Is Richard petty? Well, so am I when it comes to UNC-Duke.
When Duke’s assistant basketball coach Chris Carrawell strode past UNC head coach Hubert Davis and refused to – in time-honored fashion - shake his hand after Coach K’s last regular season game, I thought it was a petulant, shameful and disgraceful display of poor sportsmanship.
And I loved every second of it.
Yessir. You see, “Richard” isn’t the only petty I love.
Here my buddies and I were, debating whether the UNC-Duke basketball rivalry could retain its unrepentant nastiness without the snarling Coach K to cheer and jeer after his retirement, when along comes the next generation to show that the rivalry’s animosity abides now, henceforth and forevermore.
Amen!
As the schools’ teams prepare to face off Saturday for a chance to play for a national title, the mutual rancor and disdain won’t be a bit higher than it would be for an early February regular season game: rancor would exist between the schools if the only thing on the line was a pack of Hubba Bubba and a six-pack of Yoo Hoos.
Carrawell and fellow Duke assistant Nolan Smith were seething not only over losing Coach K's last game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, but also over UNC’s refusal to honor or acknowledge K’s retirement when the teams played in Chapel Hill earlier that month. It was the coach’s last visit to the Dean Dome and his assistants apparently felt he deserved to go out with a flourish.
Alas, there was nothing, not even a coupon for a free side order of nanner pudding or fried okra from Mama Dip’s.
What, precisely, did they expect UNC to do - present K with a rocking chair during pregame festivities while fans serenaded him with For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow?
Fat chance.
Decades ago when I was visiting Las Vegas, a pal scored tickets to see insult comic Don Rickles onstage.
Wanna go? he asked me.
“Nay, nay,” I said, and here’s why: First, I had tickets to see The Coasters and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes – without Teddy Pendergrass, but still.
Second, Rickles's routine consisted of spewing contumely onto audience members of every nationality and ethnicity. He was a real equal opportunity bile-spewer which – in the minds of many – made his schtick acceptable.
It would have been acceptable, too, had he not ended each performance with a maudlin, treacly apology along the lines of “We’re all brothers under the skin and everything I say here is with love.”
Buffalo chips. I’d have liked it more if he’d closed his set with “If anyone was offended by what I said – too @#$%&* bad.”
Had UNC held a pregame celebration honoring K after 40 years of booing him, it would have rang just as inauthentic as Rickles’ perfunctory, predictable post-performance platitudes.
Psssst: Just between you and me, Duke and UNC players don’t dislike each other. They often go to the same barbershops, malls and parties, and both schools recruit the same players. (I guarantee you there’d be a Christian Laettner statue on Franklin Street if he’d hit that shot against Kentucky while wearing Carolina Blue.)
Charles Scott, my second favorite Tar Heel ever – Larry Miller is the first – told me how well Duke students treated him when he was being recruited to play there. Some even took him to see Otis Redding at the Stallion Club.
Now, how could you dislike someone who takes you to see Otis at the Stallion?
When Durham’s late, lamented Pan Pan Diner was gloriously serving up cheesy grits, fatback, sausage and eggs 24 hours a day, it wasn’t unusual to see players from both schools harmoniously greasin’ together – or at least in close proximity – into the wee, small hours.
Every Duke player I’ve ever talked to – yes, even Laettner – came across as a decent bloke and was impossible to personally dislike when they weren't wearing their uniform.
Former Duke head coach and raconteur extraordinaire Bucky Waters remains one of my favorite human beings on earth.
Even the cantankerous Coach K was an engaging guest speaker at a Durham Rescue Mission graduation ceremony I attended a few years ago.
But I still didn’t want to see UNC honoring him.
Maybe it’s because I’m petty, Richard.
