With Duke in the NCAA tournament again, here’s a 2013 clickbait article from some place called Complex that still seems reasonably representative of White Guy opinion on college basketball.
When it comes to college basketball, no team catches more hate than the Duke Blue Devils.
Keep in mind that Duke’s strategy is not to recruit one-and-done morons and rapists, but instead to try to find players who can least vaguely fulfill the student-athlete athlete ideal and stick around to graduate. That’s a big reason why they are hated.
But, don’t just take our word for it. Instead, go punch the words “Duke sucks” into Google and take a look through the 5.5 million results that pop up. From a book called Duke Sucks: A Completely Evenhanded, Unbiased Investigation into the Most Evil Team on Planet Earth to a rap song created by Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg called “This Is Why Duke Sucks” (Sample lyric: “White players everywhere, they awkward when they dunk/This is why, this is why, this is why you suck”), it’s clear that there’s not a lot of love for the Dukies out there. Much like the New York Yankees and the New England Patriots, Duke is in a class of its own when it comes to attracting haters.
But, do you know what people hate more than anything about Duke? No, it’s not Coach K or the Cameron Crazies or the fact that the Blue Devils get every call on every single play in every single game. It’s the Duke players themselves. From the guys who played key roles on Duke’s national championship teams in 1991, 1992, 2001, and 2010 to the guys who graced the court at Cameron Indoor during the program’s down years (assuming you consider “down” to mean only making it to the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament), people hate Duke players. So, as the Blue Devils gear up to try and make another run at a national title later this month, we decided to take a look back at The 20 Most-Hated Duke Players of All Time. Prepare to feel your blood boil.
So I’ll annotate the list by race. As you know, college basketball stars tend to be black, but less so at Duke,, an academically demanding college, and even less so on the list of the most hated Duke stars.
It’s first worth noting Duke players not on the list, such as Grant Hill (a superior individual, admired by everybody, the son of Calvin Hill of Yale and the Dallas Cowboys, who had an immensely long NBA career despite crippling injuries), but also Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, Johnny Dawkins, Carlos Boozer, and Luol Deng (rich Dinka, not Chinese).
Here are the 20 most hated Duke basketball players:
20. Austin Rivers — black dad (Doc Rivers, hired by Donald Sterling to coach the L.A. Clippers) and white mom. Duke tends to get these players from good families.
19. Erik Meek — white
18. Shavlik Randolph — despite the first name, he’s white. He’s named for his NBA player grandfather Ronnie Shavlik.
17. Dahntay Jones — black
16. Quin Snyder — white (right)
From Complex:
That hair. That stupid $^%&*@# hair. It just screams, :”I GO TO DUKE! I’M BETTER THAN YOU!” We’re glad this guy and his hair have been banished to Russia to pursue a career in coaching.
From Wikipedia:
He graduated from Duke in 1989 with a double major in philosophy and political science, and, later received a JD from Duke Law School in 1995 and an MBA from the Duke Fuqua School of Business in 1995.[7]
15. Kyle Singler — white
14. Brian Davis — black
13. Jason Williams — black
Don’t get it twisted: Jason Williams — or Jay Williams as he’s known now — was good. Real good. In fact, you could make the argument that he was one of the best players to ever suit up for Coach K. But, he was so good that it made a lot of people hate him.
Like, how in the world did Duke manage to land that guy? Don’t they only recruit goofy-looking white guys who shoot 500 threes a game and slap the floor when they play defense?!
12. Bobby Hurley — white
Hurley was perhaps the highest-achieving point guard in NCAA history, leading Duke to a final four as a freshman and being crushed by mighty UNLV. The next year, Duke was matched up with undefeated UNLV and, to the shock of many including myself, won. He went on to win a second NCAA crown and set the still-standing career college record for assists. He was then off to a good start in the NBA but after two months of his rookie season a drunk driver plowed into his vehicle and he was half-crippled. He managed to come back and hang on in the NBA for five more years on basketball smarts. This season he coached the U. of Buffalo to the NCAA tourney for the first time ever.
So he’s only the 12th most hated Duke player.
11. Gerald Henderson Jr. — black
10. Mike Dunleavy Jr. — white
9. Jon Scheyer — white (half Jewish, played some professional ball in Israel after Duke)
8. Shane Battier — black father, white mother
7. Danny Ferry — white
6. Greg Paulus — white
5. Cherokee Parks — white (1/8th American Indian)
4. Steve Wojciechowski — white
3. Chris Collins — white
2. J.J. Redick — white
Redick claims that he got the impression from his coach on the L.A. Clippers, Doc Rivers, that Donald Sterling didn’t want him to play because he’s white.
1. Christian Laettner — white
The first name probably didn’t help.
So the Most Hated Top 20 adds up to 4 blacks, 2 mulattos, and 14 whites. The Top Ten most hated is 9.5 / 10 white, with the seven most hated players being white.
16. Quin Snyder — white (right)