Chris was dead on, he gained more respect from me, and did it in a way as to not offend anyone or either side....and he basically said Jalen used a poor choice of words, and he's right...He (Jalen) could have said it all in a better way and not offend so many people...Duke, and specifically coach K recruits whomever he feels will help his program, and he probably wants "coachable" players who will follow direction, as most coaches do...Kids with individual type of personalities, or drama filled backgrounds probably won't be recruited, and can you blame him??....if he recruited no Black kids, or didn't play his Black kids, then you'd have an issue, but thats not the case...If Black players had a problem with Coach K, or the school, you would have heard about it by now...Now ask Jalen if he had been good enuf to play for that Dream team w/ Lebron and Wade, etc, with Coach K as the head coach, if he would have kept it real and turned him down... On another note, Jalen was on that panel of athletes that were speaking on MLK day about the state of the Black athlete, and he made the a few simple remarks, that most gave him a pass on...He said when he was at Michigan, the saying was white kids were recruited for 2 reasons, free throw %, and GPA....and another saying was how do you keep a secret from a brother?...put it in a book.....what he said may have been true to some extent, but saying it, on that day, at that time was not the time to do it...and he just opened himself up to more criticism...many of us here probably had a disliking for Duke, or the Celtics of old, and a few other programs because of the way they did things, but there is a way to say it so that it doesn't offend the wrong people, and Jalen failed to do that...Grant Hill doesn't deserve the name calling then or now....the way the message came out he offended Duke, Coach K, the Black players on their team, their parents, the fact that a quality education was important, the fact that we all want to be successful in life, and he simply summed up the whole situation as brothers Tomming for Duke...and thats absolutely wrong...Jalen is quick to point out how intelligent he is, how he had the grades at Michigan, and was a good student...thats all good, he has book smarts, but what he often shows is a lack of common sense, and lack of knowing that there are still boundaries when trying to keep it real...
