What Makes Duke Basketball Great?

[MADukie20]

Hey all,
For my final paper in english, my professor is allowing us to choose our topic as long as it has to do with pop culture in some way. For my paper, I have decided to write about Duke Basketball and what makes it great. So far I am planning on discussing the history, Coach K, Cameron Indoor Stadium, the crazies, and K-Ville. I was hoping you all could tell me what you think makes Duke Basketball so great? Thanks in advance.

[weezie]

Discipline in the face of challenge. Submitting the "I" to the "We."

Plus super attractive alumni and fans, especially the women! :D

[camion]

It starts at the top with a great coach.

It continues with great players who are generally great people.

Add a great facility and crazy fans.

Top it off with the proper shade of blue.

[DevilWearsPrada]

The Head Coach is passionate and disciplined and pursues excellence and character in his actions and those on his staff and squad. From Coach K, down.......... those traits prevail and echo throughout the Duke Basketball mecca.

Duke Basketball is an obsession.

A great historic indoor stadium, passionate Cameron Crazy fans, Cameron Crusties in the upper arena (old faithfuls), students Tenting in Kville, fans dressing up with blue wigs and makeup, and making wonderful signs and coming up with new cheers.......... all makes the Duke Basketball tradition!!!

Duke Mens Basketball has always had a good record..... Coach K has just moved it to the National and International Spotlight... especially with the Olympic and USA teams. Putting a great product out in the Market, is something people want to see and buy and be a part of.

[Lord Ash]

Doing it RIGHT... as a team, and with an eye towards the down and dirty, essential, and essentially unglamorous art of defense, rather than offense. It is NEVER about the individual at Duke, EVER. It is ALWAYS about the team, about the whole, about Duke.

And the fact that, for many many years, every single Duke player graduated. Even now the vast majority do, including those fellows who go on to play professional basketball. I have always been most proud of the fact that ALL of our guys graduated, and to be honest the day that changed has always been one of the darkest days in Duke history to me.

[4decadedukie]

This is a worthy tropic, and I appreciate your asking. While there are many ways to approach this question, I have opted to categorize the elements that I believe make Duke Basketball great into three categories:
1. Institutional – The University and things that surround and augment the coaches and players.
2. Coaches – The “K era” coaching that distinguishes Duke’s program from so many others, including highly successful and traditionally storied ones.
3. Players – The young men Duke attracts, recruits, trains, motivates, enhances and GRADUATES, both on and off the court.

INSTITUTIONAL:
1. An enduring tradition of basketball excellence that permeates the university and is both significant to every Duke constituency and to everyone involved with the Basketball program. Basketball is far from Duke’s only outstanding and continuing attribute, but it is a central catalyst and unifying dynamic that many Dukies – students of all ages and disciplines, alumni, staff, administrators, faculty, boosters, community members, and so forth – employ to facilitate commutations, to share institution pride, and to create personal bonds. To review carefully the banners, suspended from Cameron’s rafters, that symbolize the accolades earned by eminent Duke athletes, is to understand that distinction in Duke Basketball is NOT a transient phenomenon.
2. Intensive and continuing competition, nationally (of course), but more significantly within the ACC and especially among the “Tobacco Road” universities.
3. Enviable and elevated benchmarks and values of comportment, scholarship, citizenship, athletic performance, teamwork, self-discipline, selflessness and leadership that are reinforced by the University (and its many and varied constituencies), self-enforced by the coaches and players, and that synergistically epitomize both Duke University and Duke Basketball.
4. Institutional support that ensures the Basketball program receives the resources – ranging from financial to emotional, and so much more – necessary to represent our University superbly in every germane arena.
5. Extraordinary standards that are unremitting, demanding, encompassing, universally applicable and enduring; these principles are clearly understood, they are relevant to board Duke communities (from our Crazies – and Crusties – to coaches and players, to University officers and senior volunteer leaders) and they underpin the extensive Basketball enterprise.

COACHES:
1. Coaches (and other Basketball program/University leadership) that are deeply imbued with the many elements – specifically including non-athletic ones – that have been demonstrated as critical to long- and short-term successes, both winning and doing so in ways that are exceptional and that distinguish Duke (both basketball and “the University”) from its competitive peers. This is an important reason our coaches are Duke Basketbuall alumni.
2. Unfailing defensive emphasis.
3. Clear, abiding focus on the TEAM, rather than the individual (Duke Basketball is MUCH more about optimized group and program performance than it is concerned with “ESPN highlights”).
4. An “academics first” philosophy, that only recruits those who can succeed in Duke’s top-tier undergraduate environment, that provides the resources to ensure scholastic success, that respects and stresses classroom performance, that strongly encourages graduation, and that demands the intellectual exertion required to meet Duke's superb educational standards. Our players simply do not “flunk out,” or fail to attend classes, or fail to take the same examinations or to submit the same term papers as their classmates. There is a very pertinent and major reason the practice basketball facility is entitled the “K Center for ACADEMIC and Athletic Excellence.”
5. Leadership (that incorporates both communications and teaching) that truly cares about the individual’s immediate and continuing success and that provides guidance and in-depth assistance in every facet of a player’s (or a manager’s, for that matter) life – not only in “basketball.”

PLAYERS:
1. Student-Athletes first, who quickly understand the University and Program underpinnings (many noted above) that both create a perpetually top-level program and that are compulsory for every player (without exception).
2. Leadership by upperclassman, especially captains, that creates both peer-performance-pressure and real teaching on “how” to function, not just what to execute.
3. Duke students in every area – no athletic dorms, or basketball “jock courses,” or set-aside behavioral and/or academic policies – that unite the undergraduate community and that forever enrich our student-athletes’ experiences, both in and out of the classroom, the library, and the laboratory.
4. A team that excels, not individual players who selfishly put their own performance and celebrity ahead of the program’s and the season’s successes.

This contribution has, intentionally, placed greater substance on the enduring FOUNDATIONS of “program” achievement, than on clear-cut, basketball-only attributes; I have deliberately done so because I believe these qualities are often overlooked, although they are every bit as essential to Duke’s continuous basketball accomplishments.

[sagegrouse]

As you can tell from his post, you need to meet 4decadedukie -- it could change your life.

I might expound a bit on one of his points:


2. Intensive and continuing competition, nationally (of course), but more significantly within the ACC and especially among the “Tobacco Road” universities.


I think a necessary condition is the existence of (i) four basketball-mad schools (ii) in a major conference (iii) located within 100 miles of each other. There are a lot of rivalries in college sports but nothing quite like this. Are there even three schools in major conferences that are so close and rivals to the same degree?

The Big Five in Philadelphia is a wonderful tradition, which I know something about having a daughter and son-in-law graduate from Penn and another daughter do her residency there. But it's hardly the same thing, with Penn, Villanova, St. Joe's, Temple and Lasalle spread over three different conferences.

Anyway, a necessary condition but not sufficient. State and Wake have grand traditions and great success, but not to the same degree as Duke and UNC.

sagegrouse
'Who among us is gonna tell 4decadedukie that it is really five decades he has been a card-carrying Dukie: 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s?'