‘I Hate (Another Dirty, Great Duke Player)’

The emergence of Duke’s Grayson Allen in the Value Add Top 5 in a month in which he tripped two opponents provides another example of why The New York Post quoted Blue Devils point guard Jay Williams as saying, “No other black player from any other school is hated as much as a white player from Duke. None.”

Allen follows Shelden Williams (2005 and 2006), JJ Redick (2006), Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler (both 2010) to give Duke twice as many Top 5 players as any other school in the historic Value Add database. The only other four programs to have even half of the Duke’s six Top 5 players are:

Georgetown: Mike Sweetney (2003), Roy Hibbert (2007), and Otto Porter (2013).

Marquette: Dwyane Wade (2003), Jimmy Butler (2010), and Jae Crowder (2012).

Utah: Andrew Bogut (2005), and Delon Wright (2014 and 2015).

Wisconsin: Devin Harris (2004), Jordan Taylor (2011), and Frank Kaminsky (2015).

But the hatred started in the days covered by ESPN’s “I Hate Christian Laettner,” in which ESPN analyst Gene Wojciechowski says Laettner is one of the top 10 players of all time “and the No. 1 a…hole.”

Redick’s abortion agreement (see Breitbart story here) and Jalen Rose saying he hated Duke because they only recruited “Uncle Tom’s” are among the many factors in the widespread hatred of a program that has stayed clean while winning more titles than any other program since Mike Krzyzewski’s first national championship (five to UConn’s second best four).

The footage of Grayson intentionally tripping another opponent (see ESPN here) likely provides another reason to ignore him in Player of the Year voting in favor of the three other major conference players in the Value Add Top 8 (Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine, and LSU’s Ben Simmons).

Duke’s recent upset win at UNC puts them in a strong position moving into Selection Sunday for March Madness just two weeks away. 

Rnk	Player	Team	Total Value	NBA?
1	Hooker, Quinton 21	North Dakota	9.55
2	Hield, Buddy 24	Oklahoma	9.48	83%
3	Siakam, Pascal 43	New Mexico St.	9.19	49%
4	Warney, Jameel 20	Stony Brook	8.76	32%
5	Allen, Grayson 3	Duke	8.50	65%
6	Walkup, Thomas 0	Stephen F. Austin	8.49
7	Valentine, Denzel 45	Michigan St.	8.49	81%
8	Simmons, Ben 25	LSU	8.44	96%
9	Payton, Gary 1	Oregon St.	8.44	64%
10	Mockevicius, Egidijus 55	Evansville	8.25	31%
11	Frazier, JJ 30	Georgia	8.24
12	Ulis, Tyler 3	Kentucky	8.21	51%
13	Brown, John 0	High Point	8.18	12%
14	Poeltl, Jakob 42	Utah	8.16	90%
15	Miles, Isaiah 15	Saint Joseph’s	8.03
16	Brogdon, Malcolm 15	Virginia	8.02	32%
17	Obasohan, Retin 32	Alabama	7.87
18	Andrews, Andrew 12	Washington	7.85	17%
19	Barber, Anthony 12	North Carolina St.	7.79	36%
20	Morris, Monte 11	Iowa St.	7.78	69%