Breaking Down Mike Krzyzewski's Response To Jalen Rose

Fab Five: Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, Ray Jackson and Juwan Howard

At long last, Duke University men's basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski has made his comment to former University of Michigan star Jalen Rose's comments regarding the program he has built.

From an article published on the ESPN website: Rose, as part of an ESPN Films documentary "The Fab Five" that aired March 13 (Rose was an executive producer), said black Blue Devils basketball players recruited in the early 1990s were "Uncle Toms."

"I hated Duke and I hated everything Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms," Rose said in the documentary.

Rose's comments, obviously, have touched off a firestorm of controversy that just continues to boil over in the media and in the world of blogs.

Krzyzewski has finally decided to respond.

"Obviously, that was a poor choice of words and very insulting to everyone here at Duke but especially, not just our African-American players, but any African-American students," Krzyzewski said on "The Waddle & Silvy Show" on ESPN 1000 in Chicago Tuesday. "When you judge within a race, you start judging, like you put categories as to who you are. I think that's just the wrong thing to do."

Krzyzewski said one of the Fab Five could have ended up at Duke.

"We were very successful against them and, to be quite frank with you, we recruited Chris Webber," he said. "I didn't recruit Jalen Rose because we had Grant Hill and I'm happy with that. We didn't look at the other, Juwan Howard [because] we knew he wasn't going to come to Duke. The other two kids we didn't think were the caliber that could play as well as Thomas Hill and Brian Davis and Billy McCaffery. They're good kids. They were good kids."

Some of what Krzyzewski says is probably fair. I still don't think there is any way he would have recruited a player like Jalen, but Krzyzewski seems to suggest that he would have (if not for Hill already being on the roster). Krzyzewski also suggests Juwan Howard might have been an option, but he would not have chosen to go to Duke. He also seems to indicate that he didn't think Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were of the caliber of the players he already had in his program.

If Krzyzewski doesn't recruit players then doesn't help perpetuate the stereotype of Duke ignoring certain types of black players?

Webber was from Detroit, but he was attending the exclusive Detroit Country Day School.

Here is a little shot Coach K takes at the Fab Five:

"They had a heck of a run but, they didn't leave anything, they didn't establish anything there," Krzyzewski said. "The guys that I had established something that Jay Williams continued to do 10 years later -- the standards of what it meant to be a Duke basketball player."

I bet more people remember that Chris Webber and Jalen Rose played at Michigan than remember Brian Davis, Thomas Hill and Billy McCaffery (who went on to blossom as a player after he left Duke). Like so many people, Mike hates (to some extent) on the legacy left by the Fab Five.

There may be some truth to that, but only because of the sanctions and scandals. Krzyzewski got his shot in and he definitely has a lot to brag about with the success he has had as a head coach. But, the defensive nature of his comments still suggests some validity to the statements.

The dislike of Duke is not all about winning. North Carolina, Kansas, Connecticut and Kentucky are other programs with histories of success. None of those programs are as disliked as Duke.

ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/ncb/news/story?id=6270285&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

Crazy Like A Foxx … Virginia Foxx Again Makes A Foolish And Insulting Statement

Leave it to Norh Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx to make yet another foolish and insulting statement in what almost is becoming old hat for her. In a debate about a project that mostly was unrelated, Foxx used the opportunity (and the platform it provided) to attack Democrats and prop up Republicans using the Civil Rights Movement as her weapon of choice. Foxx claimed, “Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle. They love to engage in revisionist history.” But, as she yielded her time, Congressman Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat from California, rose and issued a strong response against Rep. Foxx.

CARDOZA: Today, what I’m hearing on the floor really takes the cake. The gentlelady from North Carolina, in her statement just now, indicated that the Republican GOP had passed the Civil Rights Act legislation with almost no help from the Democrats. I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that civil rights legislation. John Lewis…

FOXX: Would, would the gentleman yield?

CARDOZA: No, I will not yield. John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.

Helms was a United States senator from 1973 through 2003. While he was not around in the 1960s, Helms was clearly no friends to blacks or to those who fought, bled and died during the Civil Rights Movement.

Foxx rises later and says that Helms was not elected until 1972 and “was not in the Congress when the Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 60s.”

She is technically correct, but her victory is a weak one. It’s kind of like being proud of outrebounding your opponent, in basketball, by five when you lost the game by 25 points.

Helms blasted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (source: Wikipedia):

Helms opposed many progressive policies regarding race, such as busing, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.^{[257][258][259]} Helms called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ‘the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress’,^[12] and sponsored legislation to either extend it to the entire country or scrap it altogether.^[173] Helms reminded voters that he tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,^[21] although he had fewer reservations about establishing a North Carolina state holiday for King.^[260] He has been accused of being a segregationist by liberals and political scholars including USA Today’s DeWayne Wickham who wrote that Helms ’subtly carried the torch of white supremacy‘ from Ben Tillman.^{[261][262][263][264]}

In 1996 the Department of Justice admonished Helms’s 1990 campaign for mailing 125,000 postcards to households in predominantly African-American precincts warning them (incorrectly) that they could go to jail if they had not updated their addresses on the electoral register since moving.^[265] Helms opposed ‘every piece of civil rights and affirmative action legislation’ and blocked ‘Black judges from being considered for the federal bench’.^[260] In 1982, he voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act.^[260] Helms opposed busing, supported the ‘racist apartheid regime of South Africa’, and ‘for years blocked attempts by President Bill Clinton to appoint a Black judge on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’.^[260] Only when Helms’s own judicial choices were threatened with blocking did attorney Roger Gregory of Richmond, Virginia get confirmed.^[260] Helms tried to block the nomination of Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American female senator, as ambassador to New Zealand.^[260]

Her defense of Jesse Helms is more pathetic than the original point that put her in the hole in the first place.

Comments About Tyler Hansbrough Do Him A Disservice

One of the popular compliments to make about former North Carolina college basketball star Tyler Hansbrough (drafted by the NBA’s Indiana Pacers) echoes in the ears of people who love and follow basketball: He plays so hard. Hansbrough does play hard and he brings a high level of intensity to the basketball court. Hey, we all saw it so often when he was at the college level playing for the Tar Heels in one of the best college basketball conferences in the nation.

That being said, two things about the Tyler-Hansbrough-Plays-So-Hard compliment:

1. It almost implies that other guys do not play hard. A lot of guys play hard, but you aren’t drafted in the NBA just because you play hard.
2. It takes away from what I believe is a strong skill set Hansbrough possesses and takes away from his athleticism (better than a lot of people give him credit for).

Hansbrough has so many people talking about how hard he plays that they ignore the fact that he is both NBA athletic and NBA skilled. I believe Tyler Hansbrough is going to be a solid NBA player for a lot of years.