Damn Jalen Rose. Thursday night he ruined what should’ve been an awesome evening of hoops.
Derrick Williams, Mo Mo Jones and the Arizona Wildcats destroyed Duke in the NCAA tournament. Normally seeing Duke fall by double or single digits in the postseason sets off unrepentant rejoicing in the Whitlock household.
Check my column history, before “The Fab Five” documentary and Rose’s Uncle Tom controversy, I’ve never liked the Duke hoops program. Never.
Rose’s ignorance did the impossible. He made Coach K and the Blue Devils sympathetic.
Thursday night, for the first time in my life, I rooted for Duke.
Damn Jalen Rose. He took the fun out of hating Duke. He made one of sports' great pleasures feel dirty and a little bit racist. His trashing of Grant Hill left me believing the right thing to do was cheer for the Blue Devils to win it all.
The addition of Sonya Curry, Seth’s mama, to the Duke family has already tested my resolve to passionately dislike Duke.
Do I not owe Coach K and Duke a measure of gratitude for elevating Sonya Curry from Mid-Major Mama to her rightful place as BCS TV Eye Candy? With Stephen Curry relegated to the Golden State Warriors, it could be years before TNT, ABC and ESPN adequately featured Mama Curry as part of NBA broadcasts.
And Dell Curry strikes me as the kind of O.G. who wouldn’t dare allow his woman to appear on “Basketball Mamas,” a hypothetical spinoff of “Basketball Wives.” (You know damn well Annie Iverson just stepped away from her laptop, placed a three-way call to Gloria James and Flo Allen and said, “Girl, you got Spike Lee’s number? This show is gonna be hot.”)
Where was I?
Oh, yes, my Duke hate.
I felt weird Thursday night. It was the way I felt for two years watching Ball State football after my school made no legitimate effort to retain Brady Hoke. I prayed for losses. It was the way I felt about my beloved Indiana Pacers after Ron Artest went into the stands.
As a sports fan, I’ve had just a handful of genuine passions in my life: Loving the Pacers, Ball State football, Magic Johnson, Jeff George spirals, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Roy Williams-led Kansas Jayhawks and disliking Duke basketball.
I’m cursed. It was my childhood dream that Magic would marry my sister (they dated when I was in high school) and Jeff George would be the new Dan Marino. The Chiefs haven’t won a playoff game since 1993, the year before I moved to KC. Roy Williams broke my heart leaving for North Carolina. And Duke is the most dominant college basketball team since John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins.
The week I become a Blue Devils fan, Nolan Smith goes three of 15 from the field and Duke loses by 16 as a No. 1 seed.
Damn Jalen Rose.
I never hated Duke because its roster was too white or the players too privileged.
I disliked Duke because of the hype. The media assigned Duke basketball a level of nobility and integrity that I believe is undeserved. Duke basketball isn’t Harvard or Princeton basketball. The Blue Devils play in the ACC, a power conference that compromises its academic principles in pursuit of athletic achievement just like all the other power conferences.
Let’s say Kentucky basketball is nine months pregnant with “corruption” or whatever the moralists want to call it. I think it’s inappropriate to praise Duke because it’s only three months pregnant. You can’t be a little bit pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t.
Plus, and this is where I agree with Jalen Rose, I find nobility in the people willing to get muddy trying to save people at the bottom.
All the big-time coaches are chasing dollars. If it was just about the love of the game and working with kids, they’d coach in high school or Division II.
John Calipari works with at-risk players. I find that noble. It’s riskier and more difficult than coaching Dell and Sonya Curry’s son. I’m not criticizing Coach K for his choice. I’m criticizing the media for pretending Coach K’s ethics and morality are superior to Calipari’s. They’re not. Coach Cal and Coach K are part of the same “corrupt” system that unfairly profits off the labor of kids.
My mother raised me in a small ghetto church, 25th Street Baptist Church in Indianapolis. Because of that, I’m very suspicious of TV-friendly, mega-church ministers who operate from the outskirts of the ‘hood. They get the hype and the praise while the guys working the front lines get looked down on because a good percentage of their congregation is on parole or just out of rehab.
Yeah, Jalen can’t collect an ESPN paycheck and expose the true root of his Duke hate. He sold out and ruined a great night of basketball for guys like me.
I may never forgive him for making me a Duke fan. It goes against my very nature.
