(03-18-2015 09:44 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  If Christian Laettner had grown up in Asheville, NC and was still kind of douchey and arrogant had that weird haircut and was feminine (or whatever that means); but he played at North Carolina instead of Duke would he be nearly as hated?

Not a chance. Nope, instead he would be Tyler Hansbrough, who was a hustler and a fighter and a competitor and an overachiever and blah, blah, blah.

If he grew up in Roanoke and was six inches shorter, had less of a low post game, and more polite, he'd be JJ Redick.

The Hansborough brothers are from the Midwest, not the South, as is most of Duke's roster this year. Okafor is from Chicago, Jones is from Minnesota, our last Plumlee (for awhile) is from Indiana. Cook is from DC (I guess that could be called the northeast, but nobody hates Quinn Cook), and we have a walk on from Massachusetts.

Tyler Hansborough was a flopper. Look at him wrong and he's ten feet away, on his back and crying. He fooled some NCAA refs but didn't fool many NBA refs.

By the way, you folks are really going to hate Luke Kennard next year. Great kid. He may be the most hateable Duke athlete since Laettner.

A strong plurality if not a majority of non-athlete students at Duke grew up in the South, depending on the year. But more come to Duke from the northeast than go to other nearby ACC schools, so it has that reputation as a school for northeasterners. It's kind of an inside joke.

I guess I just don't care where players come from? Pitt has a back up guard named Josh Newkirk who is from Raleigh/Durham. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Can he play? Can he help my team win games? If so, great. If not, we need to recruit someone to play ahead of him.

Similarly, I don't spend any time worrying about where the majority of Syracuse's fan base comes from? Who cares where their fans live or grew up? That is such a weird aspect to this entire discussion and it is weirder still that very few people are even questioning it.

My point is if you are an elitist institution, as North Carolina and Duke unquestionably are, it doesn't matter where your kids come from. North Carolina and Duke or both outstanding universities and both of them attract academic minded, wealthy, white kids. Just because one school has more wealthy white douche bags from New Jersey than the other, that doesn't somehow make it inherently less virtuous - unless you are a simpleminded redneck who is so stuck in the past he can't even fathom the future.

As for the obnoxious douche Duke is said to be bringing in next year, the documentary the other night correctly made the point that the hatred like we saw for Laettner will never be experienced again in college basketball because these guys that were as good as Laettner simply don't stay as long as they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It is the whole familiarity breeds contempt and principle.

In fact, that is the primary problem with college basketball, IMO. People talk about the declining interest in the sport overall and point to things like the declining quality of offensive play and the seeming omnipresence of the NCAA tournament and how it has consumed the regular season. However, from where I sit, the real problem is we don't know very many of these kids very well. Therefore we are less invested in their success/failure.

Back in the day, as a fan of the Big East, I would tune into a Georgetown game to root against Alonzo Morning or Patrick Ewing. I would tune into a Syracuse game to root against Derrick Coleman or Sherman Douglas. Nowadays, I couldn't even tell you who plays for any of those teams because all of the good players are gone after one year. For example, last year Syracuse had a guard who beat Pitt on half-court shot at the buzzer and he really crushed us in both of the games we played against him. However, as I write this, I can't even remember the kid's name (Ennis?). Also, I have no idea who he plays for in the NBA and I really don't care. That is a radical difference and it hurts the sport at every level.

It will probably never happen but if I were college basketball I would work with the NBA to have them adopt the model employed by professional baseball and hockey. Anyone can declare and be drafted coming out of high school or after their third year of college. However, once you get the college, you are there for three years. That would definitely help the majority of student-athletes and it would make a dramatic difference in the public's interest in college basketball as a whole, IMO.

Until they do something like that, I don't think most people are going to be very interested in college basketball. That Okafor kid for Duke is a great player but why would anyone get invested in him either way when he's only going to be a Duke student-athlete for about 35 or so games?

(03-19-2015 03:08 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I guess I just don't care where players come from? Pitt has a back up guard named Josh Newkirk who is from Raleigh/Durham. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Can he play? Can he help my team win games? If so, great. If not, we need to recruit someone to play ahead of him.

Similarly, I don't spend any time worrying about where the majority of Syracuse's fan base comes from? Who cares where their fans live or grew up? That is such a weird aspect to this entire discussion and it is weirder still that very few people are even questioning it.

My point is if you are an elitist institution, as North Carolina and Duke unquestionably are, it doesn't matter where your kids come from. North Carolina and Duke or both outstanding universities and both of them attract academic minded, wealthy, white kids. Just because one school has more wealthy white douche bags from New Jersey than the other, that doesn't somehow make it inherently less virtuous - unless you are a simpleminded redneck who is so stuck in the past he can't even fathom the future.

As for the obnoxious douche Duke is said to be bringing in next year, the documentary the other night correctly made the point that the hatred like we saw for Laettner will never be experienced again in college basketball because these guys that were as good as Laettner simply don't stay as long as they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It is the whole familiarity breeds contempt and principle.

In fact, that is the primary problem with college basketball, IMO. People talk about the declining interest in the sport overall and point to things like the declining quality of offensive play and the seeming omnipresence of the NCAA tournament and how it has consumed the regular season. However, from where I sit, the real problem is we don't know very many of these kids very well. Therefore we are less invested in their success/failure.

Back in the day, as a fan of the Big East, I would tune into a Georgetown game to root against Alonzo Morning or Patrick Ewing. I would tune into a Syracuse game to root against Derrick Coleman or Sherman Douglas. Nowadays, I couldn't even tell you who plays for any of those teams because all of the good players are gone after one year. For example, last year Syracuse had a guard who beat Pitt on half-court shot at the buzzer and he really crushed us in both of the games we played against him. However, as I write this, I can't even remember the kid's name (Ennis?). Also, I have no idea who he plays for in the NBA and I really don't care. That is a radical difference and it hurts the sport at every level.

It will probably never happen but if I were college basketball I would work with the NBA to have them adopt the model employed by professional baseball and hockey. Anyone can declare and be drafted coming out of high school or after their third year of college. However, once you get the college, you are there for three years. That would definitely help the majority of student-athletes and it would make a dramatic difference in the public's interest in college basketball as a whole, IMO.

Until they do something like that, I don't think most people are going to be very interested in college basketball. That Okafor kid for Duke is a great player but why would anyone get invested in him either way when he's only going to be a Duke student-athlete for about 35 or so games?

I agree 100% with every word of your post. I was responding to the idea that Christian Laettner was hated because he is from the Northeast, and that he played for a school that "was for kids from the Northeast."

I especially agree in that I too wish college basketball's relationship with the NBA was similar to what colleges have with MLB and NHL. I like Okafor, haven't heard anything bad about him, but like you said, I'm no more invested in him than he is in Duke. Well find out in a few weeks how invested he is, and like you said we'll likely only have him for 39 games at most. (To be fair, if someone had offered to pay me millions of dollars to leave Duke after my freshman year to play a game I enjoyed playing (at the time, probably Sid Meier's Civilization) I wouldn't have had to think about it for a second -- nobody offered me a dime to do that so my investment in Duke was a lot cheaper than Okafor's).

Not speaking of Okafor here, but if you took the 60 or so most talented and least academically interested players in a high school class out of the college basketball equation entirely, I think college basketball wouldn't be too much worse off.

You are a keen observer of the relationship between Duke and North Carolina, for being so new to the conference. "The vanity of small differences" is certainly a factor. North Carolina is Duke's older brother, but we don't have the kind of brother-brother relationship where the older brother is proud of the younger brother's success (even if at their expense) or where the brothers may fight but if anyone attacks either, the other on is on their attacker like white on rice. It's a lot more dysfunctional than that. It's Arrested Development dysfunctional. Where NC State and Wake fit in makes it even more complicated. (Wake is definitely Michael Bluth, haven't sorted who everyone else is out yet).

"Hate" is probably the wrong word for any of it.

Welcome to the family!

(03-19-2015 09:22 PM)opossum Wrote:  

(03-19-2015 03:08 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I guess I just don't care where players come from? Pitt has a back up guard named Josh Newkirk who is from Raleigh/Durham. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Can he play? Can he help my team win games? If so, great. If not, we need to recruit someone to play ahead of him.

Similarly, I don't spend any time worrying about where the majority of Syracuse's fan base comes from? Who cares where their fans live or grew up? That is such a weird aspect to this entire discussion and it is weirder still that very few people are even questioning it.

My point is if you are an elitist institution, as North Carolina and Duke unquestionably are, it doesn't matter where your kids come from. North Carolina and Duke or both outstanding universities and both of them attract academic minded, wealthy, white kids. Just because one school has more wealthy white douche bags from New Jersey than the other, that doesn't somehow make it inherently less virtuous - unless you are a simpleminded redneck who is so stuck in the past he can't even fathom the future.

As for the obnoxious douche Duke is said to be bringing in next year, the documentary the other night correctly made the point that the hatred like we saw for Laettner will never be experienced again in college basketball because these guys that were as good as Laettner simply don't stay as long as they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It is the whole familiarity breeds contempt and principle.

In fact, that is the primary problem with college basketball, IMO. People talk about the declining interest in the sport overall and point to things like the declining quality of offensive play and the seeming omnipresence of the NCAA tournament and how it has consumed the regular season. However, from where I sit, the real problem is we don't know very many of these kids very well. Therefore we are less invested in their success/failure.

Back in the day, as a fan of the Big East, I would tune into a Georgetown game to root against Alonzo Morning or Patrick Ewing. I would tune into a Syracuse game to root against Derrick Coleman or Sherman Douglas. Nowadays, I couldn't even tell you who plays for any of those teams because all of the good players are gone after one year. For example, last year Syracuse had a guard who beat Pitt on half-court shot at the buzzer and he really crushed us in both of the games we played against him. However, as I write this, I can't even remember the kid's name (Ennis?). Also, I have no idea who he plays for in the NBA and I really don't care. That is a radical difference and it hurts the sport at every level.

It will probably never happen but if I were college basketball I would work with the NBA to have them adopt the model employed by professional baseball and hockey. Anyone can declare and be drafted coming out of high school or after their third year of college. However, once you get the college, you are there for three years. That would definitely help the majority of student-athletes and it would make a dramatic difference in the public's interest in college basketball as a whole, IMO.

Until they do something like that, I don't think most people are going to be very interested in college basketball. That Okafor kid for Duke is a great player but why would anyone get invested in him either way when he's only going to be a Duke student-athlete for about 35 or so games?

I agree 100% with every word of your post. I was responding to the idea that Christian Laettner was hated because he is from the Northeast, and that he played for a school that "was for kids from the Northeast."

I especially agree in that I too wish college basketball's relationship with the NBA was similar to what colleges have with MLB and NHL. I like Okafor, haven't heard anything bad about him, but like you said, I'm no more invested in him than he is in Duke. Well find out in a few weeks how invested he is, and like you said we'll likely only have him for 39 games at most. (To be fair, if someone had offered to pay me millions of dollars to leave Duke after my freshman year to play a game I enjoyed playing (at the time, probably Sid Meier's Civilization) I wouldn't have had to think about it for a second -- nobody offered me a dime to do that so my investment in Duke was a lot cheaper than Okafor's).

Not speaking of Okafor here, but if you took the 60 or so most talented and least academically interested players in a high school class out of the college basketball equation entirely, I think college basketball wouldn't be too much worse off.

You are a keen observer of the relationship between Duke and North Carolina, for being so new to the conference. "The vanity of small differences" is certainly a factor. North Carolina is Duke's older brother, but we don't have the kind of brother-brother relationship where the older brother is proud of the younger brother's success (even if at their expense) or where the brothers may fight but if anyone attacks either, the other on is on their attacker like white on rice. It's a lot more dysfunctional than that. It's Arrested Development dysfunctional. Where NC State and Wake fit in makes it even more complicated. (Wake is definitely Michael Bluth, haven't sorted who everyone else is out yet).

"Hate" is probably the wrong word for any of it.

Welcome to the family!

I didn't attend one of those elitist universities (but mom did get her master's at one of them) but even I can see that you two are over thinking this thing. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. CL was disliked because he came across as a jerk. It is just that simple.

(03-17-2015 09:11 PM)opossum Wrote:  

(03-17-2015 08:10 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  Laettner came across as a self centered jerk when he was in college. We all could have been wrong. He could have been misunderstood. But his business life since then has shown the initial impression was absolutely correct.

Also, to call him the greatest college player ever is just plain wrong. He was very good, but a lot of players were very good. Lew A., B. Walton, Bill Russell, David Thompson, the Big O, Phil Ford, Danny Manning come to mind as contending for the honor of being the best college player ever, just off the top of my head.

No college player accomplished more than Laettner, if you don't think he was the greatest, it's probably because you're applying some subjective criteria like "didn't play for Duke." I mean Phil Ford? Really?

The same way some people don't recognize Krzyzewski as the greatest college coach, because one of their criteria is "didn't coach for Duke."

I totally get it, and I sympathize. My biases on those two questions dovetail quite perfectly with objective reality, but I can understand how uncomfortable it can be when one's biases don't. Maybe that's the real answer to the documentary's title question.

Ever heard of Lew Alcindor?

During his college career, Alcindor was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969); was a three-time First Team All-American (1967–69); played on three NCAA basketball champion teams (1967, 1968, 1969); was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament (1967, 1968, 1969); and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969.

In 1967 and 1968, he also won USBWA College Player of the Year which later became the Oscar Robertson Trophy. Alcindor became the only player to win the Helms Foundation Player of the Year award three times. The 1965–66 UCLA Bruin team was the preseason #1. But on November 27, 1965, the freshman team led by Alcindor defeated the varsity team 75–60 in the first game in the new Pauley Pavilion.[19] Alcindor scored 31 points and had 21 rebounds in that game.

(03-18-2015 09:44 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  If Christian Laettner had grown up in Asheville, NC and was still kind of douchey and arrogant had that weird haircut and was feminine (or whatever that means); but he played at North Carolina instead of Duke would he be nearly as hated?

Not a chance. Nope, instead he would be Tyler Hansbrough, who was a hustler and a fighter and a competitor and an overachiever and blah, blah, blah.

The reason why people hated Christian Laettner as much as they did/do was because he was white, he was from the northeast and he played for a program that is the gold standard in the sport over the last three decades. Basically, it can be summed up into words: roster envy.

I am not a Duke fan by any stretch and I get extremely annoyed with the self-aggrandizing nature of that school. It can be way over the top and flat out obnoxious. However, The Duke/North Carolina relationship reminds me a lot of whenever Michigan and Ohio State fans complain about the arrogance of Notre Dame. It's such a lack of self-awareness it is almost breathtaking. It's sort of like the guy who drives the BMW who thinks that his neighbor who drives a Lexus is a little too showy.

No fans other than Carolina fans liked Tyler Hansbrough. He was a whinner.

(03-20-2015 06:59 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(03-19-2015 09:22 PM)opossum Wrote:  

(03-19-2015 03:08 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I guess I just don't care where players come from? Pitt has a back up guard named Josh Newkirk who is from Raleigh/Durham. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Can he play? Can he help my team win games? If so, great. If not, we need to recruit someone to play ahead of him.

Similarly, I don't spend any time worrying about where the majority of Syracuse's fan base comes from? Who cares where their fans live or grew up? That is such a weird aspect to this entire discussion and it is weirder still that very few people are even questioning it.

My point is if you are an elitist institution, as North Carolina and Duke unquestionably are, it doesn't matter where your kids come from. North Carolina and Duke or both outstanding universities and both of them attract academic minded, wealthy, white kids. Just because one school has more wealthy white douche bags from New Jersey than the other, that doesn't somehow make it inherently less virtuous - unless you are a simpleminded redneck who is so stuck in the past he can't even fathom the future.

As for the obnoxious douche Duke is said to be bringing in next year, the documentary the other night correctly made the point that the hatred like we saw for Laettner will never be experienced again in college basketball because these guys that were as good as Laettner simply don't stay as long as they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It is the whole familiarity breeds contempt and principle.

In fact, that is the primary problem with college basketball, IMO. People talk about the declining interest in the sport overall and point to things like the declining quality of offensive play and the seeming omnipresence of the NCAA tournament and how it has consumed the regular season. However, from where I sit, the real problem is we don't know very many of these kids very well. Therefore we are less invested in their success/failure.

Back in the day, as a fan of the Big East, I would tune into a Georgetown game to root against Alonzo Morning or Patrick Ewing. I would tune into a Syracuse game to root against Derrick Coleman or Sherman Douglas. Nowadays, I couldn't even tell you who plays for any of those teams because all of the good players are gone after one year. For example, last year Syracuse had a guard who beat Pitt on half-court shot at the buzzer and he really crushed us in both of the games we played against him. However, as I write this, I can't even remember the kid's name (Ennis?). Also, I have no idea who he plays for in the NBA and I really don't care. That is a radical difference and it hurts the sport at every level.

It will probably never happen but if I were college basketball I would work with the NBA to have them adopt the model employed by professional baseball and hockey. Anyone can declare and be drafted coming out of high school or after their third year of college. However, once you get the college, you are there for three years. That would definitely help the majority of student-athletes and it would make a dramatic difference in the public's interest in college basketball as a whole, IMO.

Until they do something like that, I don't think most people are going to be very interested in college basketball. That Okafor kid for Duke is a great player but why would anyone get invested in him either way when he's only going to be a Duke student-athlete for about 35 or so games?

I agree 100% with every word of your post. I was responding to the idea that Christian Laettner was hated because he is from the Northeast, and that he played for a school that "was for kids from the Northeast."

I especially agree in that I too wish college basketball's relationship with the NBA was similar to what colleges have with MLB and NHL. I like Okafor, haven't heard anything bad about him, but like you said, I'm no more invested in him than he is in Duke. Well find out in a few weeks how invested he is, and like you said we'll likely only have him for 39 games at most. (To be fair, if someone had offered to pay me millions of dollars to leave Duke after my freshman year to play a game I enjoyed playing (at the time, probably Sid Meier's Civilization) I wouldn't have had to think about it for a second -- nobody offered me a dime to do that so my investment in Duke was a lot cheaper than Okafor's).

Not speaking of Okafor here, but if you took the 60 or so most talented and least academically interested players in a high school class out of the college basketball equation entirely, I think college basketball wouldn't be too much worse off.

You are a keen observer of the relationship between Duke and North Carolina, for being so new to the conference. "The vanity of small differences" is certainly a factor. North Carolina is Duke's older brother, but we don't have the kind of brother-brother relationship where the older brother is proud of the younger brother's success (even if at their expense) or where the brothers may fight but if anyone attacks either, the other on is on their attacker like white on rice. It's a lot more dysfunctional than that. It's Arrested Development dysfunctional. Where NC State and Wake fit in makes it even more complicated. (Wake is definitely Michael Bluth, haven't sorted who everyone else is out yet).

"Hate" is probably the wrong word for any of it.

Welcome to the family!

I didn't attend one of those elitist universities (but mom did get her master's at one of them) but even I can see that you two are over thinking this thing. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. CL was disliked because he came across as a jerk. It is just that simple.

I don't know what to say, two replies to posts of mine that I completely agree with in a row. Is it a full moon? He definitely came across as a jerk, and that's why he was hated. He came across as a jerk because he was a) very, very good (i'm done with the debate about whether he was the "best," any idiot can come up with random metrics by which he was not -- he doesn't hold every single record that he could have achieved, I'll give them that); b) knew how good he was; c) let everyone around him know both a) and b) constantly; and d) was very hard on his teammates, even beyond c). But you're right, it's just that simple.

All the racial and cultural theories on the 30 for 30 made for entertaining TV, and more opportunities to watch Duke highlights, but that's it.

(03-20-2015 07:24 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(03-18-2015 09:44 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  If Christian Laettner had grown up in Asheville, NC and was still kind of douchey and arrogant had that weird haircut and was feminine (or whatever that means); but he played at North Carolina instead of Duke would he be nearly as hated?

Not a chance. Nope, instead he would be Tyler Hansbrough, who was a hustler and a fighter and a competitor and an overachiever and blah, blah, blah.

The reason why people hated Christian Laettner as much as they did/do was because he was white, he was from the northeast and he played for a program that is the gold standard in the sport over the last three decades. Basically, it can be summed up into words: roster envy.

I am not a Duke fan by any stretch and I get extremely annoyed with the self-aggrandizing nature of that school. It can be way over the top and flat out obnoxious. However, The Duke/North Carolina relationship reminds me a lot of whenever Michigan and Ohio State fans complain about the arrogance of Notre Dame. It's such a lack of self-awareness it is almost breathtaking. It's sort of like the guy who drives the BMW who thinks that his neighbor who drives a Lexus is a little too showy.

No fans other than Carolina fans liked Tyler Hansbrough. He was a whinner.

And a flopper. If the measure of greatness in college basketball (since it's come up) is acting ability regarding both offensive and defensive fouls, either as the foul-ee or the foul-er, there is no contest: Tyler Hansbrough is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. And that's saying a lot coming from a Duke fan. We've had a few contenders, but nobody did it better.

(03-20-2015 07:07 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(03-17-2015 09:11 PM)opossum Wrote:  

(03-17-2015 08:10 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  Laettner came across as a self centered jerk when he was in college. We all could have been wrong. He could have been misunderstood. But his business life since then has shown the initial impression was absolutely correct.

Also, to call him the greatest college player ever is just plain wrong. He was very good, but a lot of players were very good. Lew A., B. Walton, Bill Russell, David Thompson, the Big O, Phil Ford, Danny Manning come to mind as contending for the honor of being the best college player ever, just off the top of my head.

No college player accomplished more than Laettner, if you don't think he was the greatest, it's probably because you're applying some subjective criteria like "didn't play for Duke." I mean Phil Ford? Really?

The same way some people don't recognize Krzyzewski as the greatest college coach, because one of their criteria is "didn't coach for Duke."

I totally get it, and I sympathize. My biases on those two questions dovetail quite perfectly with objective reality, but I can understand how uncomfortable it can be when one's biases don't. Maybe that's the real answer to the documentary's title question.

Ever heard of Lew Alcindor?

During his college career, Alcindor was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969); was a three-time First Team All-American (1967–69); played on three NCAA basketball champion teams (1967, 1968, 1969); was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament (1967, 1968, 1969); and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969.

In 1967 and 1968, he also won USBWA College Player of the Year which later became the Oscar Robertson Trophy. Alcindor became the only player to win the Helms Foundation Player of the Year award three times. The 1965–66 UCLA Bruin team was the preseason #1. But on November 27, 1965, the freshman team led by Alcindor defeated the varsity team 75–60 in the first game in the new Pauley Pavilion.[19] Alcindor scored 31 points and had 21 rebounds in that game.

Sure I have. He was in Airplane! Give Duke and Laettner a bye to the Final Four every year, keep UNLV out altogether, then compare the two.

Everything about the Helms foundation is horse hockey. It's pathetic, but I know of a school that claims a completely unearned "national championship" because the Helms Foundation said they got it. Any school with an ounce of self respect would say "Um, okay, thanks," but this school actually hangs a banner in their arena based on a shoe salesman retroactively declaring them national champions. I won't name any names.