More reason to hate Duke

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COMMENTARY:

Everyone hates Duke. Everyone hates J.J. Redick. And everyone hates Mike Krzyzewski and his overwrought American Express commercials.

These facts are significant for two reasons:

1. They give everyone a chance to consolidate their hate in one place.

2. Krzyzewski has become identifiable in an almost inseparable way with his signature players.

The first was Johnny Dawkins, Krzyzewski's first major recruit. Together, they turned the program around, suffering through the last of Krzyzewski's losing seasons and reaching the Final Four in 1986. Now Duke's associate head coach, Dawkins is Krzyzewski's right-hand man.

The next was Danny Ferry, the first to embody all that is Duke basketball: courage, confidence, leadership and excellence, complete and utterly hate-worthy excellence.

But by 1990, Krzyzewski had gone to four Final Fours and came up empty. He burned to win one, and in Christian Laettner, he found a talented punk just as determined to close the deal.

Buoyed by their infamous cursing matches, Krzyzewski and Laettner pushed and prodded each other and stomped on the opposition's chest until they won back-to-back NCAA championships, the first team to do so since UCLA in 1973.

As a reward, the volatile pair paid their USA Basketball dues in the summer of 1992 -- Laettner as a member of the Olympic Dream Team and Krzyzewski as an assistant coach.