Tuesday, 7 April 2015

In a Finals Brawl, Duke's Youngsters Score the Knockout - New York Times




Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones celebrated after Monday night’s victory over Wisconsin. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images



INDIANAPOLIS — This was a heavyweight fight of a college championship game, two fine basketball teams trading right crosses, hooks and uppercuts.


If Duke won, well, one of them had to.


The game was moments old when Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky, the lanky seven-footer whose seeming awkwardness disguises a fine handle and a shooting guard’s nose for the basket, drained a 3-point shot. He raised his shooting hand high and curled it — saaaah! — like a scrawny Dirk Nowitzki.


Less than a minute later, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, at 6-foot-11 and 270 pounds one of several preternaturally talented freshman man-children, grabbed the basketball like a grapefruit and rammed it into the basket. He can float listlessly in the stream of the game for minutes at a time, but when he starts to swim, he is formidable.



Back and forth it went. Tyus Jones — another Duke freshman, this time a baby-faced point guard from Apple Valley, Minn. — drained a jumper. Sam Dekker, Wisconsin’s pale-faced forward, usually possesses a fine 3-point-shooting touch. Monday night that touch was like a wallet lifted from his back pocket.




Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky and Josh Gasser reacted after losing to Duke on Monday night. Michael Conroy/Associated Press


Dekker’s game is hyperactive and he kept pushing and hitting and diving to the hoop. He finished the half with 8 points and 5 rebounds.


Bo Ryan, the white-haired veteran Wisconsin coach, complained afterward that the game had gotten too physical, and suggested the referees let Duke knock his team off its sweet game. “It’s just a shame it had to be played that way,” he told CBS after the game.


This is like the legendary boxing cornerman Angelo Dundee complaining about rough fisticuffs. Both Wisconsin and Duke gave and got with abandon, and if the referees missed a few calls, it was equal opportunity blindness.


The University of Kentucky was widely expected to make the final game, until Wisconsin knocked off the Wildcats Saturday night. Kentucky had a massive and physical team, anchored by two talented seven-footers. In the absence of these giants, Duke and Wisconsin scampered up and down the court, taking the ball to the hoop with abandon.


At the half, the teams were knotted at 31 apiece.


We journalists love narratives, and we had several suitable for pressing. Duke, with eight McDonald’s all-Americans, had the deeper well of talent. Coach Mike Krzyzewski long ago made his piece with the new world of college basketball, where freshmen often leave after a single year. To be able to bring the freshman Grayson Allen off the bench speaks to riches beyond measure.


Allen was a high school all-American guard, with the sort of spongy bounce in his legs that lets him play with elbows above the rim. He more or less treated the championship game as his coming-out party.


Several times, Allen, who could pass for a young Ted Cruz, took flight to the basket, a whirling dervish. He got whacked about the head, smacked across the arms. And still he scored.


“He put us on his back,” Krzyzewski noted.


The opposing narrative is that Wisconsin deserves retro props for playing it old style. Its players tend to stay in college for four years, carefully building a team.


This one had developed a goofy and endearing identity. Kaminsky has grown into his body, and his spinning journeys to the hoop are deeply entertaining, not the least when he puts spin on the ball and it bounces off the backboard and into the basket like a perfect pool shot.


He is expert at shielding the ball with his body, and even when stumbling he can toss a pass to waiting teammates.




Duke’s Tyus Jones attempted a shot against Wisconson’s Frank Kaminsky on Monday night. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images


After the game, Ryan grumped proudly about his team’s dinosaur status. We don’t, he said, play “rent-a-player” like some other teams. By which you might infer he was talking about the two teams he played in the Final Four, Kentucky and Duke.


I prefer to watch teams take careful flower; that is more interesting than university as rest stop on the highway to the pros. And Wisconsin plays a pleasing style of hoops, filled with passing, deception and cuts. But honesty requires noting that while the
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In a Finals Brawl, Duke's Youngsters Score the Knockout - New York Times
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