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View Full Version : The "I Hate Christian Laettner" 30 For 30 thread



SoCalPat
03-15-2015, 10:57 PM
Since it was announced that this would be shown after Selection Sunday, I've been looking forward to this more than I have the release of the bracket. I've known of Christian since I was 12, and this show did not disappoint. I was in the building for at least two events shown in the 30 for 30, and there was a brief snippet of his Little League team that I played against in 1982.

I will go on record as saying I've always been a fan of Chrisitian Laettner, and I've never hated him. He is easily the greatest college player of the modern era, and only Kareem and Walton compare in all eras. What an incredible 30 for 30. It's worth watching.

LA Ute
03-15-2015, 11:27 PM
We watched it. Loved it.

DrumNFeather
03-16-2015, 07:59 AM
I haven't finished it, but from what I saw it was fantastic.

Those Duke/UNLV games were some of my first exposure to college basketball.

U-Ute
03-16-2015, 09:18 AM
I recorded it but haven't watched it yet. Don't ruin the ending.

SoCalPat
03-16-2015, 10:39 AM
I recorded it but haven't watched it yet. Don't ruin the ending.

No real spoilers in play here. You'll recognize a lot and if you've really followed Laettner's career like I have, very little is spoiler-worthy.

I will add a little perspective on Laettner's pre-Duke days. The narrative about him going to Nichols (an all-boys prep school in North Buffalo and very elitist) is pretty accurate. He truly was the poorest kid at that school, had to carpool to get to school and had to do all kinds of menial labor in the summer to pay for his tuition there. Today, it's about $20,000 per year. In the mid/late 1980s, probably in the $10-$15K range. That's not money a press foreman and elementary school teacher can come up with on a moment's notice, but with what Christian's parents were able to offer, plus Christian's efforts, I strongly doubt he was ever in jeopardy of not being able to go to Nichols.

However, the documentary doesn't (understandably, for a general audience) explain how Laettner bypassed the public school in his backyard. His grade school, Most Precious Blood, only went to 8th grade. The natural move would have been to go to Lake Shore Central, right in Angola, N.Y. According to my grandfather, who was very involved with school district goings-on (he was a coach and administrator in the district for 50-plus years), the Laettners wanted Christian to repeat the 8th grade. He was originally Class of 1987, but being born in August, was very young for his class. My grandfather was part of the school board decision that denied the Laettners' request. Now, my story covers only one side and my grandfather died about 10 years ago, so my details could be fuzzy as well. However, if this is true, the Laettners would be foolish to talk about it -- it ruins the blue collar narrative because it portrays them as seeking privileged status for their son. Even though such moves are commonplace today, the hindsight today would hammer them. Nichols, being private, could make such a decision and Christian repeated the 8th grade at Nichols.

(Side note: Had Laettner gone to Lake Shore, transferring from my high school outside of Rochester and living with my grandparents to play alongside Christian would have been a no-brainer. I had known of Christian since our Little League days -- there's a scene in the doc featuring the Evans Phillies team he played on; I played for the Astros and he was already 6-6 with a fastball that flirted in the upper 70s. You knew then he was going to be great in athletics, so I would've needed no sales job. I was a fair high school player and averaged 15 and 8 while leading my team in assists. But we were horrible. Simply being on a team with a player like Laettner would've increased my exposure to college coaches immensely. My game would've improved going up against him every day and while that alone likely wouldn't have made me D-1 caliber, the Northeast is flooded with D-2 and D-3 schools; as it was, I went D-3 out of college and into a situation that was really bad, but that's another story for another time.)

I mentioned two scenes from the documentary in which I was in the building. The first was the Section VI title game against South Park, the one that ended up with a massive fight. I was at the old Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo at my grandfather's request -- he was on a committee of some kind and paid me to sell game programs. There were 5-6 games scheduled that day, with Nichols-South Park being the main event, if you will. So once that game tipped off, my grandfather and I went inside and watched the game. But we missed the fight! The game was a blowout and we left with about 4 minutes left in the game. We found out about the fight reading the next day's Buffalo Evening News. We figured we had walked out the door or were in the parking lot as the fight broke out.

The second came in Laettner's senior year, when he was truly living rock-star status. The doc doesn't mention it specifically, but one of Duke and Coach K.'s trademarks is to make it back to the hometown of every one of their players for a game during their careers. For Duke and Laettner, that came against Canisius College (we beat them in the opening round of the Dance in 1996 as a four seed -- the notable thing about this game is we won comfortably despite missing KVH, who was out with the flu). It truly was a scene. I swear, every above-average to hot girl in Buffalo between 16 and 25 was there that night (Insert your own joke about how many women that actually might be). The comparison the doc makes between Christian and Mick Jagger was 100 percent accurate, and some of the footage of the kind of madness that surrounded Duke hoops that year was from the game against Canisius -- I recognized the seat patterns from the Aud.

It appears that Christian is living a good life. He's had his hardships, to be sure (the doc doesn't mention the most serious of his financial problems) and he's got great perspective on how he's viewed amongst the public at large. It's not easy for athletes his stature to reinvent themselves in the public eye, but this doc will do it. It's not a stretch to say Laettner is the most despised and most admired Duke basketball player of all time, and I think the number of people in the former is shrinking quickly after the 30 for 30 broadcast.