Getting Carried Away

Thanks to the guys at ACC BasketBlog for reminding me that I wanted to write about this.
Motivated by J.J. Redick’s run at the ACC scoring record, Caulton Tudor of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote a piece this weekend on the greatest ACC backcourt and frontcourt players. To get right to the point, his list angered me.
I was mildly amused when he put Redick at #4, ahead of the much better Johnny Dawkins (don’t confuse the difference between points and overall quality).
But while I thought his guard list was a bit out of whack, I was outraged at his list of big men. Ralph Sampson, one of only three players to win national player of the year three times, didn’t crack Tudor’s top five! Listen, I loved Shane Battier. Hell of a player, but would anyone, anyone, take him over Tim Duncan or Ralph Sampson? Are you serious? Would you take Battier over Grant Hill, Len Bias, James Worthy and Antawn Jamison?
And let me say this about Lennie Rosenbluth, Tudor’s #3, he may well have been a great player, but I immediately discount any player who played in the all-white era. A blind man can see that basketball without black players just isn’t the same game. Maybe Rosenbluth would have dominated in any era, but we’ll never know, so I’m going to assume that his numbers are vastly inflated (and he was only a 1st team All-American once even then). If you took all of the black players out the ACC now, Nik Caner-Medley would probably be first team All-ACC!
If you want to see a much better list of ACC greats, check out Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s effort. I think he too is forgetting some guys, but it’s not an easy task. He certainly gave it more thought than Tudor did.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *