If you unspool the Carolina-Duke basketball rivalry to its principal core, you’re left with a scant 80 minutes of basketball a year. That’s it. The brevity of game action makes for a less colorful conversation piece than some of the rivalry’s year-round undercard narratives. That is: there’s more to the blue-blood Blue Ribbon than the fact that Duke has won 10 of the last 13 games.
For instance, there’s the Best Coach debate (Duke wins here, easily). Most Modern-Era Championships (Duke). Best Home Court (Duke). Best Recruiting (Duke). Best No Academic Scandal (Duke). Geez, this is kinda one-sided. There’s got to be something Carolina fans can hang their hat on…
What about Best Current NBA Players? Truth is, the scales are about to tip too far in Duke’s favor once the association sees Winslow, Okafor and Tokoto. A new era of Duke NBA dominance may very well be a trend for the foreseeable future so long as Duke keeps renting athletes. But today? It has be close, right?
IT HAS TO BE.
The Rosters
In order to see through this experiment, I fired up the ol’ Playstation 3 and loaded NBA 2K14. Yes, I am aware this is outdated gaming technology. I also still own an original iPod, which I play through portable speakers in my 2001 Civic; I am the ghost haunting Best Buy.
Some house-keeping needed to occur prior to roster construction. First, I downloaded the most recent update to the NBA rosters. Then I designed two custom teams with reasonably accurate uniforms and game plans: I assigned the UNC squad to the Suns’ up-tempo playbook, and Duke, the Spurs’ motion-heavy attack. I gave both teams more three-point and pick plays and less isolation calls.
The video game allows for 15 players on a roster, but only 11 can actually participate in the contest. Here’s the Carolina roster, with player ratings in parenthesis and asterisks designating the inactive players.
Tyler Zeller’s late-season surge gave him the starting nod over Brandon Wright. Vince Carter, poor thing, is terribly overrated in this game. In real life, the old man parks his offense behind the arc, where he shot just 7-28 in the playoffs. He will cheer on the sidelines with Reggie Bullock, who the Clippers decided was less valuable than 36-year-old Hedo Türkoglu.
Duke’s roster was a bit more controversial.
This postseason brought Austin Rivers out of the shadows and into the role of Tragic Man Number One. Unfortunately, there’s literally no other Duke option at point guard, so Rivers back peddles into the rotation. My sincere apologies to the Ryan Kelly fan club.
The Carolina roster earns a collective 65 defensive rating and a 60 on offense. Duke is 60 and 72, respectively. Is that worse than the Sixers? You bet. In fact, only the Utah Jazz are below Duke’s 72 rating on offense. The good news for our purposes is that both teams are equally horrendous.
An important note before we begin: At no point will I control a team in this simulation. I’ll just be sitting there, watching a video game play itself and telling my girlfriend to stop laughing this is very serious.
The Game
This is the part where you BOOM-BOOM CLAP, BOOM-BOOM CLAP for a whole minute. Good, now we can begin.
Out of the gates, Ty Lawson was a pain in the ass for the Duke defense. He took the opening possession into the paint and dished to John Henson for the game’s first basket. Lawson would then pour in 8 of the Heels’ next 12 points. For its part, the Duke offense did well to keep up. After a JJ Redick three, the visiting Heels led 14-11 midway through the first quarter.
At this point, the two coaches — doughy black twins — agreed to insert their entire second units. Here’s where the game took a tailspin into chaos. Outside of Gerald Henderson, the Duke bench couldn’t buy a bucket. Carolina led by as many as 10 before taking a 26-19 lead into the second quarter.
I should add, early in the first quarter an announcer incorrectly notes that Mason Plumlee is “one of the best in the league at taking charges.” It threw me off guard because I’ve played hundreds of games and never heard that said about a player. Not until Duke got involved.
It became clear that this early deficit heavily burdened poor Austin Rivers. At a game stoppage moments into the second quarter, he clumsily bumps Brandon Wright in frustration. It was pretty dramatic.
Tyler Hansbrough had a front row seat for the act and, uh-oh, TYLER ANGRY.
TYLER MOTIVATED BY VIOLENCE AND THE FAINT RECOLLECTION OF BASKETBALL SUCCESS. TYLER MAKE RIVER PAY.
Hansbrough’s entirely out-of-position, but effective dismantling of Austin Rivers was part of a huge second quarter by the Heels. See for yourself:
Duke was unravelling at the seams, showcasing more than just a deterioration of basic basketball ability. This was an escalated, three step wreck you can try at your next pick up game.
Step one: somehow mess up easy fast break opportunities, like this one here.
Step two: throw shade at ya boy.
Step three: JUST DANCE.
By the way, this is not standard timeout procedure. Usually the video game coach does reasonable coach things like point at players. But here, the ones and zeros bounced back a shrug; the gaming equivalent of Ashlee Simpson’s uh-oh hoedown on SNL. Irving looks at his coach like Man, this is worse than your behavior against the Clemson All-Stars.
The half ended with a why-not three by Irving at the buzzer to close the score at 53-37. Duke’s coach wobbled to the locker room and ball boys ran out to sweep up parts of Austin Rivers.
Like many sports fans, I have sports amnesia; I’m conditioned to project outcomes based only on the most recent test cases. My last image of a Carolina basketball team is one that made leads look like water snake toys, inevitably wiggling out of grasp. So I’m watching this fake lead and all I can think is: they gon fuck this up.
I let out a scream when Duke squad threw open the locker room doors, wasted bottles of Secret Stuff scattered in their shadows. The Heels turned slowly, processing their careless mistake: you never apply heat to a stable compound of JJ (poet), Mr. Deng (spy) and Hendo (assassin). BOOM-BOOM CLAP indeed.
Duke wasted no time burning the nets on nine straight points to start the second half. A Redick three made it a 12-0 run, with the score now 53-46. Jabari Parker to this point was shooting just 2-10 and Deng, spoiler alert, missed the ONE shot he’d take all game. Irving and Redick are dragging Duke corpses through the desert. Carolina is a payphone, off the hook and dangling in the breeze.
Duke would pull to within four on a Henderson transition jam. The next possession, Kendall Marshall makes this face:
The score is 59-55. Duke has all the momentum and not once in this quarter does Carolina take a timeout. You can’t make this shit up. I’m not even convinced the team knows the second half has started.
It’s about this time that Mason Plumlee gets hurt while going for an offensive rebound. As you can see here, it’s a real bad boo boo.
Carolina scores easily on this possession. Duke takes a timeout and resident jackass Kyrie Irving really gives Plumlee the business. The fan in the white long-sleeve polo is prepared to get involved.
Carolina clings to a 73-66 advantage heading into the final quarter. Okay, enough with the jokes. Enough with the snarky quips. Let’s get serious and finish this thing with raw footage. For as the great Berlin once wrote, “No more words / No more words and no more promises of love.”
A box score of the game can be found here. #GoHeels
