Why We Hate Duke Basketball Today
March 18th, 1980 was a perfectly normal Tuesday. The only notable event the internet remembers is the Soviet rocket “Vostak” exploding and killing fifty people.
If you think that’s a morbid way to start the rest of the article, just wait. It gets worse.
The other less important and more innocent seeming event that occurred that day was the hiring a man named Mike Krzyzewski by the Duke Universtiy basketball program to be their new men’s basketball coach.
Krzyzewski, an alumni of West Point, played for a guy by the name of Bob Knight. Six years after graduating from Knight’s tutelage, he was named the head coach at his alma mater and went 73–59 in five seasons.
After he was hired at Duke, the rest is history. You know his track record. You know the players he’s coached and games he’s been a part of. You know he is the winning-est head coach in Division 1 basketball history with 1,056 wins in his 42 years of coaching.
In those forty-two years, Coach K, as he is called by fans and critics alike, has grown from being a guy known as a no nonsense, hard-working coach, into a divisive, love him or hate him figure head of everything that is either good or bad about the college game. It all depends on your perspective — which side of the fence you fall on, if you will.
The ideas presented before you today might be construed as hateful, sour and jealous, but more than anything the purpose is to make you think about why we as a sports fanatic culture put people like Coach K up on a pedestal after watching how he acts, speaks and coaches.
So without further ado… A list of reasons why we hate Duke basketball yesterday, today and forever into eternity.
1. The Calls
In no other arena in the country does the home team get as many calls as the Duke Blue Devils. Some might say it’s because they play “fundamentally sound defense”. I say otherwise. In February of 2014, a number one ranked Syracuse team ventured into the unfriendly confines of Cameron Indoor arena to face off against Duke, ranked fifth at the time. The game was tight throughout and with less than fifteen seconds left and Syracuse down by two, CJ Fair drove baseline, past a weak defensive effort from Duke’s Tyler Thornton. Fair starts to gather to go up for a layup but as he’s going up, Duke’s Rodney Hood slides in, and jumps up into him, takes the hit like a champ and falls to the ground. Fair’s layup went in. What could have been an “and one!!!!!!!!!!” to put Syracuse up one with 10 seconds left, turned into a charge and a win for Duke simply on the strength of the referees being scared to go against Coach K. But I’ll let you judge for yourself.
Verdict?
2. The Flop
I have to give Duke credit where credit is due. They have perfected an aspect of basketball. It’s hard to do, it really is. They perfected the flop!
I have inside information, from a source not to be named, that Coach K specifically takes a full week — nearly 20 hours of practice!!!!! — to school his players, from starters to role players to bench guys to future Coach K assistants, on how to perfectly execute the head snap back, the minor contact arm flail and the guttural roar, that means “REF THAT MEAN GUY ON THE OTHER TEAM TOUCHED ME,” that comes out every time they take the ball to the hoop.
It’s obnoxious. It needs to stop. But it won’t!
Not even one time has a referee gone out of his way to show the Dookies their practices won’t affect his judgement. Not once has an official ever straight up laughed when a Dookie falls over with less contact than a powderpuff football game.
Case and point.
Ridiculous. Even my good pal Rodger Ayers couldn’t resist the Krzyzewski stare down. He got pulled into his tractor beam, had his brain taken over and turned into a Coach K cyborg for forty minutes of game time. Shameful.
And I’ll just leave that there for your viewing displeasure.
3. The Obnoxious White Guy
Before you go any further, this is more than a coincidence. It’s more than a trend. It’s an epidemic. It’s a cultural flaw. It is absolute horse crap. Everybody sees it and everybody and their grandmother knows it.
Ever since the 1982–83 season, Duke has had THAT GUY that everybody loves to hate. Keep in mind K was hired in 1980. It only took him two seasons to get his type of guys in there. These are just a few of the guys that stand out over the years. But trust me. There are plenty more.
1982–1986 — Jay Bilas
I was hesitant to put Jay Bilas on here because I actually enjoyed his book about toughness in life, but then I remembered he is one of the most homer, biased commentators ESPN has ever put on live television. Other hated player Danny Ferry was on the team in the 1985–86 season with Bilas.
1988–1992 — Laettner
No first name needed for this jackass. Of all the hated Dookies over the last thirty plus years, this guy might be the cream of crop. The biggest piece of crap in the entire pile of horse crap. The Mount Everest of egomania. Simply put — The Worst of the Worst. When you have an ESPN 30 for 30 made about you called “I Hate Christian Laettner” you must have been rubbing more than a few people the wrong way for many a year.
Remember the shot he hit against Kentucky in the Elite 8?
Of course you do.
Remember how, long before he took that shot, he stomped on Aminu Timberlake’s chest?
The dude has the nerve to say, “I made a mental note to go after him, get a little physical with him.” Legitimately admits to head hunting. Of course, every March, we don’t hear about “The Stomp” only “The Shot”. I HATE CHRISTIAN LAETTNER.
Cherokee Parks and Chris Collins also played on these teams. If Laettner was a 12 out of 10 on the scale of hate, these guys were easily 8.5s. Oh yeah, the other guy on this team was…
1989–1993 — Bobby Hurley
Do you know what “the floor slap” is? Does it give you this feeling of wanting to punch somebody in the nose? Yeah me too. You can thank Bobby Hurley for making that a real thing that people do. Most notably Duke. I almost put Hurley in the same group with Parks and Collins above, but then I realized Hurley was a more archetypal Duke flopper, crier and annoying floor presence than those two every were.
2005–2010 — Greg Paulus and Jon Scheyer
Oh man. Don’t even get me started. These guys were the first Duke players I ever yelled at the TV because of. Greg Paulus was a world class arm flailer and “and one” yeller while Jon Scheyer was a proficient cry baby and hall-of-fame head snapper. Watching these guys drove me crazy. “Yeah because you wish you could be them,” says every Duke fan ever. No, actually it’s because I couldn’t believe their parents would raise them in such an entitled, soft way they actually believe they are being assaulted and insulted every time they step on the floor. I can’t say for sure, but my dad claims I said my first curse word ever while yelling at Paulus for flopping in a game against the University of Virginia. Probably a lot of truth behind that one.
1609–2016 — Every. Single. Plumlee. Brother.
Since the day Jamestown was settled, people have despised the Plumlee Brothers!
Ahhhhh yes. Last but not least.
2014-Present — Grayson Allen
What words immediately pop into your mind when you hear that name?
Probably some combination of: flopper, whiner, crybaby, entitled, above the rules, cocky. At the top of the list? Serial TRIPPER.
He’s the worst of the worst! Sorry Mr. Laettner, you’ve been unseated. The most unbearable, ridiculous, floptastic Dookie of all time is none other than Grayson James Allen. The string of incidents and absurd moments he’s been involved in is unbelievable. It seems like every time Duke plays, Allen is in the middle of a controversy without fail. I can’t even put into words all of the things he’s done, so here are some videos for you to watch while I calm down.
I digress.
I’ve calmed down. But not really.
4. The 1995 (and 2016–17???) season
The ‘K Machine’ was rolling along. Thirteen years in and Krzyzewski had built his empire to unheralded heights. They had NBA players coming through and NCAA tournaments galore. Then disaster struck. COACH K HAD BACK SURGERY. According to doctors and physicians, following his operation, a rush back to basketball would have been a mistake for the University and Coach K. He was suffering from a back ailment and ‘exhaustion’ according to the Raleigh Free Press.
Vince Carter told a different story to Sports Illustrated in 1995 in regards to a recruiting visit he had with Coach K. According to Carter and SI, Krzyzewski was ‘up and about. He didn’t seem like a guy who has had all these back problems. He’s just anxious to get back.’ Interesting.
We hate Coach K because instead of taking the losses his team incurred during his absence, he handed them off to interim coach Pete Gaudet. The same interim coach that Krzyzewski told ‘not to call him’ while he was recovering. Unreal! Devils dropped their first conference game in ’95 to Clemson. Then K was gone. Duke would lose five
Even more suspiciously, following an underwhelming 9–3 performance in non-conference play, they lost five more in a row and finished the season unranked with a 13–18 record.
K left because his team wasn’t good. He didn’t want the losses on his record. If he wasn’t going to win, he didn’t want to be a part of it. He took the sucker’s way out.
Conspiracy Theory Time, you say? I oblige.
Coach K’s back isn’t hurt this time either. His team, once again, isn’t as good as he thought. The team K left in 1995 featured players like Cherokee Parks, current interim coach Jeff Capel, Erik Meek, Steve Wojciechowski, Chris Collins and Trajan Langdon. A pretty solid group of college players. His team this year is slightly more impressive, featuring numerous McDonald’s All-Americans and highly touted draft prospects.
K didn’t leave this season because his team wasn’t any good. He left because the public narrative on Duke was starting to change.
People were questioning his leadership. People were questioning his coaching. People were questioning whether or not Coach K had finally lost a step.
But that’s still not why he left. He’s trying to take the headlines away from Grayson Allen. Of all the things Coach K has done, from whining, to front running, to making his own rules, this is the lowest of the low. Instead of allowing his “star” player to take responsibility for his actions, Krzyzewski decided to baby Allen yet again and keep his name out of the media’s mouth as much as possible.
Back to my original question. Why do we put somebody like this up on a pedestal? We were quick to tear Joe Paterno down even though he had no knowledge of Jerry Sandusky’s actions. We were quick to throw Rick Pitino under the bus without any proof of his involvement in the Louisville scandal. Why then, do we as a society, allow Mike Krzyzewski to continually bend the rules, sleaze his way around controversy that comes his way and encourages his players to act the way they do?
I implore you. Please. With all sincerity and deadly seriousness: Do not let your kids root for Duke. Don’t let your neighbor root for Duke. Don’t let your worst enemy root for Duke. The way Duke University represents the game of college basketball is beyond poor.
At the end of the day, this is the five hundred millionth article explaining why Duke is the worst. However, it is the first that asks you to do something — to change the way you think about, praise and watch college basketball. Encourage the beauty that programs like Kansas, Arizona, Virginia and Villanova bring to the world. Don’t let the Duke Blue Devils penetrate your brain and convince you that complaining, flopping, floor slapping and crying correlates to good basketball.
It doesn’t.
Oh and by the way, Duke currently sits at 14–4 (2–3 in the ACC) and #18 in the country.
Is it karma? You decide.
