Originally Posted by
licc85
Last year, we got booted in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and the biggest weakness of the team was a lack of a big, athletic perimeter player with length who could defend opposing wings. I don't think we get beat in the first round with Harrison Barnes on our team. Also, if he's on that 2011 squad, that might have been the greatest Duke team ever and we might have repeated, even with Kyrie out. People can talk crap about Barnes all they want, and I'm surely no fan of his, but the fact remains that he was a really effective player in college who could defend and hit 3s. We really missed out when he decided not to come to Duke, even if he wasn't all he was hyped to be.
The 2011 squad was clearly one of the best teams in the nation that year and a legitimate threat to repeat, with or without Harrison Barnes. We got steam-rolled by an incredible 20-minute performance by Arizona that probably would have beated us with WITH Barnes. Remember how UNC lost in the tournament last year, with Barnes right there on the floor? The 2011 tournament ended up being won by a UConn team that was 5th (count it out, FIFTH) in its own freaking conference, for crying out loud. They had no business winning, and the 2011 Duke team could probably have taken them 2 out of 3 times.
That's the ridiculous thing about this line of thinking. "If only we had Parker, or Randle, or <insert other name here> we'd for sure win it all!" or, its converse, "If we don't get Parker, or Randle, or <insert other name here> we have no chance to win it all!" are both ludicrous, because the outcome of the tournament isn't predictable. The team with the best players doesn't always win. Certainly, the more good players we have, the more LIKELY we are to win it all, but the outcome isn't predicated strictly on talent levels; there is a lot of luck and randomness that goes into the tournament.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust