My teammates at Duke — all of them, black and white — were a band of brothers who came together to play at the highest level for the best coach in basketball. I know most of the black players who preceded and followed me at Duke. They all contribute to our tradition of excellence on the court.

It is insulting and ignorant to suggest that men like Johnny Dawkins (coach at Stanford), Tommy Amaker (coach at Harvard), Billy King (general manager of the Nets), Tony Lang (coach of the Mitsubishi Diamond Dolphins in Japan), Thomas Hill (small-business owner in Texas), Jeff Capel (former coach at Oklahoma and Virginia Commonwealth), Kenny Blakeney (assistant coach at Harvard), Jay Williams (ESPN analyst), Shane Battier (Memphis Grizzlies) and Chris Duhon (Orlando Magic) ever sold out their race.

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous. All of us are extremely proud of the current Duke team, especially Nolan Smith. He was raised by his mother, plays in memory of his late father and carries himself with the pride and confidence that they instilled in him.

Well said, Grant.

In a recent column, FoxSports columnist Jason Whitlock took the Fab Five to task for saying such things:

The Fab Five clearly believe Coach K and Duke didn’t and don’t recruit inner-city black kids, and they believe race/racism/elitism are the driving forces behind the philosophy.

Let’s go back to the Fab Five era and Duke’s philosophy then. Coach K recruited kids who had every intention of staying in school for four years. He recruited kids who had a good chance of competing academically at Duke and could meet the standardized test score qualifications for entrance.

The Fab Five stated it was their intention to win a national championship and turn pro as a group after their sophomore season. Webber, who was recruited by Duke, left Michigan after two years. Rose and Howard left as juniors. Impoverished inner-city kids have good reason to turn pro early. I’m not knocking Webber, Howard and Rose for their decisions. They didn’t fit the Duke profile at the time.

During the three-year run of the Fab Five (one season without Webber), Duke beat Michigan all four times the schools met while winning two ACC titles and one NCAA title. During the same span, Michigan won zero conference or national titles. In addition, Webber’s interactions with booster Ed Martin put the program on probation and caused Michigan to forfeit all its games.

I think Coach K recruited and recruits the right kids for Duke.

It turns out that Jalen Rose was the executive producer of the documentary, so it would be tough to argue that his words were taken out of context.

ESPN is currently running a two-hour documentary about Michigan’s Fab Five (Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson, and if you haven’t seen it, I’d definitely recommend it. Webber didn’t agree to participate, but the interviews with the other four members along with members of the coaching staff were quite compelling.

Yesterday, the internet was abuzz with comments made by the former Michigan players about Duke and especially Christian Laettner, whom Rose thought was an “overrated pu**y,” until he actually played against him and saw that he had some serious game. I’ll leave those comments alone since Rose eventually gave Laettner credit, but there are a few other moments in the documentary that jumped out at me:

1. Rose hated Duke because they wouldn’t recruit someone like him; they only recruited “Uncle Tom”-type black players. He also admitted he hated Grant Hill because Hill grew up in a great home while Rose grew up poor with an absentee father. Rose probably hit the nail on the head with regard to why many inner city blacks resent/criticize suburban blacks; it’s out of envy. They see lives that are more comfortable than theirs, and they lash out in anger. The Fab Five translated this to a hatred of the Duke players, including guys like Grant Hill and Thomas Hill.

I suspect if Mike Krzyzewski were asked about his recruiting habits and answered honestly, he’d say that he had the luxury of recruiting players (of whatever race) that he thought would fit into his team-first concept. He already had a successful college program, so why recruit a ‘risky’ player like Rose who may or may not fit into what he’s trying to build? The last thing he wants is to have a to battle a player on a daily basis.

In the end, Duke was 3-0 against the Fab Five, so I’d say the Blue Devils got the last laugh.

2. Forget the shorts, shoes, socks or even the style of play. The thing that bothered me about the Fab Five was the in-your-face taunting. The film was great because it reminded me of what I didn’t like about the Fab Five. Their play was outstanding. Nobody hogged the ball and winning was paramount, so from a pure basketball respect, they were wonderful. It was all the antics that drove me nuts. There were several highlights that showed the players getting into the face of the opponent after the guy was just dunked on. It’s one thing to over-celebrate with your teammates, but to show up an opponent like that is just bad sportsmanship. This was explained away as being part of the inner city playground culture, but my guess is that if they would have gotten into someone’s face on the playground, they would have been punched in the nose (or worse). At the time, officials didn’t really call taunting technicals, so there were no consequences to those actions. Oh, and Juwan Howard was the worst. Webber or Rose would dunk and there comes Howard, getting into the grill of the guy who just got dunked on. It was no surprise that against Ohio St. in their first Final Four, Howard got headbutt to the nose at one point in the game.

3. The Fab Five felt entitled to the money they were generating. This is understandable given their relative upbringings, but the Fab Five obviously didn’t value education very much if they didn’t think they were getting anything in return for their basketball prowess. They were also receiving free coaching, which improved their games and helped Webber, Rose and Howard have long and very profitable careers. What’s funny is that Rose came to this conclusion during a 16-day tour of Europe where the Wolverines traveled around and played a few professional teams in exhibition games. He looked around to the packed gym and said, “Somebody’s getting paid, and it isn’t us.” Keep in mind that the team got a FREE TRIP TO EUROPE, complete with food and board. This mentality is a little strange to me.

4. Rose brags about his trash talking, but then is surprised with Illinois fans return the favor. Rose freely admits do doing research about a player and then using that research against him. He might bring up the player’s mom or something that happened in the player’s family in an attempt to get into the player’s head. But when Rose got in trouble for being at a “crack house” (even though it wasn’t really a crack house), and the Illinois fans started chanting “Craaaaaack House” and “Just Say No,” Rose was surprised. He went on to have a great game, but shouldn’t he have respected what the Orange Crush was doing?

5. UNC/Michigan was a really weird game for me. As a long-time Duke fan, the 1992 title win over Michigan was obviously a great night. The documentary was cut in a way to make the game seem closer than it was, but the Blue Devils beat the Wolverines by 20 points even though Michigan held a one-point lead at halftime. The 1993 title game was a different story, because it was probably the only time I’ve ever rooted for North Carolina to win a basketball game. The documentary did a great job breaking down everything that led to Webber’s notorious timeout, including what was said in the huddle before the play and what might have happened along the Michigan bench to prompt Webber to ask for a timeout. There was a great, long shot of Webber walking off the court and the filmmakers also included the pretty painful post game press conference.

6. Webber was indicted for lying under oath about taking money from a Michigan booster. Rose didn’t get in trouble because he admitted to taking cash while in school. It’s estimated (alleged) that Webber took $280 K from a Michigan booster who was also an admitted bookmaker. Mitch Albom says that he got to know the Fab Five as well as or better than any writer during that time, and he doesn’t see how Webber could possibly have that much money stashed away without flaunting it in one way or another. He argues that Webber may have taken it after he declared for the draft, but that doesn’t jive with Rose’s accounts that he took money throughout college. Something’s not adding up. Regardless, the university made the decision to vacate the two Final Four appearances and those banners are sitting in storage somewhere.

7. “Our legacy is that we were bigger than the final score.” — Jalen Rose
This is exactly why so many people were turned off by the Fab Five. It’s a style versus substance argument, and what kills me is that this group had plenty of both. The only reason Rose says this about their legacy is because they never won a national championship. They were blown out by a better team in 1992 and Webber’s timeout (along with countless other plays throughout the game) cost them a chance to win it all in 1993. While it’s true that the Fab Five will always be remembered, it’s not always for good reasons. Many people associate the Fab Five with taunting or the rise of the hip-hop culture, when they should be remembered for playing really good basketball.

ESPN is replaying “The Fab Five” throughout next week. I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

The results are interesting. While 37% of respondents freely admit that they don’t hate Duke, that means that 63% do, for one reason or another. The top reasons were “they get all the calls” with 20%, “private school, elitist student body” with 14%, and “Christian Laettner, J.J. Redick, etc.” with 8%. Surprisingly, “Coach K” (3%) and “they win too much” (4%) were not popular responses.

As we get ready for the Duke/Butler matchup tonight, I thought it would be interesting to get my buddy (and Duke hater) LaRusso on the line to bash the Blue Devils.

John Paulsen: You’re a proud Duke hater, correct?

LaRusso: I am.

JP: What’s the biggest reason you hate Duke?

LR: It seems like, I don’t know if they have a sense of entitlement, but columnists, I guess ESPN, Dick Vitale, just seem to put them up on a pedestal a lot. They’re on TV all the time. They’re a good program — a top of the line program — so they’re going to draw attention. Like me, people hate them or people love them. One way or another they’re going to move the needle. So I think it’s a perceived elitist mentality of how they are so much better than everybody. They seem to get calls, they get more publicity than other schools. So I think that’s the driving factor.

JP: So one article I read listed like five reasons why people hate Duke and a commenter added a few more, so want to list them off and see what you think. So you think that they’re media darlings?

LR: Yes.

JP: They’re often compared to the Yankees, Cowboys and Patriots, and I guess the Lakers in terms of how much attention they get. I don’t like the Yankees comparison because it’s not like Duke can go out and outspend everybody. If anything, Coach K is at a disadvantage when compared with, say, North Carolina, in terms of recruiting because of Duke’s high academic standards.

LR: They do have tougher standards for academics. Some schools make concessions for athletes, I don’t know if Duke does that, it doesn’t seem like it. They always have smart kids. I don’t know if they’re on the same level as the Yankees and Red Sox. That’s all the media talks about. And in football, I’d probably say it’s more Cowboys — I don’t think the Patriots get much love. They’re probably more hated now than loved like they were when Brady first came up and they started winning. It seems to have flipped 180 on them.

JP: Well, we don’t have a local football team in Southern California, and if the Chargers aren’t on. We’re going to get the Cowboys because people either love them or they hate them. But it’s funny to me, because those teams that Duke is compared to — I hate them all. I don’t like the Yankees, or the Patriots or the Cowboys, so the fact that I’ve been a Duke fan since the days of Johnny Dawkins strikes some people as funny. I just gravitated towards the way that Coach K gets his kids to play night in and night out. We’ve talked about this in the past — I really take offense to this whole Yankees argument –

LR: I guess a better way to put it is that Duke is force-fed to us a little too much.

JP: Ok. I get it about Dick Vitale. There were some years there where he was way over the top in his love for Duke, and he was always doing their games, so I know that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. It’s sort of how annoying Pat Summerall and John Madden were when they were doing the Cowboys games in the early ’90s. But it’s not like there are a lot of columnists out there now who are just talking about how great Duke is.

LR: They were getting bashed because everyone thought they’d be the first #1 to go out, and they didn’t have any talent. I think that was more people wanting them to lose. I think if people looked at them at the end of the season then they probably were the top team because their big guys got better, so I think it’s just that people hate them as usual. I know that’s why I picked them to lose.

JP: The guy from the Kansas City Star — Jason Whitlock — wrote that CBS wanted Duke to make the Final Four because of the ratings so they put them in the easiest region.

LR: If you look at the next top three seeds in their region, Villanova was playing terrible at the end of the season. Baylor had a good season but they had never been a high seed so we weren’t sure how they’d respond and then Purdue, without Robbie Hummel.

JP: I buy that with Villanova and with Purdue, because West Virginia was the top #2 seed, and K-State and Ohio State were really good too. And those three went to the non-Duke region. But I wonder if it had more to do with geography since Duke was in the South.

LR: They’re supposed to do that S-curve thing, so in theory they were saying that Kentucky was the worst of the four #1 seeds. Which, when you look at the numbers, Duke had the #1 or #2 RPI, and had a really tough strength of schedule, so I think the perception was that they were the last #1, but the numbers didn’t say that.

JP: Yeah, when you look at the metrics, everything I saw had Kansas #1 and Duke #2. I just don’t think there was some master plan to get Duke to the Final Four, but that’s the perception, at least from Jason Whitlock’s point of view. But looking at my list of reasons why people hate Duke, the #1 reason to me is Christian Laettner.

LR: Yes!

JP: He started everything. I don’t really remember people hating Duke when Johnny Dawkins or Danny Ferry were playing, but I was younger at the time.

LR: And plus, they were still underdogs at the time.

JP: And then Laettner, I think it’s safe to say that he was kind of a dick on the court. I think he stepped on somebody’s head or chest or something.

LR: Yeah the “best game ever” tournament game against Kentucky.

JP: He was obviously a great college player, but he really turned a lot of people against Duke, and sort of put the spotlight on them as being the villain.

LR: He looked like the kind of kid that grew up at the country club and I could see him saying things like, “you’re going to valet my car after you graduate.”

JP: Then it seemed like there was a quiet time when there wasn’t really anyone to hate.

LR: I hated Wojciechowski. He was an irritating little gnat. He seemed to do the slapping the floor thing a lot. And that got really old.

JP: Yeah, Duke haters definitely don’t like the slapping of the floor.

LR: It’s cool, just not when Duke does it.

JP: Even though they invented it?

LR: Yeah. Exactly.

JP: Then Greg Paulus came along and people hated him, but I don’t really know that he did anything on the court to deserve that. Like I remember Laettner doing things on the court that would rub people the wrong way, but I don’t remember Greg Paulus walking around like his shit didn’t stink.

LR: Well, don’t forget Redick.

JP: I was going to bring him up too. But I know a lot of people hate Paulus.

LR: I didn’t see anything wrong with him.

JP: So as a Duke hater, you don’t hate Paulus, but Redick you hated?

LR: Actually, it’s funny, I actually liked Redick. I don’t know why. I mean, the way he could shoot, it was unbelievable. And they didn’t show him being cocky and saying stuff. He seemed to have a pretty even demeanor on the court.

JP: What I noticed with him was that he started maybe in his junior or senior year doing some stuff to egg the crowd on, but he took a ton of abuse before that.

LR: I think I liked him because he took a lot more than he gave.

JP: Now people don’t like Coach K — do you have any issue with him?

LR: I was thinking about that when I was watching Michigan State because I don’t like Tom Izzo either. And every coach does this — they expect every call to go their way, and if something doesn’t go exactly the way they want it to they get all upset. I think there’s just too much overexposure with Coach K. He had the American Express commercials, coach of Team USA, and all the NBA players are gushing about him and how great of a coach he is. I mean, I could roll the ball out with those guys and frickin’ win the Olympics.

JP: Larry Brown couldn’t.

LR: Well, he didn’t have the quality of players —

JP: But that was his fault.

LR: Coach K had the players that cared about basketball and knew how to play. He didn’t have the Iversons, the Marburys, and those d-bags. And he sounds really condescending when I see him do interviews, maybe not condescending, but snarky.

JP: I look for that, but I don’t see it. I mean, I spent five years listening to Bo Ryan talk, so that may have something to do with it. I think from the arguing with the refs standpoint, he doesn’t do it any more or any less than anyone else, but since Duke is on TV so much, we’re always going to get a shot of him talking to the officials when a call doesn’t go his way.

LR: I’d agree with that.

JP: Where we wouldn’t see his opponent necessarily doing that if the tables were reversed.

LR: Yeah, it’s a function of Duke being on TV all the time.

JP: A lot of people don’t like the Duke fans. Do you have any issue with them?

LR: It’s hard to say — were they like that when Duke wasn’t that good? I guess I don’t have a problem with them, they usually seem pretty creative, but they don’t seem as creative as they used to be. It seems like they’ve fallen into a rut and they’re doing the same things over and over. They don’t come up with the funny chants they used to, or maybe we just don’t hear them.

JP: Well, some people don’t like that the student body is basically all-white, elitist, private school crowd, and they act like they’re above everybody else. I actually went to a game at Cameron and saw Chris Paul when he was with Wake Forest, and they were like #2/#3 in the nation. One of the chants that the crowd did was “can’t go to Duke, go to Wake” and “safety school, safety school.” But I think any student at any school has a rival that they think they’re better than. Look at Ohio State/Michigan. No one is calling Michigan fans elitist if they come up with some chant about Ohio State.

LR: The nice thing that Duke does that a lot of other schools don’t do is that they put their student fans right on the court, closer to the action.

JP: Yeah, they’re actually able to reach out and touch the opponent, which has to be disconcerting.

LR: That’s probably part of it too. Duke fans actually think they’re the sixth man and that they can help the team win. And they probably can.

JP: We talked a little about winning before. I looked it up — at the end of the regular season, Duke has been ranked in the top 10 in 20 of the last 25 seasons. That’s pretty amazing. So even though they haven’t won a title in like nine years, they’re always right there at the end of the regular season.

LR: And like anything, when you’re on the top too long people are going to nitpick you and try to knock you down.

JP: Do you have any issue with this year’s team? Is there anyone you don’t like?

LR: Um… Not really, no. I don’t know if I really dislike Lance Thomas. But like you said before, I play basketball the same way those guys do, so I don’t know why I find it so irritating.

JP: I know you didn’t like Jon Scheyer for a while.

LR: I’m all right with him now. He’s a good player. He doesn’t do anything wrong. He just plays the game, so I can’t really get too upset with him. They were hyping him up a lot more before, but he’s developed each year and has turned into a really good player. So he does deserve the publicity he gets.

JP: People on the thread were complaining about all these different Duke players and what I noticed were that all of them were white. Nobody seems to have a problem with the black Duke players.

LR: No.

JP: Fans just don’t seem to like good white players at Duke. Nobody begrudged Kevin Love at UCLA or Adam Morrison at Gonzaga. It just seems like Duke has a steady stream of good, white players and they always seem to be the target of people’s hatred. That’s just odd to me.

LR: It’s weird — it’s like the perception is that if a black player is a good player then he’s there because he worked hard, and I think the perception is that if a white kid is really good and goes to Duke, then he must have been a country club-type, like he had a shooting coach and didn’t have to work all that hard on his game.

JP: What about flopping?

LR: Oh, god. Yeah, I hate that. And Duke does do it a lot. And the perception is that the refs give a lot more charge calls to Duke.

JP: I think Duke did bring that to the forefront, you know, 15 years ago. They really took advantage of the charge. They were the first team that I remember that took a ton of charges. But it’s hard to blame them. These guys just go charging down the lane, they’re not trying to avoid anybody, and they just run guys over. And then they’re surprised when they’re called for a charge.

LR: I don’t like it, but I agree. Battier was the first guy I remember who took a lot of charges.

JP: And I’ve talked to refs about this before — if you don’t sell the call by falling down, you’re not going to get the call. I mean, if a guy charges into you and you maybe get knocked back but keep your feet, you’re not going to get the call. You have to sell it. I think they need to go with the NBA rule where there’s a semicircle below the basket and if you’re inside that area, it’s automatically a block.

LR: Yeah.

JP: Finally, to wrap this up, who are you rooting for tonight?

LR: Butler. But I think Duke will win. The only reason because by the end of the year, the Plumlees and Zoubek figured out how to play basketball. They were soft in the middle the whole year until about a month left in the season and now, if I would have seen them play like this, I probably would have picked them to go to the Final Four. I can’t believe people don’t let Zoubek, Thomas and the Plumlees try to score 20. They’d probably miss shots wide open. But it’s probably human nature to collapse to the middle and then you leave those three-point shooters open. And you can’t leave those three open.

JP: They get so many three point opportunities on the offensive glass. The shot goes up, and the defense boxes out and then attacks the rebound, but when Duke gets it back, they’re looking to kick it out to Scheyer, Singler or Smith for an wide open three. And it’s tough to keep track of your man after the shot goes up because you’ve been trained to go rebound the ball.

LR: Just block out your guy and stay with your guy. You have to stay with those shooters. Let someone else get the rebound. Let Zoubek shoot the ball. He doesn’t look to shoot when he gets the ball right underneath the basket.

JP: We’ll see tonight if Brad Stevens follows your advice.

LR: I doubt it.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

The Week has a piece that outlines five theories why everyone seems to hate Duke.

1. Americans hate monopolies, and love underdogs: Think of Duke as Microsoft, says workplace psychologist Paul Damiano, as quoted in Newsweek. Duke’s basketball prowess, like Microsoft’s software near-monopoly, makes people mad. Americans love underdogs that fight for victory with few resources. Conversely, we hate dominant businesses and sports teams — the New York Yankees are a prime example — on the assumption they buy the best players, or get cushy treatment from the regulators (“aka the referees”). Case in point: Many writers have complained that Duke got easy opponents to help it go far in the tournament, because Blue Devil hatred translates into good TV ratings.

Sure…only Duke hasn’t been to the Final Four in six years. They are still a top 10 basketball program, certainly, but they aren’t the dominant program they were in years past. If that were the case, why doesn’t everyone hate North Carolina or Michigan State? And I don’t like the comparison to the New York Yankees. Duke can’t go around and buy up all the best free agents. If anything, Coach K is at a disadvantage due to Duke’s stringent admission standards.

2. The “Cameron Crazies”: No school has more infamous fans than Duke’s Cameron Crazies, says John Gasaway in Basketball Prospectus. And many Duke haters believe the rowdy — some would say obnoxious — student fans who cram into Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium for home games and relentlessly taunt opposing players give their team an unfair advantage. Or, as a student at nearby arch-rival University of Carolina put it: “When I see those Dookie boneheads shoe-polishing their faces navy blue on television, squandering their parents’ money with their fratty elitist bad sportsmanship antics and Saab stories, I want to puke all over Durham.”

Really, we’re going to ask a Tar Heel fan to comment about the Cameron Crazies? That’s like asking Sarah Palin to comment on Dennis Kucinich’s single-payer health care plan. I suspect even most Duke haters wish that their team had a home court advantage like Duke does. Unfair advantage? Give me a break.

3. Coach K: Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski inherited a team that was down on its luck 30 years ago, and rebuilt it into a dominant force in the basketball-addicted Atlantic Coast Conference. Duke haters find Krzyzewski “annoying and self-important,” and they love to mock his nasal twang. Coach K is a constant presence, says Monte Poole in the Oakland Tribune, and, depending on whether you’re a Duke supporter or a fan of another school, he’s “either your own personal god or he’s wearing horns and holding a pitchfork.”

I can absolutely understand not liking a certain coach’s style or demeanor. For example, K-State’s Frank Martin drives me nuts the way he stomps around on the sideline (often wandering onto the court during play) screaming at his players and staring down officials. But you have to give Coach K credit — he turned Duke into a top tier program and has never even had a sniff of any impropriety or recruiting violations. His teams are always at or near the top in terms of wins and graduation rates. That’s hard to do in such a cutthroat business. Plus, he wrangled 12 of the biggest egos on the planet and guided Team USA to a gold medal in Bejing. That has to be worth something, even to those that hate him.

4. “Elite” is a bad word: Duke is an elite school — expensive, with high academic standards, and a high graduation rate for its athletes. The pride Duke’s coaches, players, and fans take in the school’s academic reputation comes across to fans of rival programs as just another example of Duke’s arrogance. Duke is always included in lists of college athletic programs “capable of properly balancing academics and athletics,” says Ben Miller in The Quick and the Ed, and such talk makes its team stand out as a teacher’s pet in a basketball world full of huge state schools, some of which have trouble with low graduation rates.

I’ve been following Duke basketball since the (playing) days of Johnny Dawkins and I don’t once remember a Duke player talking about how high the school’s academic standards are. Besides, does anyone hate the basketball teams from Stanford, Cal or any of the Ivy League schools because they’re difficult schools to get into? Now, it’s understandable if people dislike the Duke student body because they’re a bunch of spoiled white kids, but the Duke basketball team doesn’t have anything to do with that.

That said, I fully admit that there was an era — let’s call it the…um…Christian Laettner era — where there was a certain air of elitism emanated by a few players on the team. This era’s namesake along with (maybe) Bobby Hurley ruffled more than a few feathers in their day. But since then — can anyone really accuse Grant Hill, Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Shelden Williams, Mike Dunleavy, Luol Deng, Corey Maggette, Dahntay Jones, Gerald Henderson, Jon Scheyer or Kyle Singler of being elitist on the court?

Oops, I forgot about J.J. Redick. Still, there was a long gap there…

5. It’s about money: Duke hatred is class warfare, says Al Lee in Payscale.com. Of all the teams in the NCAA tournament this year, Duke ranks No. 1 in alumni wages, with the average ex-Dukie making $104,000 a year. Thats nearly $30,000 more than alums make at the top seeds in the other regions in the tournament, and it’s more than twice the figures for the tournament schools at the low end of the pay scale.

Well, I doubt very many Duke haters out there can quote any alumni wages, but maybe I’m wrong.

In the end, I think it’s a combination of all of these factors. Duke is a top tier program (monopoly), with an extremely spirited yet bratty student body (Crazies), that has remained squeaky clean (Coach K) and has an air of superiority (elitism) that surrounds them. Or at least that elitism is perceived to be there…by people who hate the program. It’s a vicious cycle, I say.

I don’t care. I like the Blue Devils. Coach K always has good teams that play good defense and take care of the ball. The Cameron Crazies are just icing on the cake.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

In addition to the aforementioned topics, the documentary covers the ’05 comebacks by Louisville and Illinois to make the Final Four, Michael Jordan’s clutch shot in the ’82 finals, Keith Smart’s game-winner in the ’87 finals, Dwyane Wade’s triple-double as well as Jim Valvano’s N.C. State team that took down Houston’s Phi Slamma Jamma. The film also highlights Shaquille O’Neal’s single-game record for blocks, Bo Kimble’s touching tribute to Hank Gathers and Bill Walton’s astonishing 21 for 22 performance in 1973.

Special features include highlights of three championship games: ’79 (Michigan State/Indiana State), ’82 (North Carolina/Georgetown) and ’83 (N.C. State/Houston). There is also an in-depth, uncut interview with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

All in all, this is a nice one-disc package that covers just about every buzzer beater and Cinderella story in the last four decades of the NCAA tournament.