You ever grow up with a kid who's held up as the gold standard for academics, behavior, and overall good citizenship, and while you understand that he behaves/performs better than most, you also know that he's not as angelic as portrayed, and has a mix of arrogance and condescension to his personality? And no matter how often you try pointing this out to parents or teachers, they ignore your insight and still push that student as the gold standard? Even when their performance slips in the class, they still are spoken of as they are the best student around?
That's Duke. I liked the early Duke teams (Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie), despised the Christian Laettner/Bobby Hurley edition, and while I have admired individual players (Grant Hill, Elton Brand, Jason Williams, Demarcus Nelson, as examples) I have never been able to stomach the over the top adulation that's heaped upon them by the likes of Dukie V, Mike Patrick, and others in the media. While they may be cleaner than most, they ain't spotless. It's a rare thing to find a spotless program in college B.B. and Duke has their share of question marks through the years (Duhon's mother, Boozer's father, Dockery and Avery's academics, Maggette's connections), yet they are framed as "the one program doing it right". It's pure B.S. and has nothing to do with jealousy.
