Laettner 30 for 30...and Timmy Higgins

[BigEastPhil]

Watched the Laettner 30 for 30 special tonight on ESPN...why I Still Hate Christian Laettner......really good for all to see.

Laettner appears in the show and is indeed the major person to discuss all of the issues / events that occurred.

Also while watching the show, I did not realize that Timmy Higgins was one of the refs in the Laettner buzzer beater vs Kentucky in the Elite 8 at the Spectrum - a game which I actually was fortunate to attend.

Had I known this, I would have asked him about this at the Court Club Meeting because had Laettner been thrown out of the game for the stomp to the chest of the UK player - the miracle ending would have never occurred - and in all likelihood - Duke's and Laettner's 4 consecutive final 4's and 2 consecutive titles - may never have occurred.

 

[Knight_Light]

Sadly, there will never be another "Laettner" in College Hoops, villain or hero, as a top program like that almost never sees their best player come back for all 4 years.

4 straight Final Fours...2 straight National Championships...a star player may never achieve both feats ever again (UF players won 2 straight in the last decade...but then most bolted to the NBA).

And yes, it was a good 30-for-30...worth DVRing it to watch during off days of NCAA Tourn.

One of the only negative from the 30-for-30 episode is when young Directors inject some personal friends into their projects...and in this one, some MMA Writer, Ariel Helwani (Canadian who graduated from Syracuse), gets too much air time talking about Laettner hate...as its mostly fake...as he was 8-9 years old living in Canada, which didn't get most of Duke's games on TV.

Other real college basketball analysts, players, coaches, etc....that competed against Christian were great.
This post was edited on 3/16 7:11 AM by Knight_Light

 

[superfan01]

Knight_light. - JJ reddick was also about as hated as they come in college basketball from opposing fans.

 

[RUMike410]

I watched it, very good show, highly recommended. This and the Boz episode a few months ago have been the best in quite a while (and add in the Miracle on Ice from the USSR point of view). This is the one thing ESPN hasn't screwed up, yet.

CL may have been the greatest college b-ball player ever. He certainly was the most clutch.

 

[Knight_Light]

Originally posted by superfan01:
Knight_light. - JJ reddick was also about as hated as they come in college basketball from opposing fans.

Yes...the show did mention other Duke "villains" after Christian...but none reached that hate level, not even JJ.

JJ made it to just one Final Four...and never made it past Sweet 16 in other years.

 

[Dmait]

I completely agree. The choice of talking heads made this a good but far from great doc. There were two or three 30-year-old talking heads on constantly. What are they adding to the discussion? Jay Bilas was on the team. It needed more people like him to provide insight and less 25-year-old sports documentarians.

Another problem I had was how little it went chronologically. It kept going back to games and plays it had already discussed to make another point. Not sure why it did that. That took away from showing a gradual developement of Laettner and his Duke teams to a powerhouse.

On another note, Laettner's older brother Chris is given (and he more than happily takes) credit for "creating" Christain's ahole bully persona by being overly hard on him all during their childhood. It's a real bully mentality. He comes off as a real jerk, which likely explains why CL turned out the way he did.

 

[PaKnight]

Originally posted by RUMike410:
I watched it, very good show, highly recommended. This and the Boz episode a few months ago have been the best in quite a while (and add in the Miracle on Ice from the USSR point of view). This is the one thing ESPN hasn't screwed up, yet.

CL may have been the greatest college b-ball player ever. He certainly was the most clutch.

He was very good, but Lew Alcinder was easily the best college BB player.

 

[RBNY87]

Originally posted by Dmait:
I completely agree. The choice of talking heads made this a good but far from great doc. There were two or three 30-year-old talking heads on constantly. What are they adding to the discussion? Jay Bilas was on the team. It needed more people like him to provide insight and less 25-year-old sports documentarians.

Another problem I had was how little it went chronologically. It kept going back to games and plays it had already discussed to make another point. Not sure why it did that. That took away from showing a gradual developement of Laettner and his Duke teams to a powerhouse.

On another note, Laettner's older brother Chris is given (and he more than happily takes) credit for "creating" Christain's ahole bully persona by being overly hard on him all during their childhood. It's a real bully mentality. He comes off as a real jerk, which likely explains why CL turned out the way he did.

Jay Bilas played well before Laetner. Bilas played with Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Tommy Amaker, etc.

 

[RUMike410]

Originally posted by PaKnight:

Originally posted by RUMike410:
I watched it, very good show, highly recommended. This and the Boz episode a few months ago have been the best in quite a while (and add in the Miracle on Ice from the USSR point of view). This is the one thing ESPN hasn't screwed up, yet.

CL may have been the greatest college b-ball player ever. He certainly was the most clutch.

He was very good, but Lew Alcinder was easily the best college BB player.

Okay, can't argue with that. But CL is up there, especially since the UCLA glory days.

 

[Dmait]

>Jay Bilas played well before Laetner. Bilas played with Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Tommy Amaker, etc.

Right. The show covers the origins of the program under Krzyzewski, including its early struggles, and discusses how the burgeoning success of the early teams, including with Bilas, was solidified during the Laettner years.

 

[rutgersguy1]

I didn't see the documentary but I don't know that I hated Laettner as much as I just hated Duke. I never really hated them prior but I was younger then. They started to take off in my middle school/high school years in the 90s and I always hated the way they got all the calls from the refs and every little ticky tack was given to them. I think there was a stat one time where they had made more FTs then their opponents had attempted. For me he was the epitome of that and beneficiary of a lot of it. I still think they get some of those "benefits" but nowhere near what it was back then.

I was beside myself in that Kentucky game. I remember watching that with friends and the foot stomp where he didn't get thrown out and the last second buzzer beater had us all in shock just like the rest of the country. We were all rooting hard for Duke to go down.

 

[RBNY87]

Originally posted by Dmait:
>Jay Bilas played well before Laetner. Bilas played with Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Tommy Amaker, etc.

Right. The show covers the origins of the program under Krzyzewski, including its early struggles, and discusses how the burgeoning success of the early teams, including with Bilas, was solidified during the Laettner years.

One of my high school buddies went to Duke. We use to drive him back after winter break (they started a week or two before RU) and we would hang out at Duke and got to experience Cameron and see the teams Bilas played on. Watching the early years of the turnaround, it is crazy that Coach K now has 1K wins. Sort of makes me feel old.

 

[78CollegeAve]

Agree that some of the talking heads were weak. Bobby Hurley and Brian Davis were both very good.

I am waiting for the sequel -- I Hate Jalen Rose.

 

[Knight_Light]

Originally posted by RBNY87:

Jay Bilas played well before Laetner. Bilas played with Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Tommy Amaker, etc.

For those that don't know, Bilas was an asst coach under Coach K at Duke for 3 of Laettner's 4 year's at Duke...as Bilas coached and went to/earned his Law degree at the same time.

 

[PiscatawayMike]

I enjoyed the comments from one of the guys (I think he was a professor) who pointed out how all other colleges in North Carolina have some type of link to the state of NC. However, Duke is pretty much an Ivy League school with no link to NC, with the student body mostly comprised of kids from Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

Then they showed Duke students jumping up and down, going crazy at a game. He was subtly saying, "These Dukies are nothing but a bunch of entitled pr|cks from the northeast. Everyone, regardless of what school you attend in North Carolina, hates Duke."

 

[fischy5000]

i'm blanking on her full name (Monica ___), but I'm pretty certain that the girl who was interviewed in the clip where all the girls are fawning over Laettner, was a student broadcast person for Rutgers/WRSU? in the late 90s

This post was edited on 3/16 2:07 PM by fischy5000

This post was edited on 3/16 2:45 PM by fischy5000

 

[78CollegeAve]

Hard to believe that they used Mark Neal, who tried to make his career based on the lacrosse rape that didn't happen. Could have found a lot of people that hate Duke basketball without resorting to a guy who seems to hate every white student at Duke.


Topping them all, at last in terms of rhetorical panache, is Mark Anthony Neal or, as he frequently refers to himself, the "Thug-[N-word]-Intellectual"-a "dangerous [N-word] and America has never romanticized about its fear of angry 'don't give a f-k' {N-word]." Neal, a professor of English, claims that he must take on this persona because of his alienation from evil white Duke, evidenced by the mean looks he gets while "chillin' with my homey Gramsci" at Starbucks. Despite his claims, the university has actually "romanticized about" Professor Neal a great deal, featuring a lengthy article on him in last summer's alumni magazine.
The myth that Neal lives by informs his claim that whenever he "rolls into the classroom on the first day of class," there is always somebody "in the house quietly utter[ing] 'who's the [N-word]?'" That a professor heard students whispering the N-word at politically correct Duke approaches the outer limits of credibility. What's more instructive is Neal's response: "I'm the [N-word] that gonna intellectually choke the living s- -t out of you."

 

[Captain Hogleg]

This show actually made me like Laettner and Duke. I laugh at all of the whiners and haters who only seem to be jealous or resentful. Anyway, the show was done sort of tongue in cheek paying grudging respect to an obviously great former player, but Laettner is most hated by teams I dislike even more, such as UNC fans and Syracuse punks. Those two teams can't lose enough for my taste.