Is Coach K the main reason everyone hates Duke?
Israel Gutierrez of Miami Herald writes that everyone hates Duke, and it starts with Mike Krzyzewski.
No one wants Duke to win (Duke alumni excluded, of course). Not even a game. Not even a half.
Everyone hates Duke, and we’re not even sure why. For some reason, we know that if the devil had a face, it would have little beady eyes (like Mike Krzyzewski’s). If he had a voice, it would be nasally and annoying (like Krzyzewski’s) and if he had a name, it would be impossible to spell and the sound would follow no laws of language (like, well, you know).
Well, we all know that first part isn’t true. Any successful program/franchise is going to have fans outside of its alumni base and the Blue Devils are no different. Some might call these “bandwagon” fans, but as a 12-year-old back in 1986, I really liked Johnny Dawkins and loved the color blue, so I rooted for them all the way to the final, where they lost to Louisville. (Damn you, Pervis Ellison! And the color red!)
There’s no arguing that he elevated a basketball program into elite status upon arrival. From 1986 to 1999, he reached a ridiculous eight Final Fours and won those memorable back-to-back national championships, when NCAA basketball was still drenched with NBA talent.
But since then, it seems a lot of his colleagues have placed themselves in similar company, and yet, the head Blue Devil remains the most arrogant of the bunch.
To this day, he carries around a superiority complex that doesn’t match the success — at least not in the past decade.
Just last weekend, when he was asked about Duke’s “drought” about not reaching the Final Four since 2004, Krzyzewski offered this ego-heavy response.
“There are two words when you compete that are interesting — `since’ and `never,’ ” he said. “I’m glad we’re in the `since.’ ”
That’s not the most considerate thing to say when you’re about to face a Baylor coach who was on the “never” side of that coin.
But that’s who he is.
Gutierrez uses words like “arrogant,” “superiority complex” and “ego-heavy,” but what is this based on — that quote about “since” and “never”? Really? I’ve heard Krzyzewski interviewed plenty of times, and while he’s justifiably confident (not unlike any of his less-successful peers), he never has come off as cocky, at least not to me. Maybe he tires of the same questions over and over and he’s determined to put those last few tournament exits into perspective.
I’m sure this is a case of the “eye of the beholder,” but it’s the same type of rhetoric we hear about the players being elitist. Aside from Christian Laettner and J.J. Redick, which Duke players have walked around like their shit didn’t stink? And doesn’t every successful program have a couple of cocky players like those two in their history?
It comes with the territory.
Somehow, though, Krzyzewski carries a sense of entitlement, even on the court, when he attempts to, and often does, intimidate officials. Ask any Hurricanes fan who watched the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinals and you will be convinced it was his complaining that changed the direction of that game.
Let’s assume that Coach K is more successful at working the officials than his peers. We’re supposed to hold this against him? One way or another, every coach in the country works the officials from tip-off to the final buzzer, hoping to get his team their fair share of calls because they know the guy down at other bench is doing the exact same thing. Again, Gutierrez uses an ambiguous, subjective phrase like Krzyzewski “carries sense of entitlement” — what does this even mean?
Look, I don’t hold it against anyone if they dislike one team or another for being successful. I don’t like the Patriots or Yankees for a variety of reasons, but my reasons aren’t all that subjective. This ambiguous “air” that surrounds the Duke program is not as cut-and-dried as the Patriots’ videotaping the opponent’s sideline or stonewalling the press when they ask about it. It’s not as black and white as buying up all the good free agents and outspending every other team in the league in the hopes of buying another World Series title (even though the Yankees are just taking advantage of a broken system).
Duke haters throw around subjective terms like “arrogance” or “elitist” as if they are provable personal characteristics. Maybe the Duke student body or a few stars from years past are guilty of these traits, but this Duke team is neither arrogant or elitist. And that goes for the coach, too.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
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Posted in: College Basketball
Tags: 2010 NCAA Tournament, Coach K, Duke Blue Devils, Mike Krzyzewski
I think the “study” of Duke hatred is really interesting. Some have even suggested there’s a race issue behind it.
As someone who went to Carolina and had plenty of friends from both schools, I have to say that, personally, I don’t hate Coach K and I don’t remember him being really the center of everyone’s hatred for Duke. In fact, I think there’s a lot of respect for Coach K on both ends of Tobacco Road.
In my opinion, a lot of the hatred surrounds the behavior of their core fans. There’s this sentiment that they’re “pretending” to be rabid, that the “Cameron Crazies” are just a bunch of rich, preppy, nerdy kids who pretend to be “grass roots” when their basketball team dons the dark blue and go back to being silver spoon ninnies in between basketball seasons.
It’s one thing when the student body’s support is integral to the success of the program, when you’ve got a rag tag college with nothing else going for it and their students and outside fans are willing them to success. But Duke is not a rag tag school, it’s a de facto Ivy League prep school and its students would still have great careers and financial success and plenty else to look forward to if they didn’t have a basketball program. So there’s this sense that their “rabidity” over basketball is just a total sham. You know? When you see those kids pretending to act like a crazy drunken mob you have to just laugh at them.
Plus, the whole slapping the floor thing is just obnoxious. I mean, c’mon.
Duke hatred started with two words, Christian Laettner. His look epitomized the snobby elitist that people associate with a school like Duke. Did his hair ever go out of place during a game? He had a sense of arrogance/confidence that was irritating. I’m sure it was a feeling players like Jordan and LeBron have on the court that no one can stop them but his facial features couldn’t pull it off. I just wanted to punch him in the neck.
Granted, Laettner was extremely annoying if you weren’t rooting for him, but he played his last game at Duke 18 years ago. 18 years. And people still hate Duke because of him?
Laettner has become a tradition, dude. Most recently extended by the likes of JJ Redick and Kyle Singler.
C’mon, tell me you don’t look at Singler and just wanna ROCK him. (And by that I mean punch really hard in the face.)
I agree with the good Dr. Ebola. It’s not just Laettner, I agree with Redick and Singler… but please, Dr. E, do not forget Greg Paulus, by far the most annoying dookie ever, every time I saw Paulus I wanted to give him an atomic wedgie.
It’s also how some of the media, especially ESPN seem to be overly biased toward Duke, and I don’t mean Jay Bilas, who being a Duke alum and all is a little more balanced. I mean the likes of Dookie V, er, Dickie V. Seriously, I’ve heard him talk about Duke during this tournament and I think he’s been close to having an orgasm on camera thinking about his dookies going to the final four!!
Interesting that all these hated Duke players are white…hmmm…
Cannot forget Paulus, you’re right RAM. If I’m going one on one with Paulus and he slaps the floor, I’m just dribbling right past him.
And it’s true, JP, Klostermann said he thinks the reason people hate Duke is because they’re white. But then again, so was Harangody, Aldrich, Hansbrough, Bogut, and a bevy of other college stars and nobody wanted to punch them in the face. And that’s because they didn’t act like morons.
Hold on, I found a citation.
RAM, tell me this picture doesn’t embody Duke basketball and everything we hate about it:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v166/dhf23/JJ-Redick.jpg
How exactly does Kyle Singler “act like a moron”?