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Thread: Top 5 Dukies

  1. #81
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by Mcluhan View Post
    Glad to see somebody repping Johnny D here! Sheesh.

    1. Coach K's most important recruit.
    2. Set a Duke career scoring record which stood for 20 years without use of the three point line .
    3. A much more consistent player than J-Will who, for all his brilliance, rarely put together two good halves.
    4. Much better leader than J-Will. The undisputed leader of a 37-3 team.
    5. Averaged 14ppg as a starter on a 53 win NBA team.
    Very much agree with the praise for JD.

    But not the implicit diss of Jason Williams. I sure have different memories about his consistency and leadership.

    For the record, Dawkins did make 19 threes in 1983, when the ACC experimented with a 17-9 three-point shot. Would have made a lot more had he the opportunity in 1984, '85 and '86.

    It seems that discussions of this sort can easily lead to a trap, specifically, the best way to promote the-guy-that-I-like is to minimize the-guy-that-someone-else-likes.

    Remember the immortal words of Barney Fife. Nip it in the bud.
    Last edited by jimsumner; 12-03-2010 at 07:48 PM.

  2. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by jimsumner View Post
    Very much agree with the praise for JD.

    But not the implicit diss of Jason Williams. I sure have different memories about his consistency and leadership.

    For the record, Dawkins did make 19 threes in 1983, when the ACC experimented with a 17-9 three-point shot. Would have made a lot more had he the opportunity in 1984, '85 and '86.

    It seems that discussions of this sort can easily lead to a trap, specifically, the best way to promote the-guy-that-I-like is to minimize the-guy-that-someone-else-likes.

    Remember the immortal words of Barney Fife. Nip it in the bud.
    Part of what was so magical about J-Will is that he was king of the "23 point-- with 21 in the second half!!!" games.

    And it's notable that Johnny was the leader of his best team, whereas J-Will was not. I'm not trying to diss J-Will unnecessarily, just provide an enlightening comparison.

    And to be sure, on the point about Johnny being a better NBA player than people remember, J-Will may well have played a bigger role on a successful NBA team, had he had the chance. Hurley too.

  3. #83
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Asheville

    Thumbs up GoDuke Magazine

    Just got my 2011 Duke Basketball Yearbook December copy of GoDuke the Magazine today. (Boy, that's a mouthful.)

    In it, there is an article by Al Featherston on the top 50 players in Duke history. Along with Mr. Featherston, Bill Brill, Jim Sumner, Barry Jacobs and John Roth did the evaluations and voting to come up with the top 50. Top 2 without a doubt were Laettner and Heyman, with Johnny D next. The rest can be seen by reading the mag. In addition, there is another great article by Bob Harris, where he has an extensive interview with Mike Lewis covering his career from high school until the present day. There are some interesting stories in there about Coach Bubas and others, also.

    I wish that all of you out there that missed seeing the play during the Vic Bubas era could have experienced what Indoor, Devil in the Blue Dress, myself, and others experienced. I know, myself, that the experience has helped me to be able to better evaluate our present and past players under Coach K. I think a quote by Mike Lewis during the Bob Harris interview may help some to understand more what we are talking about: "And Verga could shoot the lights out and could go for 40 on any night. People don't realize it, but he averaged 26 a game, and we didn't have the three-point shot. There's no telling how many he would have averaged with that. We set plays for him beyond today's three-point line for him to get a jump shot. That's how deadly he was."

    If anyone thinks that other teams didn't scout like they did today, and didn't set up defenses to stop Verga, Heyman, Mullins, etc., then maybe we should just not have these kind of discussions. After watching a Duke team averaging over 90 points a game (without the benefit of a 3-point shot) throughout the season get hit with defenses that came up with final scores like 21-20 and 10-12, there is no doubt in my mind that the players of yesterday had to prove themselves in the same way as the players of today.

    In closing, I would like to add that DintheBD took the words right out of my mouth when she talked about "The Look" that would come over Art Heyman when it was time to put up or shut up. For the Coach K era viewers, you may have seen a slightly lesser version of it when Jason Williams led the 10 point comeback in 54 (or 56?) seconds at Maryland.

    Many of the Bubas era players were absolutely fantastic, and need to be considered in the proper context in all discussions regarding Duke Bball greats. When they are not included, I believe that the slight shows a lack of true understanding of the Duke Bball phenomena. While we may differ in our opinions regarding specific players, it really would help the discussions and our understanding (myself included) if we could all strive to be more objective in our reasoning. The more we carefully listen to the "elders" here, like Jim, Bill, Al, etc., the more we are exposed to what will, I believe, enhance both our understanding and enjoyment of what truly is Duke Basketball. At the end of one of the ESPN Duke specials that was on a few weeks ago, Kyle made a very profound statement when he closed the program with his reason for wanting to be a part of Duke Basketball. (I think that was the question) His answer was: "Because it is Duke Basketball.) 'nuff said.

    ricks

  4. #84
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC
    One of the fun things about these lists is that ultimately they are subjective, each of us picking our favorites. Nothing wrong with that - it's what makes sports banter fun.

    Christian Laettner is the best college player I have ever seen. Amazingly clutch. For my money Shane Battier is almost as good - the smartest guy on the court in any game he ever played, with incredible defensive instincts, leadership abilities, and the knack for doing exactly what his team needed at the most important times. There was a play under the basket in the NCAA title game that was the most amazing sequence of quick, instinctive moves I can remember, and they may well have saved that game.

    After that it gets a lot harder for me, because there are six or seven players who in my mind rank more or less equally. I think I'm putting JJ Redick on my list, because he was so electrifying and so consistent. Yeah, he had a bad game in the NCAAs at a very inopportune time. But IIRC Jason Kidd ate Hurley's lunch in the round of 16, too. If JJ had had Laettner and Hill as teammates, he would have that championship.

    Not that I'm leaving Bobby Hurley off the list. Best pure NCAA point guard I've seen, ever.

    So that makes me have to pick a fifth among Grant, Dawkins, Ferry, JWill, and the old-timers. Jeez. Honestly, each has his case to be made, and none is really better all-round than the others. With a serious apology to Grant, I'm going to go with Jason Williams, for all the reasons that others have put forward. But, honestly, I'm not going to argue much if you prefer Grant or Dawkins or Heyman or G-Man. It says so much about this program that the choices are so . . . arbitrary, ultimately.
    Quel est si drole de la paix, de l'amour, et de la comprehension?

  5. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Reddevil View Post
    is a good idea. First we need to define what we mean by top 5. Does it mean favorite players? Does it mean best players? Does it mean the best potential team? Something else?
    I vote for best carreer at Duke

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by johnb View Post
    I'll take a team of the guys who left early and who are generally snubbed in our lists (and I'll ignore pre1977 since I never saw those players and, anyway, for best players, I'd look to the modern era. not the players fault, but let's see a 6'3" forward dominate in 2010, and if you didn't allow African-American men to play, our current team would probably have 3 all Americans (wait, we already do ).

    anyway...

    brand, boozer, maggette, deng, williams in their primes would dominate hurley, jj, hill, battier, laettner. disagree? Bobby did set the assist record, but he was leading a team that included two of the best finishers in duke history, and the team was organized around him making assists for 4 years. I loved him, but jwill was a better player.

    jj v maggette. there's a reason that one has fared better in the NBA. maggette would make it hard for jj to get off a shot. when confronted with really good individual defenders (as in the NBA and the NCAA tourney), jj became mortal. maggette became better.

    deng v hill might be advantage grant, but not by much.

    brand boozer v laettner battier. we love the latter guys and are generally silent about the former, but one group went on to play at an all star NBA level, while laettner and battier are best known for being great college players.
    If by "in their primes" you mean that each person on your team is playing at his highest level played AT DUKE then your team is going to get whipped. Nobody dominated Laettner in college. Ask Shaq and Alonzo Mourning (2 guys who had far better NBA carreers than anyone on your team.

  7. #87

    Hurley

    Quote Originally Posted by mapei View Post
    But IIRC Jason Kidd ate Hurley's lunch in the round of 16, too. If JJ had had Laettner and Hill as teammates, he would have that championship.

    Not that I'm leaving Bobby Hurley off the list. Best pure NCAA point guard I've seen, ever.
    Don't remember it that way at all. Hurley scored 32 in a 82-77 loss. Also had 9 assists, so in effect accounted for 2/3 of all Duke scoring while playing the entire game. Kidd had 11 pts and 14 assists so he also had a great game.

    But, must have been a light lunch. Anyway Duke was a 3 seed, CA a 6. Was a very big story since Duke had won two years in a row, and it was round of 32. Duke would have likely fallen to Kansas (as Cal did) next.

  8. #88
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by dball View Post
    Don't remember it that way at all. Hurley scored 32 in a 82-77 loss. Also had 9 assists, so in effect accounted for 2/3 of all Duke scoring while playing the entire game. Kidd had 11 pts and 14 assists so he also had a great game.

    But, must have been a light lunch. Anyway Duke was a 3 seed, CA a 6. Was a very big story since Duke had won two years in a row, and it was round of 32. Duke would have likely fallen to Kansas (as Cal did) next.
    Not only did Hurley have one of the best games of his career against Cal, he did so with Grant will below par because of a lingering toe problem and Parks sitting out the second half with a sprained ankle. Duke trailed early in the second half by something in the 17-18 point range and Hurley willed Duke back into that game.

    The loss to Cal ended Duke's streak of five consecutive Final Fours and seriously undermined sales of T-shirts proclaiming the Final Four to be the "Duke Invitational."

  9. #89
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    Toledo
    First off, this discussion is subjective and a subjective poll is based on personal opinions, experiences and, in many cases, emotional attachment to whatever idea is being debated. I like to consider myself an educated historian of sorts of our basketball program. I live and breathe Duke. Are there many posters on this board that would completely dominate me in a battle of wits with regard to Duke history? Certainly there are. However, that doesn't mean us "young 'uns" who have maybe not been through as many decades of Blue Devil hoops, or frequented as many live games or seen every player ever are any less capable of adding to this conversation.

    Active dialogue absolutely is essential to this type of chat board discussion; however, the "I was there, son" mentality isn't useful in association with a subjective discourse. This is a fun-poll ranking ball players, not the Book of Life. If Redick, for example, is included over Dawkins, Dawkins won't be tossed into a pond of fire. He will still be a fabulous basketball player from Duke history who accomplished many great things.

    J.J. Redick is on the list over Johnny Dawkins for me; however, only because there is not enough room and I can only choose five players. I won't lose any sleep for making this decision, either, like it appears some will.

  10. #90
    With the caveat that I'm only including post 1990 because I had just started seriously watching around then, selecting my 5 was easy. I'd rank them as follows

    1. Hill
    2. Laettner

    3. Battier
    4. Hurley
    5. Williams

    Hill is the best Blue Devil I have seen. A spectacular player who did everything - no matter whether on offense or defense, the ball in his hands or not, he was always helping us win - and this allowed him to star in whatever role K put him in. That said, I can certainly understand an argument for Laettner over him.

    A few points about some interesting discussion in this thread:

    Williams vs. Hurley
    It's very close and it largely depends on the situation. With the supporting cast of the 1993 team, I would prefer Williams. With that of the 2001 team, I would take Hurley, even given that they won the title anyway. The reason I gave Hurley the slight overall edge is that I'd rather my premier ball-handler be a top passer than a top scorer, because the former is tougher to gameplan and defend.


    Redick
    I just couldn't give him serious consideration over anyone in my top 5. And it's not so much related to his March performances; rather it's just that he wasn't as good as the others. He was a terrific scorer, but he was still one-dimensional, and as someone pointed out in this thread, that dimension required significant work on the part of his teammates in order to help create his opportunities. While the quality of his supporting cast (besides Shelden) was relatively weak, his offensive game didn't make his teammates better.

    If JJ had the opportunity to play with players like Laettner, Brand, etc., he would have been more likely to win a title. But there would also be no need for K to center the offense around creating good looks for JJ, and his numbers would take a serious dip from what they otherwise were. And his name wouldn't be coming up nearly as often in a discussion like this one.

  11. #91
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Charlotte, North Carolina

    Holy Crap...I just met Jeff Mullins!

    Not much else to say than that. It was a social hello through one of my practice partners, but it absolutely highlighted my day to be able to shake the hand of one of the holy trinity of the Vic Bubas era of Duke Basketball. He was a nice guy, of course, but about all I could do was shake his hand, and tell him it was an honor to meet a guy who helped to make Duke basketball relevant on the national landscape, and who's jersey is hanging in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

    To be clear: I didn't put this post in this thread to make any argument about whether or not Mr. Mullins is one of the top 5 all-time Dukies. But he's clearly one of the greats, and I didn't think a post just to exult over meeting the man didn't deserve it's own thread.

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