He probably means me
Usually when I post, Jinks posts right after and says it doesn't meet his standards.
I posted 2 words, "Duke sucks", not my fault KNVB gets all bent out of shape.
Regs, when is my membership up? I want to get every last day out of it before it's done.
Yodahasquitquotingandkeptpostsshortbutstillnotgoodenoughfors
ome.
Usually when I post, Jinks posts right after and says it doesn't meet his standards.
For the game, Duke shot .615%
Let me repeat.... Fcuk, I hate the J-Hawks.Originally posted by knvb
Fcuk, I hate the J-Hawks.
By Paul Forrester, Special to SI.com
Why aren't Duke players more successful in the NBA?
Courtesy of the NCAA tournament, we've all been given a glimpse into a possible future of the NBA, replete with Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and T.J. Ford. The quickness, ball-handling and maturity under pressure that these three and some of their college brethren have displayed appear to translate into the pro-style game. Oddly enough, though, the athletes from the school at which the aforementioned traits are gospel, Duke, rarely translate into Grade A pros.
To be honest, the relative lack of success that Duke players have achieved in the NBA perplexes OTG. They have the best coach in the college game, a loyal and loving fan base, talented teammates and pressure-packed games in the national spotlight. That should be a recipe for pro success, shouldn't it? Yet year after year we get Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Cherokee Parks, Trajan Langdon and William Avery. Fundamentally sound players all, but none around which you would build a team. The same seems to be true this year with Jay Williams, Mike Dunleavy and Carlos Boozer.
Of the two Dookies you can legitimately term stars, Elton Brand has already been traded once (whether you agree or not, at least one NBA GM didn't think Brand was a primary building block), and Grant Hill's career is in jeopardy far before his life as an athlete should be over.
Ironically, the Blue Devil with, perhaps, the most ability, Corey Maggette, is one of the few that coach Mike Krzyzewski did not give his blessing to, thanks to Maggette's early departure from Durham. While the fact that so many Blue Devils make it to the NBA may be something to crow about, the harsh reality is that for a program that recruits so many high-school All-Americans and wins so much, Duke does a rotten job of turning out top-notch NBA players. OTG won't claim to know the cause but here are some possible reasons.
Thin Skin: Jay Williams will probably lose more games this year than he has in all the years of his entire basketball life, combined. Who is to blame? Well, according to Williams, it's the Chicago Bulls' system, the famed triangle offense, that is stifling his ability to run Chicago into the win column. While OTG agrees the notion of running the triangle in Chicago with its primary proponents on the West Coast is foolish, it isn't the primary reason the Bulls are headed toward another spot in the draft lottery. That has a lot more to do with coach Bill Cartwright's puzzling rotations, Eddy Curry's and Tyson Chandler's rate of development and, oh yeah, playing a point guard from Duke who shoots less than 38 percent and hands out fewer than five assists a game.
Williams, of course, isn't the first player from Duke to complain about his initial NBA surroundings. Danny Ferry took the silent way out and hauled off overseas for a few seasons while Christian Laettner took a more vocal route in expressing his displeasure with a Kevin Garnett-less Minnesota. I am not suggesting that any player should sit back and tally up the losses with a smile on his face. But even the best players have to deal with losing 20 times a season. When the complaining starts before a player has developed his game to the best level it can attain, it is whining. When Williams gets his game in order, then he can criticize.
The Mirage of Talent: The fact that Duke plays in so many big games -- and on national TV -- gives its players a sheen of quality that exists only as long as Mike Krzyzewski is coaching those players. Shane Battier won the Naismith and the Wooden awards by scoring 19.9 ppg, grabbing 7.3 rpg and shooting 47 percent from the field during his final season at Duke. Two years later, it's clear that Battier's trophies won't have any company on his mantle soon, what with his 9.3 ppg and 4.5 rpg.
As I said before, it isn't as if the Duke boys don't have NBA skills; they just don't have NBA skills equal to the expectations we fans, and many a general manager, place on them. Trajan Langdon could have been a perfectly serviceable two-guard off the bench. Instead, he's the No. 11 pick in the first round and his inability to do much but shoot is glaringly apparent against other NBA starters. OTG wonders if Atlanta regrets selecting Roshown McLeod with the 12th overall selection in the 1998 NBA Draft before later draftees Ricky Davis, Rashard Lewis and Cuttino Mobley.
Duke players always fall into that "winner" category, that intangible quality that many a GM or coach believes makes a difference on a team. While that may be true if you are adding a long-range marksman to a playoff club with a great post game, it isn't a quality around which you build a team. For that, you need players with talent oozing out of their ears. You need the Shawn Marions from UNLV or the Tracy McGradys out of Mt. Zion high school. "Winners" make nice complementary parts. They know how to play a role on a winning team; they rarely form the backbone.
The Blue Devil Mystique: While Duke may not be producing future NBA All-Stars each year, no other school is consistently churning them out, either. Steve Francis may have come from Maryland, but so did Joe Smith. Baron Davis was a fabulous choice out of UCLA, quite unlike Jerome Moiso a year later. Still, for the constant flow of high school luminaries Duke receives, very few develop into the pro stars they seem to have the talent to become. Is Krzyzewski's system to blame? Dean Smith had a pretty rigid system in Chapel Hill and still managed to turn out Michael Jordan, Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse. Whatever the reason, talented players don't come out of Duke the same way they came in.