As I watched the NCAA Tournament games yesterday, I rooted really hard for Duke to defeat Michigan. Rarely do I cheer on the favorites during March Madness (unless of course the favorite happens to be my Notre Dame Fighting Irish), but yesterday's game was different. It was different because it occurred just one week after former Michigan players made disparaging comments about Duke's program that are rooted in bitterness, hatred, and racism.
It all started when former Michigan star and current ESPN analyst, Jalen Rose, produced a documentary on Michigan's "Fab Five." It told the story of how five freshmen, including Rose himself, came together in the early 1990's to propel Michigan's basketball program to national prominence. The documentary was shown on ESPN last Sunday, March 12th, and it drew a record audience. Now, it stands as ESPN's highest-rated documentary ever.
As you might expect, the program included several interview segments with each member of the Fab Five: Rose, Jimmy King, Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, and Ray Jackson. It was pretty standard up until an interview segment where Rose lashed out at Duke. He made it a point to say that they would never have recruited him, because he was a poor black kid from the inner city. In Rose's mind, Duke only aims for rich kids from the suburbs who attend prestigious private schools. You know, kids like Bob Hurley who grew up in a modest Jersey City home, attended a small, inner-city Catholic high school, and had a father who worked full-time as a Hudson County probation officer. But I digress. Though Rose didn't come out and say that Duke focuses on recruiting mostly white athletes, that's what he was implying.
The fact is that Duke doesn't only recruit white players, and Rose knows that all too well. So he just had to come out and take a shot at the black kids who go to Duke, and specifically called Grant Hill an "Uncle Tom." In a separate interview segment, Jimmy King referred to Grant Hill as a "bitch." It sure is nice to see that Rose and King both turned out to be upstanding citizens following their Michigan education. The fact that these comments weren't edited out of the final version of the documentary is unconscionable. Though one may wonder if Rose left them in just to generate controversy and draw more attention to his film.
While the comments have drawn some harsh responses from former Duke players, the liberal media has given Rose a free pass. I applaud Grant Hill for writing an open letter to the NY Times, one in which he praised Duke's program, head coach Mike Krzyzewski, and the family atmosphere that exists at Duke. He even outlined the success of a number of black men who played basketball for the Blue Devils, listing them one by one.
Kudos to Bob Hurley for his defense of Duke as well. In an interview with Dan Patrick, Hurley noted that Rose is probably bitter because Michigan never beat Duke when the Fab Five were there. He also said that Rose probably wasn't recruited because he would have been a bench-warmer, and that he never would have taken Hurley's place as the starting point guard. Hurley went on to say that the Fab Five constantly talked trash on the court, but they never backed it up. When he was asked if he himself was ever the target, Hurley noted that Jimmy King said that he had "no game." But Hurley then quipped, "Maybe he should have gotten the hint when I scored 26 points on them."
Let me first respond to Rose by saying that Duke recruits high-level kids for one reason: because they can. When you're one of the best programs in the nation, you get to pick and choose who you want. Why would Coach K take a chance on a kid who is prone to getting into trouble or likely to struggle with the rigorous academics that exist at Duke? Coach K has always run a clean program, and ninety percent of his players have graduated during his tenure. For this, he deserves to be honored, not denigrated.
Perhaps Rose would rather see Krzyzewski run a program similar to the one run by Nolan Richardson when he coached at Arkansas. Richardson won a lot of games and even a national championship, but never graduated one player. Yes, you read that correctly. Not one. But no one ever called him out on it, probably because he was black and anyone who did so would have been accused of racism.
And so it is with Rose and Jimmy King. They have not been lambasted by the media. They have not been asked by ESPN to issue apologies. Rose wasn't asked to resign his position as an analyst. Instead, they both got a chance to clarify their comments in a segment with Skip Bayless, one in which Bayless lobbed softballs at them and continuously used the disclaimer, "I'm not black, so I can't imagine what it was like for both of you." Give me a break.
When I was growing up during the 1980's, the St. John's Redmen (yes, Redmen, not Red Storm) had an excellent basketball team and their games were consistently shown on local television. Those were the days of Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson, Walt Berry, and Coach Louie Carnesecca roaming the sidelines in his trademark sweater. I cheered hard for the Redmen, especially when they played their arch-nemesis, Georgetown.
Over time, I noticed something about the Hoyas. What stood out to me as a kid was that I never saw one white player on their team. Not one. When I asked my grandfather about that, he told me that he believed Coach John Thompson was a racist.
Now I don't know whether Thompson is a racist or not. The only ones who know that for sure are God and Thompson himself. But what if someone insinuated that he was? What if they pointed out that for the longest time, he didn't recruit one white kid to play at Georgetown? Would the reaction be similar to the one Rose has gotten for saying that Duke only recruits upper-echelon kids who are mostly white?
I doubt it. My guess is that a white man who made such a comment would be labeled a bigot himself. If he held a position at ESPN, he would be forced to apologize for his "rude, racist remarks" or risk losing his job. Maybe he would even lose his job regardless of issuing an apology or not.
My whole point is this. Rose's comments, and the reaction of the media toward them, indicates a huge double standard. There is no way that things would have played out the way they have if the roles were reversed. And that troubles me.
I hope that Rose enjoyed having an outlet for his apparent lifelong bitterness toward Duke. He couldn't beat them on the court, and he wasn't even considered as a potential recruit there. It must have killed him to see the Blue Devils succeed year in and year out, winning all of those games and hauling in the hardware. Four NCAA Championships, 11 Final Fours (tied for second most in history), 12 ACC regular season titles, and 13 ACC championships, not to mention the many All-Americans and the times they were honored for having the nation's highest graduation rate. The accolades are many, and deservedly so.
Since neither the media nor ESPN are going to give Rose what he deserves, I suppose that I will have to take comfort in something else. Duke beating Michigan yesterday was a good start. I know that somewhere, wherever he was, Rose was seething as he watched the Wolverines' comeback effort fall short. If Duke goes on to win another national title, then he'll be seething even more. That's why I'll be rooting hard for the Blue Devils, and looking forward to Nolan Smith, Kyrie Irving, and the rest of Duke's black players telling Rose to stick his comments where they belong. Given the state of our society, they're apparently the only ones who can.
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