Layups: Jalen Rose vs. Grant Hill
Posted by Neil Paine on March 17, 2011
Surely you've seen this already, but if not, a brief recap:
- ESPN had a pretty good documentary about the legendary Michigan "Fab Five" team on Sunday night.
- In it, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, & Ray Jackson spoke very frankly about their feelings on Duke 20 years ago.
- Notably, they felt that Christian Laettner & Grant Hill were "bitches", that Duke only recruited black players who were "Uncle Toms", and Rose in particular felt jealous & bitter toward Hill because Hill's pro-athlete dad was in his life (Rose's father, Jimmy Walker, was also a pro athlete but had no relationship with Rose).
- Grant Hill took offense at Rose's comments and responded in the New York Times yesterday.
My take on this:
Hill was understandably upset and hurt by the statements Rose & his teammates made -- it's never easy to hear that people harbored negative feelings toward you because of factors that were beyond your control. But I think Hill missed Rose's point. In essence, Rose was giving voice to his mindset as a 19-year-old and how it motivated his play back then. And the level of honesty & self-examination with which Rose looked at those emotions was a meditation on Rose's own life more than a knock on Grant Hill. Though he doesn't come out and say it, it seems somewhat obvious that Rose no longer holds the same feelings, if not just from the fact that he now recognizes the true source of his resentment (Rose admits it came from a place of jealousy, not a hatred of Hill himself). That Hill seems unwilling or unable to make a distinction between feelings at 19 and feelings at 38 makes me wonder whether he or Rose has grown more as a person in the last 20 years.
Of course, that's just my opinion -- what's yours on this Jalen Rose-Grant Hill spat?
March 25th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
@ Ricardo, thanks for bringing the discussion back to where it should be.
1. But, I don't think this is a case of racism, but clearly a case of classism. If Duke was really racists, why would they even let in Hill in the first place, or the countless other A.A. Dukies. This was Rose's main argument, hey Hill comes from a different class than I do, and that's why Duke accepted him.
2. Duke doesn't have any Rhode Scholars. However, FSU football and Alabama football's teams have over the past couple of years. Myron Rolle, and Bama's Qb. You can't honestly think that the Duke's athletes are smart simply because they go to Duke. Jay Will graduated in communication (3 years) great. Emeka Okafor graduated in biology, who's smarter. Luol Deng and Kyrie Irving stayed and would have stayed for one year. Corey Maggette and Elton Brand left too.
So what does this prove? What evidence do you have that Duke basketball atheltes are smarter than their peers. Or is it simply their private school background which they were probably tutored through.
3. You're right Duke does have 10% A.A. students. But this isn't the point as those student couldhave grown up in the best of areas. More importantly, 37% of Duke's students are legacy students, meaning soemone in their family went to Duke. Does this mean that they perform better than others? No.
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/09/09/duke-study-says-legacy-students-underachieve
So really Duke is recruiting kids from a specific class, who are not as smart as their peers in the classroom, giving suspicion that they weren't qualified in the first place.
March 25th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Accidently hit the submit button before I was done, but oh well. I'll keep this going.
4.) So you have a point that if Duke isn't recruiting the Jalen Rose's of the world, then someone else will. That's true, but how much better is that than, if my restaurant won't serve you than someone else will.
5.) You have a point about Michigan. That's bad. They need to do better. But they've tried. How so? By creating affirmative action programs for their law school to help minorities. These programs were so in favor of minorities that some actually got pissed and sued, leading to two famous Supreme Court cases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger
Clearly Michigan has tried to help minorities.
March 26th, 2011 at 10:10 am
Mr. Understood-
Two great posts. However, I would not be so quick to exclude race entirely from the conversation. While I agree that class seems to be the driving force, it'd be interesting to compare whether the class exclusion applies across the board or is unique to AA and/or other PoC. Many institutions (educational and otherwise) have well-defended class biases that only seem to manifest themselves when dealing with racial minorities. They have no problem taking poor or lower class whites, but suddenly "culture" and "fitting in" and other BS becomes issues when dealing with poor or lower class blacks or Hispanics.
March 26th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Shane Battier - Detroit Country Day (MI); elite private school; also where C. Webber went (who was recruited by Duke)
Elton Brand - Peekskill High (NY); Peeksskill is a middle class suburb of New York; predominantly white
Chris Duhon - Salmen High (LA); Salmen is in a middle class suburb of New Orleans; predominantly white
Corey Maggette - Fenwick High (IL); Fenwick is in a very wealthy suburb of Chicago; predominantly white
Carlos Boozer - Juneau-Douglas High (AK); Juneau is a predominantly white, fairly middle-class city
Luol Deng - Blair Academy (NJ); Blair is an elite private school and Deng's father was Sudanese royalty before the family fled the country for Egypt and then Britain; moved to USA in high school
Dahntay Jones - Steinhert High (NJ); located in a middle class suburb of New Jersey; predominantly white
Shelden Williams - Midwest City (OK); lower-middle class suburb of Oklahoma City
These are all the black NBA players (outside of Hill, who we already know about) who played for Coach K (according to his website) at Duke. It is obviously far from a comprehensive, but offers some insight into the types of black players who go to Duke (I limited myself to NBA players because they had the most biographical information available). While we can quibble with how I might have chosen to define "middle class" or "predominantly white", it is clear that none came from poor or urban areas.
Again, this doesn't necessarily "prove" anything, as it is far from exhaustive and does not include white players (who may have come from equally privileged backgrounds). But it does prove interesting that Duke does not have a single NBA-caliber player from an urban area, when such a large share of NBA players grow up in that environment.
March 26th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Seriously, you decided to argue something that no one is even arguing, because you're proven completely wrong.>>>>>>>>>
1) Nobody has been 'proven completely wrong' here. Why would you say such a thing? Ego? What am I complete;y wrong about---not to mention 'proven to be'? That a better man than Rose would apologize to Hill? That Duke is snobbish? That Jimmy Walker being an absentee dad is a FAR bigger deal than Duke not recruiting Rose?
2) Neither the Rose documentary nor Neil's intro to this thread set THE issue as 'Duke's Recruiting Practices'. Your insistence that it be just that that is amusing, in a myopic, egoentric kind of way. Please stop trying to control what the larger issues are.
3) Rose spent 1 year NOT being recruited by Duke. He spent his whole life not being loved by his dad. What's the bigger issue?
My take on Duke is that they are snobs. I don't believe my pedigree would pass muster with them. I don't sweat it. I know that none of us can fit in everywhere. The Duke snobbiness ISN'T racist-------it's classist... There is nothing that can be done about who some people consider 'their type of people'. There has been class division since the beginning of man. It's not going away. It would be nicer if more people were more inclusive of EVERYONE. At least it SOUNDS better... but the honest truth is that people ARE different. They have different ways, values, priorities. People have different sets of things they consider 'no-nos' and different things they let slide. Jalen Rose and the Fab 5 seemed to really enjoy themselves at Michigan. I don't know if they could've made a better choice for themselves. You want EVERYONE to want you/ like you as a child. But that's just not going to be. I've been in jobs and schools where I really didn't feel like I fit in. I found my niche and couldn't be happier. No anger. I can't control how anybody else values me. Duke valued Rose and 3 of the other Fab 5 less than the guys they recruited (including Webber).
You do what you can to take care of personal responsibilities and don't worry about who's 'kind of people' you aren't. I'm not Duke's king of people, either-----it doesn't make their recruiting practices criminal or mean they have to change them.
What has to change---and everyone to a man can actually inact this kind of chage---------is that people have to be responsible with their kids and be good, loving parents. That's something that can happen that we all can control.
November 17th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Irigylem a képessége, hogy tegye közzé a csodálatos cikket - egyszerűen akartam mondani, mint ez!