Poetry Month, Day 6
I come to bury Christian Laettner
I must start off by saying that—despite the reframing of a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar above—I have no ill will against him personally. I’ve never met Christian Laettner and with a few notable exceptions—whose names and images were plastered all over signs that I saw at the HandsOff protest yesterday—I find it unsavory to hate anyone whom I’ve never met. But ever since he hit an improbable shot to win a basketball game against Kentucky in another century, I’ve not only hated him but all of Duke as a result. And I’m not the only one, either.
The replay of that shot gets played over and over and over again, every single year, as Exhibit A of what the NCAA tournament is all about. And it certainly was a great moment, when it first happened. But the problem is that it’s never stopped happening since then. It’s so bad that I can’t put a link to it in this post, because I don’t want to propagate it any further than it’s already been done.
Duke wins more than their share of basketball tournaments, and maybe it’s not fair to hold that success against them. But when they appeared to be on the cusp of yet another title game appearance—holding a 14-point lead with just over eight minutes left in the game, and a six-point lead in the final minute of the game—that old Duke envy seemed to be warming up yet again. And then the new generation of Duke players somehow let it all slip away. Duke’s golden aura had been pierced, and there would be no Laettneresque celebrations in this year’s tournament.
In 1983, when Christian Laettner was probably still in grammar school, the Houston Cougars were the overwhelming favorites to win the NCAA tournament. Their aerial style of play earned them the nickname “Phi Slamma Jama” and it was almost a foregone conclusion that they would easily handle the Wolfpack of North Carolina State in that year’s championship game. But the Wolfpack was coached by Jim Valvano, who became known for his saying of “Don’t quit. Don’t ever quit.” And the ending of that game is a highlight that I’ll never get tired of, and I’m happy to provide a link to it here.
Kelvin Sampson, the current coach at Houston, now has a chance to accomplish what the Phi Slamma Jama team could not. And the members of that team, Hakeem Olajuwon among them, will be pulling for them to do it, along with millions of others, myself included. I’m looking forward to a great game tomorrow night, and I’m hopeful that Houston can finally ascend to where Duke has been, so many times before. And perhaps I can now hate Duke a little bit less than I used to. Hope springs eternal.