eff Goodman provoked one of the stupidest Duke-UNC conversations we’ve heard in a while when he said that the Duke staff is “scared” of UNC’s Michael Malone, partly because he has an NBA championship ring.
Well, yeah, he does, but the team that he won that ring for also fired him because he lost his team and his personality became too overbearing. In a nutshell, he lost the locker room.
Denver was so done with him, in fact, that they fired him right before the playoffs.
That aside, his year-to-year record was solid but not overwhelming.
And putting that aside, what kind of impression has Malone made? Well, we think most people would respect his work ethic. The guy is clearly a grinder, and unlike a lot of NBA guys who move to college, he understands that you have to put the time in on recruiting. But you could probably say the same things about Matt Doherty, and no one was scared of him.
Well, maybe his dog.
We think Malone will be a solid to excellent coach, but Duke survived 36 years of Dean Smith and 18 of Ol’ Roy Williams. That’s a total of 54 years of two of the finest coaches in basketball history. Why should Duke be “scared” of Malone?
He’s working hard, and the effort is impressive, but he’s not likely to be John Wooden, Bob Knight, or Dean Smith.
Besides, Duke is doing fine. Check out this clip from Captain Caleb Foster, where he says this team could be better than the Cooper Flagg/Kon Knueppel team of two years ago, or the Cameron Boozer-led team from last season. He also says this: “We are blessed to have the opportunity to have such a good team, to where we could play 5 on 5 and simulate championship games every day unlike many other teams could.”
We think UNC had to move on from Hubert Davis, and Malone has a chance of doing very well. We’ve also said many times that it’s terrible for the ACC to have a weak UNC. We want every ACC team to be good.
We just want Duke to be the best.