Regarding the son wearing the father's number, that is completely different. I think that is another way to pay tribute to the number. The son obviously knows and understands the importance. Sure, we don't know everything behind Jabari Parker's story with the number and Jay Williams but right now, it appears there isn't much of a relationship between the 2. And as JE has pointed out, if you are going to take this step, than you have to effective un-retire all the numbers or is this procedure just open to the #2 recruit in the class who was on an ESPN cover?
As an old timer here (although not the oldest timer -- thanks to Jarhead and Jim3K), the "Duke Tradition" was not to retire jerseys at all. Dick Groat was the only one, and AD Eddie Cameron's rationale was that Groat was an A-A in two sports. Vic Bubas tried really hard, it is said, to get his A-A's jerseys retired but no dice. Therefore, my contemporaries Artie and Jeff had to wait until my daughter was at Duke to see their jerseys in the rafters. And then Cherokee got to wear a retired hersey, good old #44. Art has been quoted as saying that he didn't get along with Cameron, but Art said a lot of stuff, and I don't know that I buy it, given the incredible political skills of Mr. Cameron.
Anyway, the crux of the #22 story is that this is apparently JWill's idea -- so who could object to that?
[A different story, to which I would invite Sumner's comments, but Cameron is still having a positive effect inside the ACC, in that he really went to bat for Clemson and some of the schools outside of NC in the old So Con and early ACC days. Duke made a lot of friends back then. That is one reason I never bought the stories of Clemson fleeing the ACC: Sports are about loyalties, and Duke's sponsporship of Clemson on various matters still apparently casts a shadow. Everywhere but UMd, of course, which is led by carpetbaggers. And also, of course, Clemson never hired a strutting egomaniac like Frank McGuire, who led USC out of the ACC.]
sagegrouse
'To be fair, my House J 2nd floor mate, Jim3K, is at most a month older than me'
This is a five-page thread? Wow.
Christian Ast = 54. Hey, he won two titles! It's a shame more people don't wear 54, as it is a fine member of the set of positive integers.
Fifty-three, though... now there's an ugly number.
Especially considering the nba is ok with any two-digit number, although they wouldn't let Dennis Rodman use a leading zero, so he had to settle for 91.
I don't see why the ncaa couldn't allow 6 if you didn't also have a 51, 7 if you didn't also have 52 and so on. Or just signal 6 through 9 the way they do on trading floors.
Oh, you beat me to it. Besides, nba refs often mention the name of the player already. "It's on Kobe, number 8," for example.
This in fact will be the solution in the 31st century.
ALeelaofHerOwn.jpg
I think they do this to simplify things for a number of reasons. For one, NCAA arenas often seem to be much louder than their NBA counterparts. Additionally the refs and players all know each other in the NBA. In college, these refs are reffing games all over the country with players from many different conferences. It would be impossible for the refs or even the scorer to know everyone on all the teams. They could use things like different hand signals but I think they want to simplify it and with seemingly 30+ numbers, they don't see a huge reason for changing the rules which could end up resulting in a foul recorded on the wrong person.
Traditions matter, especially in college sports. Without intangibles, honors, traditions...it's just a game. If it's just a game, there's no reason to care about it at all. If UCLA let Kevin Love wear one of their retired numbers, then they have dampened their tradition, even if not drastically so.
If you scoff at this and really only are worried about the effect on actual basketball to be played in the future, what happens when a future recruit isn't deemed to be quite as special as Jabari and doesn't understand why a number won't be unretired for him when it was unretired for someone else before? Where do you draw the line?
I don't know anything that suggests that Jabari should be blamed for this, for all I know J-Will came up with it himself. But I still say it's a bad idea.
I love Jason Williams as much as the next person, but aren't some people getting a little worked up over this for no reason? It's a number. If J-Will is good with it, then so am I.
This cracks me up in a sense because I remember seeing threads on this board years ago of people asking what will happen when Duke runs out of numbers from retiring all of them. They were going to have to be worn again anyways. Forever is a long time to never use a number again.
Again, it is a number. People made a big deal out of Austin and Kyrie being the first Duke players to wear 0 and 1 for no reason, too. I for one think its pretty cool of Jason to provide permission for Jabari to wear it if he would like.
As loathe as I am to contribute to page 5 of a thread that is based on something that may not be an issue at all, I feel the need to shut down a certain train of thought: that Jay (or Jason) Williams' opinion, flexibility, or permission on this actually matters. It does not.
A great number of you seem to be confused about this because Duke -- like most schools -- puts last names on the back of jerseys. This does not mean that the person with that last name has any ownership in the jersey. The jersey Duke retired was #22, not Williams #22. By retiring a jersey, the institution is honoring a specific player by promising that no one else* will ever wear that number. Sure, there was a glorious past with that number, but your present accomplishments as a student-athlete were so rare and exceptional that the number will have no future.
Other threads on this subject go into this point in further detail, but the decision to retire a jersey is not unilateral by the coach, either. The university plays a role in it. Duke especially takes the term "student-athlete" seriously, and there is definitely an academic element to jersey retirement. Which means that the decision to unretire a jersey is also institutional in nature, and not left to a single person.
And while I feel that unretiring the #22 jersey for anyone other than Jay Williams is ridiculous, it's not my honor to give or take away. It's nice if/when Jay Williams is offered some input into the decision, but ultimately not necessary.
*No one else of that gender, apparently. Andre Dawkins is assigned Alana Beard's number.
The #44 jersey for Jeff Mullins was retired on 12/06/1994; Cherokee Parks was issued the #44 in 1991-92 prior to it being retired and continued to wear it until the end of his senior season in 1994-95.
Also, not sure if it has been mentioned: when Barry Bonds signed with San Francisco as free agent in Dec 1992, "The Giants even have gotten permission from (Willie) Mays to allow Bonds to wear his No. 24, even though it has been retired by the team"
"I want to say how excited I am to be able to go back home and share something with my family and the people I grew up with," said an emotional Bonds. "I was born on July 24, 1964, and 24 has always been my favorite number. It's great to have grown up with such a great hero and then have the chance to keep his name alive. I want to thank the Giants for talking to Willie and allowing this to happen."
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/199...rie-case-bonds
Ultimately, "...Bonds never got to wear 24 - fans and columnists complained, and he settled on 25, which his dad, Bobby, wore..."
http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article...#ixzz2JQQ4Q2uj
Jordan chose to wear #45 when he returned: "He was back, albeit with the unorthodox No. 45 as he wanted to leave No. 23 behind, and attempted to carry the Bulls to another title." http://www.nba.com/history/players/jordan_bio.html
The Chicago Bulls were fined $100,000 by the NBA yesterday for allowing Jordan to return to his familiar No. 23 during the playoffs without notifying the league. http://articles.philly.com/1995-06-2...boston-celtics
This NYT article spells it all out: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/sp...at-matter.html
Basically, Jordan had sub-par Game 1 against Orlando in the East Semi-finals and Nick Anderson talked smack about how #45 wasn't as good as #23...
That left John Ligmanowski, the Bulls' equipment manager, to explain the genesis of his decision to wear his old number.
"It was my idea," Ligmanowski said as he was cornered against a wall in the arena by cameras, microphones and notebooks. "After the loss the other day, I suggested it to him. Since he came back, I carry around both jerseys. He basically decided before the game tonight."
Some coincidence, huh? Only Monday, Nick Anderson, the Magic guard who shut down Jordan in Game 1 and snuck up from behind and poked the ball away from him with about 10 seconds to go, said: "No. 45 is not No. 23. I couldn't have done that to No. 23." Anderson added that Jordan, at 32, was nowhere near Jordan at 28 or 29 years of age.
"Honestly, I did not notice it right away," said Anderson, who finished with 16 points but only 4 after halftime. "But 23, he made some shots. He wasn't saying anything. He was just playing basketball."
It's Jason's number to give away... His opinion is the only one that should matter
sage, my following comments address only the sentence that I bolded. When South Carolina left the ACC many folks thought Frank McGuire was the culprit. Later on I heard differently. Paul Dietzel was the Football coach when they left in 1971. He was also the Athletic Director. As I recall, he was reported to have visions of Notre Dame-like success with the football program, so he supposedly made the ACC departure move. Another story I recall hearing is that he had a prime recruit for his program, but he was rejected by the ACC office for failure to meet the academic standards of the conference. I can't find it now, but Wikipedia supports that scenario. It wasn't until 1991 that they joined the SEC. The football program competed as an independent for 20 years.
Devil84, as usual, has my proxy on this. We're caught in a numbers game.
I would argue this: college basketball, as such, has only been around a bit more than 100 years. If you're going to have a tradition like this, it's only logical that it will crumble beneath the weight of time. We don't want to become UNC, with tons of laundry on the ceiling, but maybe Carolina's 1999 (Okulaja, seriously?) is our 2040. If you expect this game will last hundreds of years, it's unreasonable to assume the rules that applied in 1952 when Groat was retired will be the same ones in 2052.
Tempus edax rerum, people.
I like the idea of the old guy granting some sort of exemption to the new guy. As I've argued for years, given the rough qualifications for retirement, it's pretty absurd that Verga and Alarie aren't in the club. And we wouldn't even lose any jersey numbers out of circulation since those are the Hurley/Laettner numbers. Verga's problem is that they weren't retiring numbers back then, and Alarie's is that he was the classmate of this highest-scoring player in school history. We'd gotten over that last problem by 2006 (see SWill and JJ). Maybe you could take the same number [mostly] out of circulation, mostly, but honor multiple guys on that number. This would even go into the future. JJ says, yeah, some AAU twit can have 4. If Twit 4 turns into amazing, great, he gets added to JJ's banner. If not, who cares--he's gone.
Indeed, maybe Carolina's stupid two-tier system makes some sense. Make six or so numbers sacrosanct and "honor" the other guys. That might last 400 years.
If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna take a shower.
A movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it.
---Roger Ebert
Some questions cannot be answered
Who’s gonna bury who
We need a love like Johnny, Johnny and June
---Over the Rhine
Surprised no one has brought this up, but the Chinese actually count to 10 on one hand.
http://www.instructables.com/id/HOW-...ND-in-Chinese/
Seems like another potential solution.
Interesting side note, JP's own #22 has now been retired midseason at his high school. So if he wears 22 at Duke, he'll have worn it twice after it was retired. (Albeit the one he has now DOES belong to him.)
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highsc...221158346.html
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."