Sparty Note: Many of you have hearing since November about the potential of a “Duke Sucks” post.  This was a task assigned to one of the writers who has the most experience watching them up close and personal, guyinthecorner.  Now that the season is almost over, I thought I would give you all a huge glimpse of what never was…This has been in “drafts” since Nov. 21, 2008.  It was a post that was never close to completion, but is currently sitting at 5140 words. Here it is in its most raw and unedited form.

Listen, we all know why we are all here. Sparty asked me for 2500 words on why I hate Duke Basketball. To me, this was easy. Mostly because, well, I really hate Duke. As most of you know I am a Terp. Grew up rooting for them, actual attendance of the university, my father went there, my grandfather went there, and my great-grandfather went there. So, there’s the full disclosure part of this post. To try to mitigate this inherent bias that I have, I will not include anything that includes that bias. Seriously, I won’t do it. I will only include the objective factors that contribute to the natural hatred that Duke has accumulated across this fine country of ours. So without further ado, the jump…

Part I: The Players Are Jerks

First thing’s first; the players. Duke’s players come off as a bunch of jerks. I am going to focus on the recent age of Duke players so as to limit the number of jerks in this section. Jason Williams was probably the first of this generation’s tremendous jerks. Oh, you are confused about who I am speaking of? That’s probably because I am referring to him as “Jason” even though he changed his name to Jay. We’ll get back to that later. A famous story of his jerkitude comes from a 1/16/01 game against Boston College. With a few seconds left and Duke up by 20, he had the ball. Instead of wasting the clock by simply standing still (admittedly to much to ask from such a colossal jerk) he decided to start taunting BC guard Kenny Walls by faking the ball towards his face a few times. Walls elbowed Williams which led to Coach K throwing a temper tantrum on the sidelines even though his player clearly started it. Did I mention that Walls had done absolutely nothing during the game to warrant the taunting? I didn’t? Sorry, I thought it was implied that Duke starts all fights. On to the name change. So basically, he changed his name so as not to be confused with other people named Jason/Jayson Williams. Some say that he wanted a name all to himself. Others say that he thought he would be confused with the one or the both of them. The other Jason Williams is different from this guy in a few ways. First, and I hate to state the obvious, he’s white. This would make it hard to confuse them. Next up, goodness. The white Jason Williams was first-team All-Rookie and won an NBA championship. The black one played one season and wasn’t good. The second one was actually Jayson Williams. That’s right. Spelled differently and still threatened by it. Not to mention the guy was out of the NBA at the time and was on trial for manslaughter for shooting his driver. So there wasn’t really any reason. Now comes the motorcycle accident. It ended his basketball career as we all know. I should point out that he had a specific clause in his contract that precluded him from riding a motorcycle. Oh, so he just took a random ride on a motorcycle and got unlucky? No, he owned the bike. For extra fodder see his (miraculously still existent) Duke University homepage. Next up; Carlos Boozer. I guess it’s pretty obvious why he is such a jerk. But just to make sure that we never forget what kind of a jerk this guy is…

After the 2003-04 NBA season, the Cavaliers had the option of allowing him to become a restricted free agent, or keeping him under contract for one more year at a $695,000 salary. The Cavaliers claim to have reached an understanding with Boozer and his agent on a deal for approximately $39 million over 6 years, which he would sign if they let him out of his current deal.

Once Cleveland eliminated the final year of Boozer’s deal, making him a restricted free agent, his agent began to receive calls. He received an offer from the Utah Jazz.

They were determined to be successful and offered the most they could under the circumstances. Boozer signed their offer sheet, and Cleveland had the option to match, but were already over the salary cap, and so could match only up to the Mid-level exception, thus they ‘chose’ not to re-sign him. Boozer joined the Utah Jazz in July 2004 for six years and a total of $70 million.

Boozer has denied that he made any commitment to the Cavaliers: “There was no commitment. It’s unfortunate how the turn of events went through the media,” Boozer said shortly after signing the deal with Utah. “I’m not a guy that gives my word and takes it away. I think I’ve made that clear.” However, Boozer’s agent subsequently ceased representation, and in addition former Cavaliers owner Gordon Gund has said, “In the final analysis, I decided to trust Carlos and show him the respect he asked for. He did not show that trust and respect in return.”

Did I mention that Gordon Gund was 65 years old and blind? I thought everybody knew that. Well, I’m sure Boozer did anyway. Oh yeah, and he sued Prince. Next comes Chris Duhon on the jerk list. This is easy. We are going to do this one in quotes from the man himself. First, his famous quote on the ACC Tournament…

“It sends a message to this whole league that we have dominated this conference over the last eight years. We are just going to keep continuing to do it. I think it sends a message to the other teams that they are always playing for second.”

and…

“I think whoever our second team is could definitely contend for the ACC championship right now.”

By the way, they then lost the ACC Tournament to Maryland. Second, on his first game at Duke…

“When I put the jersey on and I was about to go play, I just stared at it for two or three minutes. Then I put on my top and I went into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and my first thought was, ‘That’s a sexy man in the mirror.’ Then I had to catch my focus. I looked down at my chest and saw the Duke emblem and I really wanted to cry. I knew I couldn’t do that before a game, but it just meant so much to me to have the uniform on.”

Just to tack another on I should point out that he missed three team meetings while playing with the Bulls and was suspended by the notoriously easy-going Scott Skiles to which he replied…

“Usually, I don’t play anyway, so it doesn’t have that much of an effect on me.”

So, there’s him. Moving on to Dahntay Jones. Besides the ridiculous spelling of his name, there was this incident…

That’s right. He dunked on a guy and then did push-ups to taunt him. And don’t worry, that wasn’t a technical for taunting or anything. Next in line is Shavlik Randolph. Two words: Momma’s boy. I present you these gems…

Shavlik and his parents are all quick to point out that girls do not figure into his life at this point. They are “out of his comfort level,” Kim Randolph says.

After practice, Shavlik Randolph watches sports on TV in the den as he soaks his feet in soothing warm water and Epsom salts. His mother, Kim Randolph, serves Shavlik and his dad, Kenny, their dinner on trays; for Shav, she cuts his steak, prepares his baked potato and pours his two glass of milk.

If you thought that this somehow stunted his mental growth, well, you’re right…

For all his newfound awareness that he is a public figure at 18, Shavlik won’t give up one thing: his fart machine.

I was so about to be done with him, but I just can’t resist his quote after the John Amaechi news (which he called “idiotic”) about the possibility of having a gay teammate…

“As long as you don’t bring your gayness on me, I’m fine.”

Moving on to the greatest jerk of the retired contingent, J.J. Redick was such a jerk that he was able to admit that he was acting like a jerk. I’m not joking. Here are a few quotes by the jerk himself…

“I think there’s still that persona that I’m a total jerk.”

“I said, ‘All right, if they want to call me these things, then I’m going to act like a jerk on the court.’ That made people dislike me even more.”

Here’s the reason people think of him as a jerk: He’s a jerk. I know, it’s not that complicated but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The screaming after making shots, the taunting, the bumping defenders off the ball just to annoy them (because you know that won’t be called on a Duke player), the attitude during interviews that made you want to punch your TV screen on the off-chance that it might reach him, and the fact that he thought he was intimidating even though he wasn’t ticks me off to this day. Persona? No, J.J., it’s your personality. Last up in this section, and I could go on forever, is Greg Paulus. This guy may actually be trying to steal the coveted “Typical Duke Jerk” title from Redick. He has been trying for years but has actually been relegated to the bench for this season because sophomore guard Nolan Smith is simply better than Paulus. If screaming after made shots was a criminal offense, this guy would have been put to death already. He also adds what is mostly a new wrinkle do Duke basketball. He cries to the refs. Very few Duke players do this for a reason that will be discussed below. Needless to say though, I think he gets away with it because he is so small and more like a knat than a player refs should be giving a technical to. If refs were allowed (and sometimes in the case of Paulus I believe they should be required) to carry rolled up newspapers with them on the court, he would have black and blue skin to match his road jersey.

Part II: The Cameron Crazies are Annoying

You know the Cameron Crazies. They are those annoying Duke students that sit in the section across from the TV cameras. They are often painted on the face or body and are always yelling. They always yell things in unison. To the casual observer, this is impressive. To have that many kids all knowing the same chants, many of them changing from game to game and targeted at opposing players, should be incredible. Why “should be”? Let me introduce you to the cheer sheet. It is a piece of paper that is handed out between the Cameron Crazies before every home game. It includes the designated cheers for that game. Cheers for their own players as well as cheers that are against the other team are included. For a while, this was a secret. Then came a fateful day for these Cameron Crazies. Rumors of these cheer sheets started circulating during the 2004-2005 season. In the earlier days of the Cameron Crazies, there were meeting with a committee to decide the cheers for the game. The committee made up their minds and then went tent-to-tent (Duke students wait in line in tents to get the seats in the front row) teaching the cheers. The fact that they had a committee is stupid, but the fact that the committee became not enough is even dumber. After a game against Virginia in early 2005, a guy from Maryland who was living in North Carolina got a hold of the cheer sheet. At the bottom he noticed a note that said…

“Add CheerSheets to your IM buddy list and contribute for the next game.”

So he did what any sensible person would do. He IMed the screen name when he knew the guy was away. The guy then emailed him back saying that he had to confirm that the guy was a Duke student. When he IMed the screen name the next time he was on the phone with a friend of his who was a graduate student at Duke. This helped him fool the guy into thinking he went to Duke. He then told the guy that then Maryland star Nik Caner-Medley had a girlfriend named Myra and that she had a nickname for him. That nickname was said to by Piggy because he supposedly snorted when they were alone together. He also told the Crazy that Nik hated being called that by anyone other than her. He further hypothesized that chanting “Myra and Piggy” (clap clap clapclapclap) would really tick off Caner-Medley. For those not familiar with Duke scandals, Myron Piggie was a cocaine dealer / Duke booster / AAU coach that paid Corey Maggette while he was in High School and possibly college. Basically this ended in the Crazies chanted the name of a scandal in their own program while thinking they were insulting the star player of their hated rival who actually had no idea what was going on as he dropped a game high 25 points on them at their place while leading his team to an upset of the #2 ranked team in the country. So, yeah. That backfired. Here are the cheer sheets from both of those games. But that was just me getting the making fun of them out of the way. The facts are that they are also really annoying. Some of the chants that they have employed over the years have been terrible. I could give many examples but one should do. North Carolina Forward Scott Williams lost his parents in mid-season to a tragic and well publicized murder-suicide shooting. They had a game at Duke later in that season and the Crazies chanted “Orphan, orphan!” at him. Yes, they did. Then there is the complaint that the kids only do it to be on TV. An obvious proof of this argument is an incident last season. To be honest, this one even annoyed the rest of the Cameron Crazies. As previously stated (assuming you are reading my exceedingly annoying parenthetical asides, and if you haven’t been reading them you aren’t reading this either so why am I still typing…) Duke students have to wait in lines of tents in order to get front row seats to games. For last year’s ACC/Big 10 (non)Challenge game, Duke was playing Michigan. A student who probably had to wait in line for about three days got a seat in the front row. And he was wearing an orange shirt. Needless to say, this is not customary for Cameron Crazies and drew the ire of many of the members of the committee that were on hand. They then proceeded to taunt the guy and tell him to get out of the there. The guy was waving constantly for TV cameras and talking on his cell phone. When approached he managed to make a “T” sign with his hands followed by a “V” sign to further make himself look like a jerk. Another chant that they are famous for is the “BS” chant that they do after pretty much any call that goes against them. Keep in mind that they state on the cheer sheets that they have a level of classiness to live up to. Would that be the lowest level possible or would that be the level that up until now was so low that it wasn’t visible by normal humans? Let’s not even mention the fact that they claim to have the most original cheers yet had the very classic and original anti-Antawn Jamison chant, “Antawn sucks!” while he played at North Carolina. I should also point out (most likely unessesarilary) that Antawn did not suck. You can only imagine his shock and horror at this brilliant adaptation of uncommon prose into a high-quality statement of his lack of ability to play the game of basketball. I have mentioned before that the Duke students sleep in tents to stay in line for games. It’s actually not that simple. They have an entire system set up. Oh, you think I’m joking? It’s called Krzyzewskiville. And no, I’m not making the name up either. There are only two designated “tenting” games per season. Students form “tents” in the line that are registered to 12 people. There are 100 “spots” for tents to complete the 1,200 person student section inside. If you are wondering why I am putting things in quotations it’s because there things are mythical. A “tent” is often 3-4 tents with 2-4 people in it. A spot is no exact space and is in fact just a number. The first people start moving into tents about six weeks before the game. Right about now is when you start to ask, “Guy, that doesn’t sound annoying at all. Sure they are overly organized, but can you blame them?” And to that I answer you, yes. Yes, I can blame them. They didn’t use to have all of this. It used to just be people in tents. Now there are rules. A lot of rules. In fact, here they are. There are rules about how many people have to be in the tent at one time at night, on the weekends, and during the day. There are grace periods when you can leave your tent for bad weather or other basketball games. And there are rules about keeping your tent clean. To make it easier on the students, the University installed ethernet outlets, electrical outlets, and Wifi for the area so the kids didn’t miss class. Seriously!?! But if tenting isn’t your thing you can stand in the walk-up ticket line that starts exactly 48 hours before tipoff. You must have a partner though and one of you has to stay in line at all times. If this wasn’t bad enough, there was an incident two seasons ago with a program called the Robertson Scholars. Here is there Wikipedia file. Basically, about 40,000 students apply for a full scholarship program each year. The students are from both North Carolina and Duke. Only 36 students (presumably half from each school) are awarded the scholarships and become dual citizens of the two schools. The bylaws of the scholarship state that all students are to have full rights to both schools…

“They also have the opportunity to participate in clubs, conduct research with a faculty member, and attend cultural and sporting events on the sister campus.”

Students originally from North Carolina that were Robertson Scholars joined a tent with other Duke students. Once they got inside they shed their outer layer of clothes to reveal Tar Heel geer underneath. This angered the Duke Student Government, which runs “K-Ville”, and they declared afterward that any student who was enrolled at Carolina in the past year was banned from tenting at K-Ville. This of course angered North Carolina who could thing of no retaliation except making the same rule about campus elections at their place. In short, the Cameron Crazies exhibit most of the attributes that collectively compose the reasons we hate Duke so much. They are arrogant. They are annoying. They are Duke.

Part III: They are Overrated

We all know that Duke is overrated. My goal is to show exactly how overrated they are. I’m going to start with a chart I created. I call it the Duke Basketball is an Embarrassment to the Expectations Set Forth Before Them Spreadsheet™, but we’ll call it the DBESFBTS™ for short. The chart is simple enough. The first category is the year (duh). The second category represents the ranking that Duke held in the final AP Rankings for that season (released the Monday after Selection Sunday). If Duke was not ranked in the top 25, it is marked with a “NR”. In those cases Duke’s unofficial ranking, determined by the number of votes they received in that poll, is in parentheses and is used for the purposes of the chart. The third column is their seeding in the NCAA Tournament as determined by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The forth column represents how they finished in the NCAA Tournament that season. For example, if the grid says “2nd Round” it means that Duke won their first round game, reached the second round, and was then eliminated. Here’s where it gets interesting. The fifth column represents a comparison between their AP Rank and NCAA Seeding. In other words, column 5 compares column 2 and column 3. The possible answers are “underrated”, “on pace”, and “overrated” for this column. For example, if Duke’s AP Rank was 5th, they would be expected to receive a #2 seed. If the NCAA Tournament selection Committee awarded them a #1 seed, the result would be “overrated” as they were seeded higher than they were actually ranked. If they received a #2 seed, the result would be “on pace” because it is in line with where they were ranked. If they received a #3 seed, the result would be “underrated” because they were ranked higher than they were seeded. The sixth column is a comparison of their NCAA Seeding and their actual results in that tournament (6 compares 3 and 4). This column is more obvious. If they were a #1 seed and lost in the Sweet Sixteen that is “overrated”, if they went farther than expected (by their seeding) it is “underrated”, and if they went the expected distance in the tournament the “on pace” tag is used. The seventh and final column compares their AP Rank with their NCAA Tournament result. This is again obvious. Ranks 1-4 are expected to go to the Final Four or beyond, ranks 5-8 are expected to go to the Elite Eight, ranks 9-16 are expected to go to the Sweet Sixteen, ranks 17-32 are expected to make it to the 2nd Round, and ranks 32-64 are not expected to advance. The same three answers from the previous two columns are available and used in kind. “Underrated will be highlighted in green and “overrated” will be highlighted in red.

It is easy to see that the red outnumbers the green, but there are interesting things hidden in the DBESFBTS™. The first thing that is easily noticeable is that in 2003 and in 2004 Duke was actually underrated. This is actually incorrect. If you look closely you will notice that they were also overrated in the same season. How is that possible? The explanation is not really that difficult. We see that in 2003, Duke was ranked 7th, received a #3 seed, and lost in the Sweet Sixteen. The “underrated” tag comes from the “Rank/Seed” category because the 7th ranked team would normally receive a #2 seed. I would suggest that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee found the AP Rank to be a little high and therefore awarded Duke a slightly lower seed (that of a 9th-12th ranked team). However, as Duke lost in the Sweet Sixteen, it proved the committee’s seeding correct, and the AP ranking overrated. On to 2004 where Duke was ranked 6th by the AP, awarded a #1 seed by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, and went to the Final Four. The “underrated” tag here, is derived from their trip to the Final Four being uncharacteristic of a 6th ranked team. In this case I would say that the AP simply missed the boat on the ranking. The Tournament committee thought so highly of Duke that season that some argued that Duke was the #1 overall seed based on the fact that they were playing closer to home than any of the other #1 seeds ( Raleigh and then Atlanta). They were also gifted the worst #2 seed of any bracket (8th ranked Mississippi State), a poor #3 seed (12th ranked Texas), and luckily were able to play their Elite Eight game against #7 seed (and unranked) Xavier that they were barely able to squeak by (66-63). I daresay that puts an end to any underrated talk.

Now that we’ve covered where they came up underrated, let’s check out where they were overrated. I’m just kidding. We can’t cover all the times they were overrated because, well, as much as I would like to go into it, we are already reaching the 4,200 word mark and that would push us over five digits. I’ll only pick out a few things right now. In the Rank/Seed column you will notice that they were on pace for a very long time, but in the last 5 years they managed to get an “overrated” tag three times including both of the last two years. Most people know that it is pretty hard to get a higher seed than your ranking. This is especially true when you have gained a reputation for not living up to your ranking. The Rank/Result column shows how Duke’s AP ranking held up to how they did in the tournament. You can see that before the recent five year period of getting an overrated seed from the committee compared to their ranking they had not lived up to that ranking with tournament results in five of the last eight years and had never overachieved. So what prompted the committee to give them the overrated seed? My guess would be the assumption that if they got a higher seed and played worse teams they might actually go far into the tournament. Obviously, that didn’t really work. My other favorite part of this graph is the Seed/Result column. Notice anything? Top to bottom, not one single time in the last 13 seasons have they done better than their seed. You might be able to counter this with an argument that it would be hard for them to do so because they have been given seedings they didn’t deserve. There is probably some truth to that. But the fact remains that it is very unlikely that a team never goes even one round deeper than they should have based on their seed in 13 tries. That’s just pathetic. Not only that, but the chart doesn’t even contain a tag for “really overrated”, although I did consider it. I would have placed that tag on the years where they exited two rounds early instead of just one. So instead, I’ll list it here. In the last 13 years, Duke has gone as far as expected 4 times, has been eliminated one round early 3 times, has been eliminated two rounds early 6 times, and has gone deeper than expected… never. That right there is the final statement on just how overrated they are.

Part IV: The Evil Coach K

First, I want to straighten something out. This may sound weird, but I am very against the nickname “Coach K” for Mike Krzyzewski. Why, you ask? I believe that if a person is being referred to as a singular letter they must meet the following criteria: (1) Be one of the 26 (number of letters in the alphabet) best people at whatever it is you’re doing, (2) be the best of all people in your profession with the letter that begins your name, and (3) have your name actually emit the sound that that letter generally makes. Simply put, Coach K is not one of the 26 best basketball coaches ever, he isn’t the best ever with a last name that starts with a “K”, and his name doesn’t even start with a “k” sound. So he fails on all three counts. That said, I will refer to him as Coach K out of convenience. Next up, his coaching style. I actually can’t go into some of the defensive methods his players use because they will be covered in a later part, but I can discuss his offense. Duke basically made famous the idea of running out the clock in basketball. Coach K will typically have his players start doing a three-man weave hand-off set of plays from any point after the under-four-minute timeout. Most of the time, this comes up in games that are still within reach for a team if the other team isn’t running the clock down. I would say that while there should be no shame in running out the clock, the style in which Duke does it as well as the length of time they do it for is what is shameful. The three-man weave hand-off is just ridiculous. Next up is the stuck-upitude. Yeah, I made that up. Yeah, it’s awesome. It means exactly what it sounds like. Coach K once told Virginia Tech’s Zabian Dowdell…

“You’re too good of a player to be celebrating like that.”

…after the Hokies had upset Duke at Cameron. Seriously? How can someone be so arrogant that they could try to direct a college kid on how to act during what is quite possibly going to be the best basketball game of his life? Zabian Dowdell didn’t really have NBA aspirations. He was a role player on a mediocre college team. He’s probably off in Europe now playing somewhere where his chance at a moment as memorable as that is quite slim. And how does the talent level dictate the level of celebration? Is Coach K trying to make a we-at-Duke-are-so-good-that-we-don’t-celebrate kind of point? If so, mission failed. We all know Coach K. We all see him screaming obscenities at refs from the bench (and sometimes court). But he’s such a nice guy… right? Even the Duke student newspaper is unsure…

“Coach Krzyzewski, you often respond to criticism about your inflated ego, hostile treatment of referees, and foul language by citing the amount of money you have given to charity. Are we to conclude from this that you consider writing checks a proper substitute for common human decency? “

So, yeah. What up with that, Coach?

5. Cameron Indoor Stadium

6. Recruiting

7. Getting all the calls

8. Jerseys

9. Flopping

10. General attitude

11. Hypocricy

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