I didn't think Rose's point was that Grant Hill was--objectively--an Uncle Tom. The point was that as a 19-year old kid, who had significant anger toward his own father, significant anger about growing up poor, he saw Grant Hill as a Tom and the Duke program as targeting Toms.Also, a good post in the comments of that blog post on Duke's recruiting:
That's very different than making an actual, literal case that, say, Elton Brand [is an] Uncle Tom. Rose is dismissive of Christian Laettner, but he actually says he only felt that way, "until I got on the floor with him." I'm not sure why that's wrong. I could fill a blog post about the objectionable thoughts I had at 19. It almost gives the thing too much credit to say people are "taking it out of context." From what I can tell, folks heard "Duke" and "Uncle Tom" and then stopped listening.
There are a couple of factors. I don't think, for example, Duke is more interested in background than UNC, but over time when your program gets to a point when you can pick and choose who you recruit you go for the best player who is going to cause you the least amount of trouble and graduate. They may come from a single parent home or not, but you can avoid kids than seem headed for trouble (Dean stopped recruiting Chris Washburn for this reason). It's kind of like Oprah. When her show first started she was doing paternity test, KKK, and makeover shows like everyone else, once she got success she was able to do it the way she wanted to.posted by AceRock at 2:08 PM on March 16, 2011 [3 favorites]
Duke is very skilled at PR for their program. The basketball program is definitely used to sell the school. For example, every year they will play at least one Ivy League team in a non conference game. They are trying with this to sell Duke as being in the same class as the Ivies, but we also have a great basketball team which they don't have, you'll have more fun if you come here. Those are the students they are trying to appeal to. This further adds to the tension between UNC & Duke because most of them aren't from NC and don't really care for the state. I went on a recruiting trip to Duke and on the tour the guide said,'the only thing good about this state is this university.' He obviously didn't know I was a native. I also happen to think the annual drubbing an Ivy League school is important to the students as some of them didn't get into those institutions, probably one of the few times they had been told 'no'. One of the jokes at UNC is the easiet way to shut up a Dookie is just say 'Harvard.'
They will usually schedule a game in the NY/NJ area as they have a lot of alumni there. The biggest difference between Coach K and his mentor Bobby Knight is the former's understanding of good relations with the media. That said I think the hatred for Duke ,outside of NC & MD especially, is due to the constant media narrative of Duke as the ONLY school that does it the right way. There are plenty of schools that are on the level of Duke in bball and academics but they have been singled out. It's the same push back seen in the Tebow and Tyler Hansbrough phenomena.
There is definitely an element of race involved. I think people realize Duke is being pushed to the forefront by the media in part because they attract white athletes who are stars in their program. This is the part that makes people mad, not at the athletes, but at the way their whiteness is celebrated. Through no fault of their own becoming media darlings created a backlash. Coach K embraced the backlash and uses it as motivation for his team. Dick Vitale was really bad about it.
As a big fan of this blog, I'm a little disappointed in what appears to be TNC's acceptance of the received wisdom on Duke hatred, since he's such a perceptive debunker of equivalent shallow thinking on similar topics. I arrive at Duke the same year Coach K did (1980), and I was no fan of Duke basketball -- their late 70s teams that were very good featured white guys, like Mike Gminski and Jim Spanarkel, who didn't favorably impress me (I grew up in Philly and rooted for Big 5 schools like LaSalle, where my father had gone). I've watched and thought about the anti-Duke phenomenon for many years, and while I don't think the explanation for it is simple, I don't think either the quote highlighted by TNC or the "Duke turns up its collective nose at people like (me)" narrative are all that accurate. I think the two most important things to keep in mind when evaluating one's perceptions of Duke are these:posted by AceRock at 2:24 PM on March 16, 2011 [6 favorites]
(1) If you read K's books and listen to stuff he says, he's always been very consistent about how he recruits. He came from what he describes as a working class background and revered his parents, who he viewed as sacrificing everything to make possible a better life for him and his brother; he went to West Point; he got into a profession that, by definition, relies on adherence to authority. He clearly has two big personal obsessions: "family" as the most important thing someone can devote one's self to, and adherence to authority as the organizing principle for achieving anything. He has always been forthright about saying that he tries to recruit players who've been instilled growing up with the same core values. I remember reading that he says that the most important thing he pays attention to during recruiting is how the kid acts toward his parent(s) -- if the kid shows the proper respect and deference and appreciation toward Mom and Dad, that's the kind of kid he wants. He makes much of trying to create a "family" atmosphere with the team, and involves his wife and grown daughters a great deal in trying to create that atmosphere. The kids who choose to go there always cite that as important to their decisions, and players long graduated always talk about that.
Basically, K's always operated with a highly developed conception of what he thinks it takes to be successful, and a lot of that, perhaps self-servingly, focuses on getting talented players who are going to easily accept him as an all-powerful authority figure, and who are going to pull together as a "family" under the unquestioned leadership of "Dad" K. One can pick bones about this philosophy as archaic, shortsighted, even sexist, but I have a tough time seeing it as racial. I think it does tend to self-select toward certain types -- sons of coaches (Bobby Hurley, Jeff Capel, Chris Collins), sons of successful pro athletes who made their peace with/became part of the system (Danny Ferry, Grant Hill, Nolan Smith, Seth Curry). I don't think it's coincidence that so many Duke players, black and white, go into coaching. But it doesn't necessarily rule out kids based on race or economics. K rightly gives credit to his first big recruit, Johnny Dawkins, for making the program. Dawkins grew up in modest circumstances in DC. Chris Carrawell came from similar circumstances in St. Louis. Ditto William Avery from Augusta, GA. I'm not sure that any of those guys had a father in their lives, but I know Elton Brand and Chris Duhon didn't, yet they passed the test as K's kind of kid, so two-parent families don't seem to be a requirement.
The idea that Duke as an institution exerts some kind of pressure over K in terms of who he recruits or how he presents his program is farcical. The guy is the most powerful and autonomous person at that school, and has been for two decades. Yes, the school piggy backs on the basketball team's success, no differently than any other school does with a successful sports program. The only influence the school exerts is that it establishes minimal test score requirements for recruits (the school does fancy itself as academically selective, after all). Maybe that does put certain kids on the outside. But at this point, the Duke basketball team's image is almost self-perpetuating in terms of the players it gets -- the JJ Redicks and Greg Pauluses grew up wanting to play for Duke, and maybe that had something to do with Duke having a certain number of white players, but they still had to be good enough. Maybe if you're an elite white basketball player who does reasonably well in school and wants to play for an elite program and go to an elite academic school, you're going to be really interested in being recruited by Coach K. Does that merit the racial rancor that gets directed at Duke?
(2) The lazy explanation for all of the praise Duke gets from Vitale and his ilk is that it's all inherently racial, that it's a bunch of old white guys loving that a white team is successful and doing it "the right way" and all of that. Maybe. But I think it's more about the inherent hypocrisy of big time college sports and those paid large sums to flack it. Think about the cognitive dissonance those guys must endure -- they know that big time college basketball is not a haven of "student athletes" getting in some extracurricular activity while vigorously pursuing higher learning, supported by an institution committed to ensuring their academic progress. Yet they have to pretend that John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins (we'll forget about Corey Maggette and Josh McRoberts for the moment) are just like any other UK frosh except that they have a marketable skill that compels them to start earning money prior to getting the degree that they began so earnestly to pursue.
Think of how psychologically comfortable it is for those guys to praise Duke for "doing it the right way" et al., with players who graduate and don't get in trouble and don't consort with Worldwide Wes. I'm sure Vitale wishes that every program was as praiseworthy on his terms as is Duke -- it would make his job selling the glories of the NCAA so much easier. In fact, I bet that if there was a program like Duke's that featured nothing but "good kids" who "do things the right way" and were very successful and had nothing but black players, Vitale et al. would fall all over themselves praising that program with twice the vehemence they shower on Duke. I've got nothing original to add to all the jaded observations of big time college sports. But even propagandists must especially enjoy those moments when they believe their propaganda is true. (Of course, the received view of Duke is becoming less so as time goes by, given that as many Duke players leave school early as anywhere else. I think it's true that the Duke praise has decreased in recent years, tempered both by backlash and by reality).
Personally, I got over my Duke hatred when I decided to go there. I went to every game I could, cheered for bad teams (12-18 both my sophomore and junior years), got to see the beginnings of what the program would become, went to class with (I really did) and cheered for black and white players. It's been a lot of fun to be a Duke fan for the last 30 years, and not because Christian Laettner is white, or Grant Hill grew up in the suburbs, or Dick Vitale makes an ass of himself regularly.
“I don’t have any issues with Grant today,” King said in a phone interview. “I’ve grown up. I don’t view people in that manner anymore. Today I understand why Duke would recruit the sort of people that they’re viewed to recruit. If that’s what that school is looking for, that’s fine. That was where we were coming from 20 years ago.posted by auto-correct at 2:28 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
My theory is that, for whatever reason, fans have a need to belittle opponents in order to feel better about themselves. And for crowds that are predominately white, spewing venom at another white person allows them to unload all of that hatred without the fear of being labeled racist. How would it be received if white fans taunted black players the way they went at Redick? You know how. So did the fans. Those college kids were mean, but they weren’t dumb.posted by AceRock at 3:52 PM on March 16, 2011 [3 favorites]
it's worth watching this video of Great NCAA Moments in Lego Form for the moment when Lego Chris Webber calls time out
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Chris Webber, the most famous member of the group, chose not to be involved in the film presumably because of the NCAA violations he was later convicted of.
posted by auto-correct at 12:47 PM on March 16, 2011