{"id":46517,"date":"2019-02-21T20:06:08","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T00:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46517"},"modified":"2020-08-10T20:06:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T00:06:19","slug":"unc-duke-and-the-sad-state-of-the-future-of-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46517","title":{"rendered":"UNC-Duke, and the sad state of the future of basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Fact<\/a>: #8 North Carolina defeats #1 Duke in the latest edition of the so-called greatest rivalry in all of sports<\/span><\/p>\n

Fiction: #8 North Carolina defeats #1 Duke in the latest edition of the so-called greatest rivalry in all of sports solely because super-prospect Zion Williamson went down with a knee injury 30 seconds into the game when his foot exploded out of his shoe when trying to pivot<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to talk about when it came to last night\u2019s UNC-Duke matchup; it was the hottest ticket in all of sports, with tickets costing only second to the Superb Owl, the fact that among the litany of celebrities present for it was previous president Barack Obama, that it was the first time of the year where Duke\u2019s super squad would be meeting arch-rival North Carolina for the first time, among other things.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when the hoopla all died down and the final horn blew, it was #8 North Carolina cruising to an easy victory against the #1 ranked Duke squad on the road, where the Tar Heels scored the first basket of the game and never looked back the whole rest of the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is, as the game chugged along with Duke being completely incapable of closing the margin to under seven points, the ESPN analysts began preemptively apologizing for the anticlimactic and completely uncompetitive contest, and were making all the excuses in the world that Duke was \u201cdevastated\u2019 and \u201cshell shocked\u201d over the loss of their superstar (and likely one-and-done-er) Zion Williamson, after his shoe blew up on him 30 seconds into the game, leading to, a knee sprain.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not a torn ACL, MCL or a dislocation.\u00a0 A knee sprain; yes, it sucks all the same, and Duke and Zion made the right call of pulling him, because forcing it can only make it worse, but it will get better on its own in time with rest and elevation.\u00a0 No surgery, no months-long recovery timetable.\u00a0 Just a game or two inactive, and he\u2019ll likely be fine and ready to go and get back to denting basketballs<\/a> and Mutombo-ing shots<\/a> into the stands again.<\/span><\/p>\n

But don\u2019t let all those trite details stop celebrities and active NBA players act like<\/a> Zion had his throat slit on the middle of Coach K Court, and the crime of the century had just occurred.\u00a0 Naturally, this re-ignites the whole notion that these kids should be allowed to go to the NBA straight from high school, but that\u2019s a different rant for a different day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point is, if it were up to ESPN and the internet, North Carolina won solely because Zion Williamson went down, and Duke didn\u2019t also have two of the other top-5 freshman prospects in the entire nation on their squad\u2013except they did.\u00a0 I wonder what RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish felt after the game, with the media treating them like they were chopped liver in comparison to Zion; especially after the two of them combined for 60 points out of the 72 total scored by the entire team.\u00a0 Barrett\u2019s 33 points led all scorers, and at the college ranks, a 30 point game is a pretty big deal, but nobody will ever remember it, since this will always be remembered as the \u201cZion\u2019s shoe exploded\u201d game.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which is all in itself a really sad state of basketball, which sucks doubly, because I\u2019ve always felt that the college ranks weren\u2019t nearly as insufferable and bullshit as the NBA is these days.\u00a0 The fact that Duke\u2019s literally put all of its eggs into the basket of Zion, despite the fact that they\u2019ve got two other guys that would easily be the sole star of just about any other D-I school in the nation, if they all didn\u2019t collude to come together to try and win a National Championship together before they all jumped into the NBA draft next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019s true that had Zion not gotten hurt, Luke Maye probably doesn\u2019t explode on Duke like he did last night, because he\u2019d have been covered by him and not Jack White who played like the worst white shooter in the history of the game, but basketball is a team game; when one guy goes down, there\u2019s still four other starters and an entire bench of players who are expected to pick up the slack, and not roll over and die because we can\u2019t win without Zion.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the day is over, I watched the game, because I got drawn into the hype of a dual top-10 ranked UNC-Duke matchup, and if you\u2019re not intrinsically curious about Zion Williamson, you\u2019re not really a sports fan.\u00a0 I earmarked the time and made sure that I was available for it, complaining about why an ACC game would be starting at 9 fucking pm.\u00a0 But by the time the threat of a late-game Duke three-pointer barrage had seemed unrealistic and it was apparent that North Carolina was going to win it, I was already pretty disgusted with the state of basketball, and certainly hope Zion gets better quickly, just so that when Duke fails to win the National Championship (again) this year, they won\u2019t have any more excuses in March.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fact: #8 North Carolina defeats #1 Duke in the latest edition of the so-called greatest rivalry in all of sports Fiction: #8 North Carolina defeats #1 Duke in the latest edition of the so-called greatest rivalry in all of sports solely because super-prospect Zion Williamson went down with a knee injury 30 seconds into the … Continue reading UNC-Duke, and the sad state of the future of basketball<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,45,52],"class_list":["post-46517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-basketball","tag-fail","tag-owned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46519,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46517\/revisions\/46519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}