4:25 PM: Duke 73, Charlotte 26

Back from the run, happy to see ten comments on the last post, less excited to see Duke up 3o.

Always fun to watch Scheyer and Singler ride the one good black player. Now that Gerald Henderson's in the NBA, nice to see Nolan Smith fit nicely into that role.

As a jumping-off point for some Duke hate, this Gmail message from Albert:

I know I'm supposed to hate Duke, but I'm not quite sure why. I think I need to be watching this game with someone who can properly point out things I should hate.
Here's why: Because they have managed to become very successful by doing something that makes basketball less enjoyable. For me, this is the one thing to hate about them. I don't really care that they send dozens of smug white d-bags to the NBA only to be huge busts, I don't care about the Cameron Crazies, I don't care about the latent racism inherent in Duke as a culture. All I care about is that they have elevated flopping to an art form.

Basketball is not really a strategic game. It can be, but more than anything else it is a game where the best players can win. You can put eight in the box to stop Adrian Peterson. You can intentionally walk Albert Pujols. But, in basketball, a good offensive player will beat you. If you double him, he will find the open man. If you leave him alone, for even a second, he will score. And so, really, the only way to stop a good offensive player is to play good defense. And this is why basketball can be so viscerally awesome. When a good offensive player takes the ball to the basket, it is up to the defense to man up and stop him. Block his shot. Steal the ball. Force him into a bad shot or a turnover. But you have to be better at defense than he is at offense to beat him. This guarantees action.

Duke, however, does not play defense in the usual sense. Sure, they always have some scrappy white point guard slapping the floor as if he's all fired up to hound the opposing point guard into a turnover, to directly go and steal the ball from him, to be the better player and prove it. However, this is not what he is going to do. He is going to attempt to get himself into a place where he can fall down and make it look like an offensive foul.

Duke also never lacks for a seven-foot big man. Usually they have several, all McDonald's All-Americans, guys who were the super-studs of their high schools, often the best player in their entire state. These are guys who are used to dominating the lane, imposing their will on others, blocking shots at will, and changing an entire team's offensive game plan. At Duke, however, they are taught to simply stand there until the opposing post player makes the slightest move, then to throw themselves into the basket support as if they had been hit by a truck. I would bet that Coach K actually discourages blocked shots.

And so the offense goes from a mindset of attacking to a mindset of fear. Any player who makes any kind of cut, with or without the ball, is now thinking of scoring only secondarily, and is instead more concerned with avoiding a charge. Being good at offense, being quick, slashing through the defense, getting to the rim, trying to create a highlight ... this all now has negative reprecussions. And so Duke games turn into stand-still jump shooting contests, with the best actors gaining the advantage. In the college game, with a five-foul limit, one or two soft offensive foul calls can put a superstar on the bench, and can beat an entire team.

Duke is really good at basketball. They are currently winning 73-36. I think they could win just as much by playing a style of basketball that is not such a perversion of everything we love about the game. I think they could make final fours without attempting to turn basketball into Italian soccer. And, if they did, they would be just another good team that I have no real opinion about. But this will never happen. Not as long as Coach K is able to recruit players willing to give up their desire to play entertaining basketball. And he will. And I will hate them.