opossum
2nd String
Posts: 381
Joined: Jan 2014
Reputation: 22
I Root For: Duke
Location: DC area
|
RE: "I Hate Christian Laettner"
(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.
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2015 09:19 PM by opossum.)
|
|