little.”

“Guy is a gym rat. Not many of those over here.”

“A lot of outdoor basketball in Dubai and Sharjah, and a couple of places with some pretty serious ballers. Safa Park is kind of like the Rucker of the UAE.”

“Their level is about the same as an AAU Under-16 team. Yeah.”

It was great fun, and felt almost illicit. Me and the bros from back home talking hoops in something approaching American code.

A few hundred people turned out just to watch Duke practice. Coach K described some of what they were doing to the coaches, dispensing pearls of hoops wisdom as half the guys videotaped him for further exegesis. “We don’t have rules, we have standards. Some of them are … we look each other in the eye when we speak, we tell each other the truth …”

This looks like one of Duke’s good teams, and the local coaches seemed keen to have the UAE basketball community see them, and how they act and how they prepare.

“College basketball is the purest form of the game left, the fundamentals and the teamwork and the teaching, and these guys need to see that.”

The Dukies had traveled all day, from China, checked into what civic boosters like to call a “seven-star” hotel (what constitutes seven-star? The climbing wall?), but then looked sharp and disciplined even while stretching.

And you have to admit that if college hoops could pick one team to be the ultimate ambassador for the sport, and spend a week in China and then go to Dubai on their way to circling the globe … you’d want it to be the Blue Devils, all keen and polite and freshly scrubbed and bright-eyed.

Duke played China’s national team three times in about six days and won all three games despite China shooting 111 free throws to Duke’s 48. Meanwhile, Georgetown was also doing China and at the end of a nasty game got involved in a bench-clearing brawl with a Chinese team. Yeah, the Hoyas. Just sayin’.

I did a story about the state of the UAE basketball team, based on what the coaches had told me and some last-minute-before-deadline input from one of the country’s best players as well as the general secretary of the basketball federation, and that story is here.

Also, my National sports colleague, Chuch Culpepper, did a commentary on the Duke University basketball program in an attempt to bring up to speed all the locals who know even less about basketball than they do about Duke University which (and this no doubt explains why the Dukies stopped here) is about to open a business school in Dubai.

So, big game at Wasl! And it has nothing to do with Diego Maradona. I will be covering basketball for the first time since I left the U.S. … and given the state of the game here, perhaps for the last time for a good long spell. Not enough gym rats, you know.