The bad calls never used to go against Duke, and they certainly never used to go in favor of the likes of Virginia, not the way the ACC did its booking the past, oh, 40 or so years.
The script got flipped last night: Virginia is now, unequivocally, the bad guy.
I say we accept it, and not just accept it, but lean into it.
Granted, we’re kind of a Kurt Angle bad guy – the fans don’t like us because we do things right, we’re too nice, our kids actually go to class, play boring, slow basketball, whatever.
We’re the goody-too-shoes heel, as it were.
To wit, consider how Tony Bennett, after the refs reversed their decision and took two free throws away from Kyle Filipowski at the end of regulation, didn’t rub everybody’s nose in it the way Coach K would have afterward.
“What do you think? It’s close, right?” Bennett asked reporters, smiling sheepishly, on the matter of the reversed call kept Virginia alive, on the way to what turned into a 69-62 OT win.
“Bang, bang, we’ll take it,” Bennett said, almost apologetically.
Coach K, after having stared holes through the refs to make sure that the call went his way, would’ve reminded the media afterward about the story that he made up and has been telling for 40 years about the time that Ralph Sampson was still in the game at the end of a blowout of Duke in 1983, waxed poetic about some lesson or the other that he learned playing pickup ball in the Army, before condescending about how much respect he had for Tony Bennett for doing things the right way, a veiled jab at another guy in the ACC knowing his role.
Krzyzewski was the Mr. McMahon-type heel – the guy running the show who also happened to be a competitor, and wasn’t above bending the rules to go in his favor.
I mean, to that point, Coach K turned Duke, an esteemed academic institution, into a clearinghouse of kids who go to school for six weeks on their way to middling careers in the NBA.
And before you @me on either of those points, Kyrie Irving played all of 11 games at Duke in 2011, and among other things, he’s an antivaxxer who believes the earth is flat, so, if you want to hang your hat on Kyrie and his stellar record, it’s a free country.
I mean, OK, sure, there’s Zion “Street Clothes” Williamson, you got me there.
As far as anybody can tell, he doesn’t believe the earth is flat, so he has that going for him.
(Eye roll.)
Rooting for Duke is like, to update the old saw about how rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for US Steel, I dunno, what’s a good update for 2023?
I’ll go with, rooting for Duke is like rooting for Elon Musk.
Which is to say, Heel Duke is easy to root against.
Heel Virginia is a play on how bassackwards our society is anymore – hyper-focused on vapid celebrity, hyping our own fake lives of sound and fury, but signifying nothing, on social media.
You know there are people out there just waiting for some kind of break in the armor to reveal that Tony Bennett isn’t what he is.
Duke Basketball Report has the V-E Day 72-point font banner headline ready and waiting if Tony so much as gets a parking ticket.
I say, again, we just lean into it.
Heels, as we know, have more fun.
The ball bounces their way, the call goes their way, and the heel takes it all in stride, because things always go their way.
They don’t apologize for it; they revel in it.
That’s what I say we do.
So, Duke wants to complain about how they got screwed.
I say, bwahahahaha, they did get screwed; and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in a basketball game in my life, and maybe ever will see.
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Chris Graham
