Vol. 1, Issue 8 (The Fab 5 vs. Duke: "March Madness"?)

IN THIS ISSUE:
Jalen Rose, Grant Hill,
The Fab Five and Duke Basketball

We continue our prayers for the people of Japan and Libya, but in The Global Game's universe (that where politics, sports and culture intersect) there was really only one story last week: former Michigan guard Jalen Rose's explosive revelation in a documentary on the fabled "Fab Five" Michigan teams that he regarded Grant Hill and all black Duke basketball players as "Uncle Toms."

Speaking His Mind

Rose's Fab Five teammate Jimmy King poured further oil on the fire when he said he thought at the time that both Hill and Duke teammate Christian Laettner were "bitches."

"Both of Us, Grant?"

The controversy reached full boil when Hill responded in a piece in the New York Times, labeling Rose and King's comments
 "a sad and somewhat pathetic turn of events"

Still Ballin' and Taking Names

First, however, some context is necessary.   Duke Basketball plays a very specific role in the cultural touchstone that is American sports.   The Global Game would attempt to distill and characterize that for you, Dear Reader, but there are only three TGG rules and one of them is "Never Try To Restate What Somebody Else Has Already Said Perfectly Well."  Accordingly, we present a reader comment to Atlantic.com social commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates' meditation "On Duke Hatred":

"There are a couple of factors. I don't think, for example, Duke is more interested in background than UNC, but over time when your program gets to a point when you can pick and choose who you recruit you go for the best player who is going to cause you the least amount of trouble and graduate. They may come from a single parent home or not, but you can avoid kids than seem headed for trouble (Dean stopped recruiting Chris Washburn for this reason). It's kind of like Oprah. When her show first started she was doing paternity test, KKK, and makeover shows like everyone else, once she got success she was able to do it the way she wanted to. 

 Duke is very skilled at PR for their program. The basketball program is definitely used to sell the school. For example, every year they will play at least one Ivy League team in a non conference game. They are trying with this to sell Duke as being in the same class as the Ivies, but we also have a great basketball team which they don't have, you'll have more fun if you come here. Those are the students they are trying to appeal to. This further adds to the tension between UNC & Duke because most of them aren't from NC and don't really care for the state. I went on a recruiting trip to Duke and on the tour the guide said,'the only thing good about this state is this university.' He obviously didn't know I was a native. I also happen to think the annual drubbing an Ivy League school is important to the students as some of them didn't get into those institutions, probably one of the few times they had been told 'no'. One of the jokes at UNC is the easiet way to shut up a Dookie is just say 'Harvard.' 

They will usually schedule a game in the NY/NJ area as they have a lot of alumni there. The biggest difference between Coach K and his mentor Bobby Knight is the former's understanding of good relations with the media. That said I think the hatred for Duke ,outside of NC & MD especially, is due to the constant media narrative of Duke as the ONLY school that does it the right way. There are plenty of schools that are on the level of Duke in bball and academics but they have been singled out. It's the same push back seen in the Tebow and Tyler Hansbrough phenomena. 

There is definitely an element of race involved. I think people realize Duke is being pushed to the forefront by the media in part because they attract white athletes who are stars in their program. This is the part that makes people mad, not at the athletes, but at the way their whiteness is celebrated. Through no fault of their own becoming media darlings created a backlash. Coach K embraced the backlash and uses it as motivation for his team.
 Dick Vitale was really bad about it."

Just in case anybody thinks this reader was either exaggerating or paranoid about the pedestal on which the mainstream media places Duke Basketball, here is a Parade Magazine cover from back in the day that couldn't make it any clearer:

Which begs the obvious question, of course ---

 "Then what are all of the other Division 1 men's basketball players and programs?"

A Rivalry For The Ages

Jalen Rose and Grant Hill were both fierce competitors....

Point Guard On The Fab Five

Point Forward On The NCAA Champions

Every Day Is Father's Day

And they both had pro athlete fathers.   In remarks that did not receive as much attention as his explosive name-calling, Rose made it clear that he had some envy of Hill because Rose's father, the pro basketball player Jimmy Walker, was not a part of his life growing up.....

Jalen's Father

While Hill's father, former Dallas Cowboy Calvin Hill, had been by Grant's side 
the entire time.

Hill Senior and Junior

As was to be expected, the commentators all had their say.   As also was to be expected, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock came hardest with the truth, picking apart the mythology of the Fab Five and pointing out that John Thompson's Georgetown teams had a greater cultural and athletic significance:

They Shocked The World

Meanwhiule, Huffington Post, apparently with its sports editor on vacation, published a screed by Jonathon Weiler, a "Professor of Global Studies" (maybe he should study The Global Game more closely) at Duke archrival rival University of North Carolina attacking Duke's Hill for his response to Rose and placing their dispute in the context of an American society that "has become perversely defensive of the prerogatives of the most well-off." (Huh?)

The best analysis of the whole affair, however, particularly for cultural context, was by ESPN basketball analyst Chris Broussard on the network's "1st and 10":

Interestingly enough, in the wake of the controversy, Jalen Rose has been given every chance to retract or back down from the "Uncle Tom" comment, but has declined to do  so.   Watch him here (direct embed unavailable) with Fab Five teammate 
Jimmy King:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDlfp4ADJRE

What, then, to make of the whole controversy?   TGG breaks it down to you, like the Fab Five itself, in 5 easy pieces:

(1) It is OK to hate Duke Basketball.   For all the reasons cited above, and for all the reasons any Global Game reader knows by heart, they deserve it.  Duke Basketball thinks they are better than you and your team.   And they're not.   Just different.

(2)  Duke does recruit a certain type of player, both black and white --- The All-American Boy.   It is not easy to be an All-American Boy at the age of 17 or 18.   Not everybody qualifies.   Not everyone fits the image.   Grant Hill did.   Jalen Rose didn't.    It is OK to say, "Grant Hill and his teammates were All-American Boys and me and my teammates resented that."   It is not OK to call Grant Hill and all African-American Duke Basketball players "Uncle 
Toms."  They didn't, and don't, deserve that.

(3) Parsing through all the rhetoric, all the interviews, and the clarifications, half-retractions, charges, and countercharges, we think we know what Jalen Rose was actually trying to say, and it was this:  "By the early 1990s, Duke Basketball in the public's mind had come to represent White America's Team, or at least that portion of White America that felt threatened by, or hostile to teams such as Georgetown or UNLV or later our own Fab Five.   Even at 18, we were aware of the cultural significance of where you chose to play basketball, and I and a number of African-American players like me wouldn't have played for Duke even if we had been given the chance because we considered that to be selling out in the cultural wars."   True? False?  You can argue it all day.   But it might have carried almost the same impact without drawing the cultural and sporting worlds into an unedifying debate on the meaning of the term "Uncle Tom."

(4)  Grant Hill never was, either in demeanor, game or conduct, a "bitch."   We will leave our readers to draw their own conclusions with respect to Christian Laettner.   

(5) Ultimately, sports is about winning.  These are the last lines of Grant Hill's response to Jalen Rose:
"I am proud of my family.  I am proud of my Duke championships and all my Duke teammates.  And I am proud I never lost a game against the Fab Five."  As TGG reader "The Sandman," a Duke alumnus himself, said, "Grant showed the value of a Duke eductation."  Rose and King should have chosen their words more carefully --- in sports, it never looks good to question the manhood/street cred of a team you went 0-3 against in head-to-head competition. 




Most of all, however, TGG hopes that Rose is able to reflect upon his words and actions and bounce back from the mess he finds himself in ("the mess he started").  For better or worse, the legacy of the Fab Five has come to be associated with too much hype and not enough championships.   It is probably not the legacy that a proud athlete like Rose wanted as his memory.

Five The Hard Way 

In recent years, however, Jalen Rose has transcended his Fab Fiver persona to become one of ESPN's most knowledgeable --- and likeable --- basketball analysts.   He knows the power of words and images because he works with them every day.   Now, because of his words, his image has taken a hit.  TGG hopes the master playmaker still has a few more tricks up his sleeve. 

A Winning Smile 

And this year, like every year,

we hope Duke makes it to the
Championship Game
of The Final Four.

And loses.  In the last seconds, if possible. 

We suspect that Global Game readers will have a few comments of their own on this story.   You can do so below, in the "Comments" box.  

Stay tuned next Weekend for Volume 1, Issue 9 of TGG,

and be on the lookout for periodic updates

"as events warrant"