Beyond the team chemistry gained of spending a week in a foreign country, do these trips help with anything? If anything, you're dominating bad competition and you would've been better off in your practice gym scrimmaging your second team.
How far out do people schedule/plan a knee replacement surgery? This isn't a surgery to repair something from a sudden injury. Coach K obviously knew this knee replacement would be coming up. He didn't just suddenly decide it was necessary and the next week he's having it. This was all planned. So Duke gets a bunch of extra practices that no other team gets unless they're taking a foreign trip and then doesn't waste any time with their foreign trip.
Pretty savvy.
