State of Basketball

[jon breiner]

Listening to all the crap come out of Durham recently reminds me of why I used to be a Duke fan, but struggle rooting for them these days.  I hear coach K bemoan the state of bball now that he is losing players early, especially now after 1 year (Deng) and with Livingston (?) going straight to the pros and not even coming to Duke.  How can that be?  Well, it must be because there is a problem now.  No, maybe the problem has been here and you ignored it until it affected you?  It is not a problem, now, just because, now, it happens to affect YOU!

Then I read the column on ESPN and see the Duke AD's quotes and thoughts and it makes me sick.  Heck he even got his buddy at the Charlotte Observer to write the article (probably).

The only thing worse off than the college game right now are the self-righteous folks like the ones at Duke who thought their crap did not smell until they unplugged their noses recently.

And with all of that said, sorry, the game is not really that bad off.  Sure we can find some things that make it bad, but just because the NBA drafts a bunch of high school players to watch only a handful make it, does not make the college game bad.  I wonder what pick Felipe Lopez would have been had he jumped straight to the NBA a few years back?  First pick?  7th pick?  But he went to college and really helped St Johns!  There is no guarantee that even the "best" person in high school that year will matter much in college and as someone else (Brad I think) pointed out we are talking about less than 1%.  Sure it is a very good 1%, but the game is fine and will be better off if coach K takes his hypocrisy to LA with my distant memories of being a Duke fan.

Jon