The Blue Devils did something unthinkable on Sunday afternoon — they actually made me like them. Conditioned on three decades of familial loathing, I walked into the Lenovo Center in Raleigh prepared to be wrapped in Duke’s weighted blanket of disgust, lulling me into a comfortable state of hatred. Instead I found myself falling in love with this iteration of the team.
We don’t need to re-litigate the reasons to hate Duke. It’s a talking point which comes up every March, with no shortage of think pieces about race, privilege, and the Blue Devils embracing their role as college basketball’s “villains” to become emblematic of brilliance and distain simultaneously.
The current Devils are just fun. Really fun. More importantly: This team knows how to enjoy themselves and show emotion — something lacking in the Duke teams of the past. Under Coach K the Blue Devils were ruthless, they were efficient, but often felt like they were just going through the motions. Running off a plan, like assembling a piece of furniture. Jon Scheyer’s approach to the game has taken Duke into the modern era by embracing personality, allowing individuality, and still fitting those tenets into the Duke rubric.
It all starts with Cooper Flagg, the eventual No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, and arguably the best U.S. prospect since LeBron James. Flagg’s footwork with the ball and array of moves in the paint is surpassed by his court vision and supreme basketball IQ as a passer which draws in defenders, before kicking the ball out to an open player on the perimeter. On top of all this there’s no reason to really hate him. This is a guy who came out of Maine, hardly a hoops recruiting hotbed, and has shown himself to be a humble team player without a huge amount of ego.
Then there’s Khaman Maluach, the 18-year-old from South Sudan plucked out of basketball obscurity by a bicycle rider who convinced him to earn the sport at a camp organized by Luol Deng. Here is a kid who is literally living the dream, poised to be a Top 5 pick in the NBA Draft himself, providing a life for his refugee family that they never could have possibly imagined. Still evolving as a basketball player, Maluach’s ludicrous length and wingspan has already made him an elite shot blocker and rebounder, with a high motor and work ethic to hone his offensive game.
On Sunday against Baylor it was the Tyrese Proctor show, which really underscored how different this Duke team is from its past iterations. Proctor is a fringe NBA player. It’s unclear if he’ll actually get drafted, but in Raleigh the Australian was unconscious from beyond the arc, shooting an obscene 7-of-8 and being the biggest difference maker on the court. This performance brought Scheyer to tears after the game, overjoyed at seeing Proctor shine on college basketball’s brightest stage, and reflecting what it’s meant to have the guard by his side since taking over as Duke’s head coach.
“I think in this era, you guys cover this, you understand the challenges and NIL and transfer portal and all that, still to have the relationships you can build with a guy for three years and go through a lot, I’m obviously really proud of him.”
The lack of a bellwether player to hate really impacts how much you can dislike Duke this year. There’s no Greg Paulus or Chris Duhon slapping the floor. No Grayson Allen tripping players with the efficiency of misplaced children’s toys. Nobody who can even hold a candle to someone like Christian Laettner — and on top of that there’s no Coach K to loom over the court like Mr. Burns, fitting all the pieces together.
Instead with the game in hand on Sunday, Scheyer called the ultimate fan-favorite move, subbing in his two beloved graduates walk-ons, Neal Begovich and Spencer Hubbard to close out the game. Hubbard in particular, a 5’8 point guard, likely playing the final basketball games of his career, was welcomed into the game with raucous applause and cheered for every time he touched the ball.
There’s simply no good way to hate Duke this year outside of their fans, logo, horrifying mascot, general history, and years of pent-up disgust. Sure, that’s enough to hate Duke as a construct, but not this team — who are just fun, well-prepared, full of emotion, and playing ultimate team basketball.
It’s a very unsettling feeling to actually like a Duke team. I hate them for that.
