Nate James and Jon Scheyer have been handed the keys to the Tesla. They're not about to go joyriding.

"We don't want anything to happen on our watch while he's away,'' James said.

Can you blame them?

He would be Duke Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski; he of the five national championships and more than 1,000 wins; he of the Basketball Hall of Fame; and he of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a graduate whose steely-eyed stare could leave a grown man weak in his knees. And he currently is in Rio where he's leading the U.S. men's basketball team, the best basketball players in the world, in his final go-round as Olympic head coach.

Meantime, back in Durham, North Carolina, sits his Duke men's basketball team, which will arguably be one of the best college basketball teams in the country this coming season, winding up its critical offseason conditioning.

Essentially, James and Scheyer, two of Krzyzewski's two assistants, have been given one charge: Don't mess it up.

"There's no question you feel a huge responsibility to make sure you're holding up what he would want,'' Scheyer said. "The big thing we tell our guys is, how do you want this team to look when he gets back? The first chance he gets back to watch us again, how do you want to be?''

That, indeed, might seem like good fuel to get the old motor running.

The good news is the coaches know their boss pretty well. James and Scheyer both played under Krzyzewski and have been on staff for a few seasons. James came on board in 2007-08, just as Krzyzewski was prepping to head to Beijing for that Olympic run. With Chris Collins and Steve Wojciechowski manning things on campus, he often found himself as the lone man on the recruiting trail, tying up loose ends. He repeated that role in 2012, when Krzyzewski headed to the London Games.

Now, with associate head coach Jeff Capel in Rio, James is the old veteran on staff. He and Scheyer, who has been on staff since 2013, are the guys in charge while Nolan Smith is the low man on the totem pole as the newly hired special assistant.

The staff got through July relatively easily. The coaches were fairly certain about who they were interested in -- and those players already knew of Duke's interest -- so there was no need to explain why Krzyzewski wasn't around. It got a little tricky when they spied someone who hadn't initially been on their radar.

"Whenever there's a new recruit thrown into the mix, it creates a slight problem,'' James said. "We were gym-hopping a lot to begin with, so we were limited in the number of guys we could see and we also had to think, 'Ok, how can we make this work without him feeling like we don't have any interest?'"

But as vital as planning for the future is, handling the present is really critical this year for Duke. With Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum, the anchors of the nation's No. 2 recruiting class, joining Grayson Allen, Amile Jefferson, Matt Jones and Luke Kennard, the Blue Devils will be among the heavy favorites to win it all next season. All of the players already are on campus, working on conditioning drills and individual workouts. That's the easy part. Most high-caliber athletes are accustomed to training and weight lifting.

The harder part of the winning formula is combining the old with the new. That worked exceptionally well two years ago, when Justise Winslow, Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones mixed seamlessly with veteran players on the roster, the lack of friction as much the reason for the 2015 national championship as the talent on the roster.

Krzyzewski used that offseason -- in particular the month of August, when the freshmen were on campus -- to foster team building. That year, the Blue Devils participated in a program called Dear World, in which people write meaningful phrases on their bodies and then share the stories behind them.

Now it's up to James and Scheyer to ensure this critical early time goes smoothly. Though Krzyzewski is in frequent contact -- usually via text, or through Capel -- he's surprisingly not a micro manager. The Army man in him has left his soldiers to figure things out on their own, entrusting them to do what they think will work best with the players.

"He gives us complete freedom, letting us follow our instincts,'' Scheyer said. "Of course he's keeping tabs, but he really leaves it up to us.''

With Coach K and Jeff Capel (foreground, left) off in Rio at the Olympics, Nate James and Jon Scheyer take the reigns at Duke. Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire

Realizing that the dog days of August aren't exactly fun for anyone, the coaches decided to try to use the reason for Krzyzewski's absence as their tool. Let's call it the Blue Devil Heptathlon.

The coaches have divided the team up into three groups of four -- the gold, black and white teams -- and created their own pseudo-Olympic games. There are no individual event medals, just points assigned to each with an overall gold awaiting the group that scores highest.

"We've got the medicine ball throw, like a shot put, the mile run, a bunch of relays,'' James said.

At last update, Jones, Giles, Frank Jackson and Chase Jeter had the early lead for the overall gold medal. This week as the U.S. enters the quarterfinals and medal rounds, the Blue Devils will gather to watch and celebrate their own, as yet still to be determined, gold medalists.

"We're trying to be as creative as possible, without getting anyone hurt,'' James said with a laugh.

That's probably not a bad idea. If you've been handed the keys to the Tesla, the last thing you want to do is crash it.