A Duke alumnus honors the storied Cameron Indoor Stadium, brick by Lego brick

It’s accurate down to the brass rails, the stained wood paneling, the banners hanging from the roof — all that’s missing is a thousand screaming mini-figures painted blue.

For National Lego Day on Friday, Duke University tweeted out an achingly detailed reproduction of Cameron Indoor Stadium, produced by alumnus Scott Walker with 15,000 bricks and a set of tweezers.

Walker, class of ‘94, even presented his tribute in blue to Coach Mike Krzyzewski last year, where it drew lavish praise free of any taunting.

“I thought he might make some crack about me shooting bricks instead of playing with them,” Walker said Friday.

Such an inspiring building

After fitting the square in place, Walker told the Lego fan journal BrickNerd that the building inspired him from the moment he first breathed its hardwood-scented air.

A Lego and hoops enthusiast, he couldn’t find any quality basketball arena builds, and though 35 years had passed since his last original construction, he dusted off his brick chops.

“If you’re lucky enough to have ever visited Cameron,” he told BrickNerd, “or better yet attended a game there, you might understand why someone would build a 15,000 piece Lego model of it. Of course, you might still think that person was nuts.”

His discussion with the fan journal shows piles of graph-paper sketches and screen-shots of his spreadsheets, but in the end Walker’s Cameron emerged at a 1-to-160 scale — or 31 inches long and 15 inches tall.

‘Passion, talent, creativity and inspiration’

Walker confessed to spending far too much time sorting through his own brick collection, and that a revelation hit once he began designing digitally — allowing him to figure out necessary pieces and create a grocery list.

“This is exactly what I love about the Duke alumni community,” said Sterly L. Wilder ’83, a senior associate vice president at Duke Alumni Engagement and Development. “Passion, talent, creativity and inspiration all rolled into one.”

In all, Walker’s Cameron took 300 hours to design and another 100 to assemble, but once finished, he was able to load it on board a plane’s overhead compartment — having bought an extra seat — and lose only a few bricks in transit.

Then in August, he gave it to the Duke basketball program while at the K Academy Fantasy Camp, posing for a snap with Coach K.

“I loved playing with Legos as a kid,” he said, “You get older and you stop playing with toys, but in the back of my mind you always ask, ‘What could I create?’ “