{"id":21391,"date":"2025-07-19T12:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T12:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21391\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T12:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T12:03:08","slug":"picking-dukes-best-players-ever-is-a-fools-errand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21391\/","title":{"rendered":"Picking Duke\u2019s Best Players Ever Is A Fool\u2019s Errand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at ESPN, Myron Medcalf took a whack at picking Duke\u2019s best players ever.<\/a> Here\u2019s who he came up with:<\/p>\n

Jason WIlliams
\nChristian Laettner
\nGrant Hill
\nZion Williamson
\nCooper Flagg<\/p>\n

Reserves<\/p>\n

Shane Battier
\nJohnny Dawkins
\nJJ Redick
\nBobby Hurley
\nElton Brand<\/p>\n

Medcalf rightly says it\u2019s just about impossible since there has been so much talent that you have to leave great players off. For instance, even counting his honorable mentions, he leaves out Mike Gminski, Art Heyman, Jeff Mullins and Jack Marin. <\/p>\n

However, given his list, we would have to take Bobby Hurley over Jason Williams. Why?<\/p>\n

Because of Hurley\u2019s insane success, fueled by intensity. Williams was more talented, but Hurley won two national championships and still holds the NCAA assist record. More to the point, Williams sometimes lost focus. Hurley never lost focus.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d also have to consider Battier over Flagg. Flagg was superb this season, but Battier had a four-year career and emerged as one of the toughest, best leaders Duke\u2019s ever had. He was also one of the very best defenders ever to pass through Cameron. <\/p>\n

Like Hurley over Williams, Flagg has more talent and if he stayed for longer, he might be right behind Laettner and Hill. <\/p>\n

But he didn\u2019t, so we\u2019d have to give the edge to Battier. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over at ESPN, Myron Medcalf took a whack at picking Duke\u2019s best players ever. Here\u2019s who he came…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[571,402,19434,2843,19437,19435,577,19436,424,2850,398,400,401,19433,4697,2853,419,99],"class_list":["post-21391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-a","tag-basketball","tag-best","tag-duke","tag-errand","tag-ever","tag-exclude-from-stn-video","tag-fool","tag-front-page","tag-is","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-picking","tag-players","tag-report","tag-s","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}