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JJ Redick Blames Media For Creating Hatred Towards White Duke Players

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Duke is like the Yankees of college basketball.

For decades now, Coach K’s program has embraced the villain role, as the legendary head coach has led Duke to five national championships.

Maybe it’s the slapping of the court, the flopping, the ‘uppity’ persona or maybe it’s just that Duke basketball is something to be envious of because they’re so good year-in and year-out.

With all of that being said, throughout history it always seems to be a white Duke player that opposing fans just love to hate.

From Christian Laettner to Mike Dunleavy to Greg Paulus to JJ Redick and now Grayson Allen.

Whether it’s fair or not, it’s the reality of the situation, but where did this tradition of hatred stem for?

Redick believe it starts with the media.

” I think it’s fine for an opposing fan base to choose a player to root against or maybe you dislike certain guys, my issue though is I think the media has perpetuated this white Duke villain myth as much as anyone. Grayson is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, Jon Scheyer is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met — never seen Jon Scheyer do anything dirty. Greg Paulus, one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met … And you know me too, I probably in a way brought on some of the animosity towards me with the antics, the smiling, the head-bobbing, the trash-talking, but to be honest with you, it was more in reaction to the hate that was already coming my way before I ever really did anything to warrant it. It’s almost like every time there’s a player at Duke, the media says ‘oh, you should dislike this guy’. I can remember being in school my senior year, Greg Paulus was a freshman, and there were numerous articles that year, ‘Greg Paulus is the next hated Duke player’.

Redick continued.

So the media I guess was choosing who we should hate. The media was saying like ‘this guy is the next guy’. And then the following year or the year after, whenever it was, it was Jon Scheyer — ‘he’s the guy you’re supposed to dislike’. And now recently there was an article in ESPN, and to be honest with you I participated in the interview and in the process of Dana O’Neil writing the article, and I thought the article was, it is what it is. She didn’t seem to kind of go off the rails against Duke or wasn’t as anti-Duke as some people might think it is. But she kinda said the same thing, like ‘now we’re supposed to dislike Grayson Allen — he’s the next in line’. Why though, why? Why does there have to be a next in line?

It’s hard to disagree with Redick here because most of these guys from the past didn’t do anything to warrant such hate besides be good at basketball, but maybe that’s enough.

Grayson Allen’s hate maybe warranted though because he keeps intentionally tripping players and that has nothing to do with the color of his skin.

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