This weekend we are burying the ashes of my father Paul Carrington, a long-time Duke law professor and actually Dean of the school from 1978-1988. He was 90 years old when he died in August and had been quite infirm the past several years. He had a good innings and so his death is sad but definitely not a tragedy. I'm quite okay and, in fact, as perhaps others have found, the death of a superannuated parent has allowed me to reengage with the memory of who he used to be when I knew him best...and that's actually quite nice. All that's an aside, however, to a note we got from another Duke law professor:
"Early in his tenure, (Paul) sought additional basketball tickets for the Dean’s Office to use when alumni were passing through Durham. The Athletic Director resisted to which Paul issued a challenge. Duke athletics would make available 4 Cameron seats if the law school team selected by Paul beat Duke’s starting five. Paul mentioned in making the challenged that two of the law school’s team members had a combined 14 years of NBA experience and the other three had garnered all conference recognitions before entering law school. The game was never played; the law school got the tickets."
Question A: Who were the NBA players at the law school?
Question B: Who were the all-conference honorees?
I know the answer to A but not B. FWIW, beyond these two, there are at least two other Duke bball greats who went on to get a Duke law degree.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
You are of course right about Jack Marin. And, now that you list Snyder (who I had forgotten), that makes three Duke standouts (including Snyder and Bilas) who went to DLS after Marin...the other of whom I am aware is Jim Spanarkel. FWIW, and I figure you're probably ahead of me on this, but Marin probably had the best NBA career of any Duke player up until Grant Hill (with the possible exception of Laettner), having made two all-star teams. He went to DLS directly from the NBA and, when he graduated in 1980, he was still only 35. His peak was significantly better than anyone on the 1979-80 Duke team, though of course he had presumably deteriorated a bit.
Last edited by WillJ; 10-11-2021 at 02:57 PM.
Gary Melchionni (Lee's dad) is in fact the second one, and I think that he was also in the DLS Class of 1980. He was nowhere near the player that Marin was, but he did play some NBA games...which I believe is more than anyone else on the 1979-1980 Duke team (besides Gminski) can say. He was only 29 years old when he graduated.
Very sorry for your loss.
Gene Banks was also on the Duke team at that time (Class of 1981) and he played in the NBA for a while.
Also, I'm pretty sure Spanarkel doesn't have a law degree - I think he has worked in finance (which doesn't rule out a law degree) in addition to broadcasting.
Thanks so much...he loved law schools, Duke's most of all. He always thought that what you were doing there - both the faculty and the students - was really important, and I suppose that showed up in his teaching. He got into some trouble for saying this to law professors who were more cynical than he was about the law, but it's hard to teach something effectively to others if you don't think it's valuable.
You're right about Spanarkel...I remember hearing about his admission to DLS, but he never attended.
You're also right about Banks - looking him up just now, he had a better NBA career than I had remembered - 11 pts/game avg. over six years. In terms of NBA achievement, he and Gminski were way ahead of Melchionni but still a good step below Marin.
This ends up as a bit of a stroll down memory lane for me, now 25 years removed from graduating.
(1) Professor Carrington's CivPro was, literally (every bit in the jimsumner sense of the word), my first law school class, in that it was scheduled as the first morning course of my 1L year. Thankfully, he did not call on me that day; I would have been a wreck, as I totally had "The Paper Chase" construct of what law school was like sticking in my head.
(2) Quin Snyder overlapped with me, and I *think* was a joint JD/MBA student. (Don't hold me to that.) I did not have any classes with him, but knew some who did.
(3) I interviewed with Bilas when seeking employment. He was still actively with Moore & Van Allen at the time (unlike now, when he is just listed on the website and, as I understand it, does not actively practice with that firm).
(4) Jack Marin participated in on-campus interviewing, but I did not interview with him. And, in addition to his basketball exploits, he was (probably still is) a helluva golfer.
Thank you for indulging me.
"Amazing what a minute can do."
You beat me to it, I was going to ask if Marin's career was better than Mullins'.
Not quite a completely disconnected tangent: Marin's brother Chuck was my financial adviser while I lived in Durham (and not a bad golfer at all in his own right, just like Jack). I recall doing pretty well while he was shepherding my comparatively insignificant funds.
Add: Now that I think about it, I remember Chuck telling me about caddying for Jack on some celebrity tournaments back then.
Last edited by 75Crazie; 10-11-2021 at 03:39 PM.
I don't know anything about the web site "The Balance Careers" but here's what it says about Spanarkel's passing up law school for finance:
Upon retiring [from the NBA], Jim Spanarkel applied to and was accepted by the Duke and Seton Hall Law Schools. He also interviewed for jobs at several financial services firms and accepted an offer from Merrill Lynch to become a financial advisor in their Paramus, NJ branch office. Forming a partnership with two other Merrill Lynch financial advisors in 1999, Spanarkel's new team would claim to manage over $1 billion of client assets by the year 2000. If accurate, this would suggest that each member of the team probably was earning at least $1 million annually at that time.
In order to add extra value for clients, Jim Spanarkel also has become a certified financial planner (CFP). As of 2016, he remains the lead partner in a Merrill Lynch financial advisor team that still includes two other advisors, plus two registered senior client associates (that is, registered broker sales assistants). One of the latter also serves as an investment analyst.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
With apologies for the bad formatting, I thought this list (from basketballreference.com )of top Duke NBA career scorers is interesting. Grant obviously #1, though not that much ahead of Elton Brand - both obviously would be higher without the injuries. It seems like Kyrie will become #1 if he can get this vaccine thing figured out. it's still a long way to go, but it seems likely that some combination of Tatum, Ingram, and Williamson will soon be at the head of the list. For reference, Lebron has 35,000.
Player Points
Grant Hill * 17,137
Elton Brand 16,827
Carlos Boozer 13,976
Luol Deng 13,361
Kyrie Irving 13,293
Corey Maggette 13,198
Jeff Mullins 13,017
Jack Marin 12,541
J.J. Redick 12,028
Christian Laett 11,121
Mike Dunleavy 11,048
Mike Gminski 10,953
Shane Battier 8,408
Bob Verga 6,918
Danny Ferry 6,439
Gerald Henderson 5,987
Johnny Dawkins 5,984
Jayson Tatum 5,594
Brandon Ingram 5,566
Austin Rivers 5,338
Gene Banks 5,305
Mason Plumlee 5,007
Randy Denton 4,749
Rodney Hood 4,493
Jabari Parker 4,327
Mike Lewis 4,081
Art Heyman 4,030
Mullins averaged 16.2 ppg, Marin 14.8. That's a bigger gap than the cumulative stats suggest.
Mullins also had some great playoff runs with the Warriors, although no one knew it at the time because he was doing it on the west coast at a time when NBA coverage was pretty limited.
Vince Taylor '82 played for two seasons with the Knicks. Didn't score as much as Melchionni, though. He's now an assistant to Johnny D. at UCF.
Checking the alumni register, Scott Goetsch '79 JD '82 was in law school in 1980. Gminski's backup, so he would be familiar with his moves. If there were three all-conference players in addition to Marin and Melchionni, Goetsch wouldn't start, but would be a pretty decent sixth man.