Big Ten-ACC Challenge: Duke's most hateable players of the 21st century, ranked

DOOK HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE

By Kyle Robbins, Ben Raphel, and David_Siegel May 14, 2015, 11:34am EDT

CAN YOU TELL WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT THIS GAME? YES IT'S NOT UNTIL NOVEMBER OR DECEMBER WE DON'T CARE. LET'S PLAY IT TOMORROW. AND THE NEXT DAY. AND THE NEXT DAY. DID WE MENTION GRAYSON ALLEN LOOKS LIKE TED CRUZ? GRAYSON ALLEN IS EVERY KID YOU DIDN'T LIKE IN LAW SCHOOL. HE WAS THE GUNNER, THE KID THAT ALWAYS ASKED A QUESTION TWO MINUTES AFTER CLASS ENDED AND TURNED EVERYONE IN FOR SHARING OUTLINES. YOU DO NOT LIKE GRAYSON ALLEN, OR ANYONE THAT HAS EVER PLAYED FOR DUKE, FOR THAT MATTER. NO I AM NOT YELLING, SORRY IT'S REALLY LOUD IN HERE MARCO KILLINGSWORTH JUST DANG NEAR KILLED GREG PAULUS AGAIN SORRY

CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHO WON THAT GAME?????

huh

oh duke did

DUKE HATE, RANKED.

10. Grayson Allen

Ben Raphel: In recent years, Duke has had fewer hateable players than they did back in the 1990s and 2000s. Dare I say the most recent team, with Jahlil Okafor, was actually enjoyable to watch at times, with its impressive offensive efficiency. Coach K has also adapted to the current times of college hoops and changed the primary makeup of these teams. Gone are most of the players who would slap the floor and muck it up for four straight years, and in their place have come more NBA-ready one-and-dones. This one-and-done makeup was the underrated aspect about this year's title-winning Duke team that no one in the national media really recognized, because of their obsession with Kentucky doing almost the same thing.

Some things about Duke never change though. Enter Grayson Allen.

Wisconsin was in the lead early in the second half of this year's national title game. While the Badgers have frustrated the Hoosiers for the good part of the Bo Ryan era, I was still fully on board the Wisconsin bandwagon in the finals, partially because of conference pride but mainly because they knocked off Kentucky two nights before. And it looked like they were in good shape that night for a while on this night as well.

But then Allen caught fire.

Of the eight-man Duke rotation this past year, Allen was by far the last guy I was expecting to make an impact in that title game. But there he was, knocking down shots at ease and playing stingy defense during that national title game like he was playing some ACC also-ran at Cameron Indoor. In only a couple minutes, Duke became their hateable selves again, all thanks to Allen's gritty play to help them win their fifth banner. (That's right. Duke now has as many banners as IU and all of them have come since the Hoosiers won their fifth. I just puked a little in my mouth.)

And the thing about Allen is, he still has room to shoot up this list, as he might continue to make a name for himself as the annoying bench glue/grit/hustle guy at Duke over the next few years. In addition, he has an uncanny resemblance to the similarly annoying Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, so be prepared to hear about that during the election cycle next season.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Duke's Grayson Allen looks A LOT like a young Ted Cruz. <a href="http://t.co/cjBAfeknf6">http://t.co/cjBAfeknf6</a> <a href="http://t.co/hiN4UsVe2h">pic.twitter.com/hiN4UsVe2h</a></p>— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/585610329884852224">April 8, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Coach K may have changed the primary makeup of his team during this decade, but Grayson Allen proves that his old habits still die hard.

9. Kyle Singler

Kyle Robbins:

8. Jon Scheyer

David Siegel: For the most part, Scheyer didn't deserve a lot of the hate he got. He was a solid regular that developed into a go-to guy near the end of his career on a team that won a national title (Apologies, Butler fans). However, being a white shooter at Duke will immediately vault a player into a certain limelight. For full disclosure, Scheyer grew up 15 minutes from my hometown and was the living embodiment of everything I wanted to be on on a basketball court, and was so obviously not. I like to think of the collective dislike for him as a culmination of the cognitive dissonance of every failed suburban high school athlete.

7. Gerald Henderson

KR: GOON THE GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON. I have two Tyler Hansbrough jerseys.

6. Josh McRoberts

DS: Hailing from Carmel, Indiana, the 2005 McDonald's All-America Player of the Year and #2 overall recruit left the original basketball heartland to go join the evil empire in Durham. With such a high profile, McBob had a target on his back from the first day he set foot on campus. After a somewhat bland freshman year, the man with a thousand different haircuts broke out in a big way his sophomore year, becoming the do-it-all forward he appeared to be coming out of high school. Although he was no Christian Laettner, McRoberts knew how to rile up those around him. He left for the NBA in 2007, and continues to be a player that can get under the skin of anyone (that means you, LeBron).

5. Shane Battier

KR: I own this Shane Battier jersey and it's what I wear when I want people to not talk to me in public. Shane Battier is the worst, and is the most Unmemphian player to play for the Memphis-era Grizzlies not named Beno Udirh. I don't know why any of this makes him bad, but I don't like him.

Also, his head looks like a dang Ruffle.

4. Greg Paulus

BR: During Duke's nine-year-long title drought between 2001 and 2010, the Blue Devils were still as hateable as ever. And no better was the hateable archetype of the Duke basketball player embodied during this time than with Greg Paulus. Paulus was a coach's son and a four-year player for the Blue Devils, along with being constantly praised for his grit and his tenacity and all those other intangibles that announcers love. However, his legacy in Durham will be remembered primarily for one thing.

His flopping.

No one was better at drawing charges than Paulus was while at Duke, and he had this knack for getting to the ground quickly on either side of the ball. And every time he did this, the ref would almost certainly blow his whistle and charge the opposing team with a foul. Watching Paulus was like watching the Italian national team play soccer, but with even less ability to score. I specifically remember watching one Duke game where Paulus basically fell over backwards, yet still was able to draw a foul (and have the announcer wonder whether the opposing player should be called for a flagrant).

And unlike JJ Redick, Paulus had neither the sweet shooting ability from outside nor the excellent poetry chops to partially redeem himself. Yep, Greg Paulus was the worst and I hated watching him play, since his only discernable quality was flopping.

After four mediocre years of flopping at Duke, Paulus went on to one year of being the mediocre quarterback at Syracuse. Doug Marrone may have turned Syracuse's program around for a while in the early 2010s, but choosing a guy who hadn't played football since high school as his first starting QB was not one of them. But the fact that Paulus was tapped to start at QB for an FBS program right away as a grad transfer, even after not playing football for years, just made him even more hateable in my mind. More recently, Paulus has been an assistant at Ohio State for the past few years. This means, of course, that he passed his legacy of flopping and gritty annoyingness onto Aaron Craft. I can think no more hateable player/coach combination than Paulus and Craft.

3. Mike Dunleavy

DS: As the son of an NBA coach with an endlessly punchable face, Mike Dunleavy is a prototype of someone born to be hated at Duke. Factor in that he could play a little bit too, and it was game over. Dunleavy was prolific shooter at Duke, and for someone of his size, he had no business being as adept a ballhandler as he was. There were no defining cheapshots that earned the hate, no obnoxious mannerisms to loathe, but as a total package, it was so easy to dismiss him, only to watch him drop 25 the next game with ease. Dunleavy cemented his legacy by being a key contributor during Duke's 2001 title run, and has continued annoying us through present day for a number of teams in the NBA.

2. Carlos Boozer

KR: Carlos Boozer was once blocked by a man that is SIX FOOT THREE in the low-post and then went on to make millions of dollars playing basketball. You should hate him for this reason.

1. JJ Redick

KR: JJ Redick is here as a placeholder. He's the dude EVERYONE hated in the mid-2000's. If you put the constraints (only-2000s players) on this list we did, he'd be at the top dang-near everytime. But, hold on, why? He was good? Redick was, and is, just a general placeholder for Duke hate. He was the lightning rod in the mid-2000s -- a percieved well-off, clean-cut white dude that shot threes and couldn't do much else. But, like, if we're gonna be honest, this dude totally didn't deserve this kind of flack:

HAVE SOME CHILL, WAKE FOREST PEOPLE, JESUS.

Redick takes the top spot, because I think it's college basketball law to put him here, or something.

Indiana will play Duke this fall in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge in Durham. We're going to talk about it all summer long, because the 2002 Sweet 16 game was the high point of most of our shitty millennial lives.