J.J. Redick Thinks The Media Is Responsible For The 'Hatable White Duke Basketball Player' Stereotype

BSO-  I think it’s fine for an opposing fan base to choose a player to root against or maybe you dislike certain guys, my issue though is I think the media has perpetuated this white Duke villain myth as much as anyone. Grayson is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, Jon Scheyer is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met — never seen Jon Scheyer do anything dirty. Greg Paulus, one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met … And you know me too, I probably in a way brought on some of the animosity towards me with the antics, the smiling, the head-bobbing, the trash-talking, but to be honest with you, it was more in reaction to the hate that was already coming my way before I ever really did anything to warrant it. It’s almost like every time there’s a player at Duke, the media says ‘oh, you should dislike this guy’. I can remember being in school my senior year, Greg Paulus was a freshman, and there were numerous articles that year, ‘Greg Paulus is the next hated Duke player’.

So the media I guess was choosing who we should hate. The media was saying like ‘this guy is the next guy’. And then the following year or the year after, whenever it was, it was Jon Scheyer — ‘he’s the guy you’re supposed to dislike’. And now recently there was an article in ESPN, and to be honest with you I participated in the interview and in the process of Dana O’Neil writing the article, and I thought the article was, it is what it is. She didn’t seem to kind of go off the rails against Duke or wasn’t as anti-Duke as some people might think it is. But she kinda said the same thing, like ‘now we’re supposed to dislike Grayson Allen — he’s the next in line’. Why though, why? Why does there have to be a next in line? -J.J. Redick



Reverse racism! Reverse racism! Caucasian athletes that are having their educations paid for at a prestigious university are being unfairly judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character! Christian Laettner was just a tough, hard nosed player that would do anything to win. It's the media that wanted you to think he was just a cutthroat dickhead that would constantly get away with elbowing his opposition in the face and stomping on their chest. Greg Paulus was just a extremely caring and passionate player. It's the media that wanted you to think he was a guy that flopped like he was auditioning for a role in a Sidney Crosby mockumentary, cried more during his college years than his mother did during menopause, and slapped the floor on defense like he was at all capable of striking fear into the heart of anything bigger than a fruit fly. Jon Scheyer was just a really expressive doofus, not the disturbingly unsightly douchebag that the media portrays him as. Grayson Allen? Come on, do I really have to keep going? He's just the right guy that got put in the wrong situation. It's not his fault that people are routinely tripping over the outstretched foot he keeps placing directly in front of them. All of this negative spin just because J.J. Redick got provoked into doing a little celebrating and engaged in light hearted banter with the people that guarded him? Have you no shame sports media?

It's just awful to see how dire the state of sports reporting has become. Integrity used to matter. Now the first thing they teach you in journalism school is to always downplay the accomplishments of successful white athletes. Can't even get through a college basketball game anymore without the announcers subconsciously instilling us with hatred for quirky fairer skinned guards from a private Catholic school in Durham, North Carolina. Just a bunch of completely innocent, fundamentally sound guys trying to play basketball the right way and there's not a single thing they can do to avoid biased coverage. Nothing...at...all.....