Almost all of the ACC basketball prognosticators and predictors, including yours truly, will point out that this upcoming season will be unique because of the dominant role freshmen will play on nearly every team in the conference. Everyone from defending national champion Maryland to hometown favorite Virginia will most likely have at least one freshman in its starting lineup come opening day.
Even perennial heavyweight Duke is not immune to the wave of incoming first- year players that will see significant playing time. In fact, after losing "now call me Jay" Williams, Mike Dunleavy and Carlos Boozer to the NBA, Duke reigned in the consensus No. 1 recruiting class in the nation. With four of their five recruits receiving McDonald's All-American honors, the Blue Devils' freshmen class has been dubbed the "Fab Five" by many of those aforementioned analysts. This is where I must diverge from my fellow forecasters.
I find such an assertion to be analogous to those claiming some player is the next Michael Jordan. Whether it is Grant Hill, Jerry Stackhouse, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, there never will be another Michael Jordan. Just as we will never witness another high-flying, sky-walking, gravity-defying MJ, there never will be another team like the Fab Five of Michigan that played from 1991-1993. There was and will only be one "Fab Five."
A decade ago, five University of Michigan freshmen changed the face of basketball forever. They included NBA stars Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose. The other two members were college standouts Jimmy King and Ray Jackson. As writer Mitch Albom says in his biography of the team, "a group like them will never come along again." They not only changed the way the game was played and presented, but also embodied a cultural revolution of the age. The Fab Five introduced the formal basketball world to something many elsewhere already had seen -- baggy shorts, bald heads and black socks. If you compared tapes of basketball games from pre-1991 and post-1993, you'll see a dramatic difference in the way basketball looks. This change can be largely attributed to the Fab Five.
That Michigan squad started all five of its freshmen within a few games of the 1991-1992 season. With only the freshmen in the starting lineup, and little help from the bench, the Fab Five Wolverines made it all the way to the championship game that season. They would accomplish the feat again the following year as five sophomores.
I am not trying to say that this year's Duke recruits, especially J.J. Redick of Roanoke and Shavlik Randolph of Raleigh, are not going to be really good players. But when people start calling them the next Fab Five, they are mistaken for several reasons.
First of all, Duke has some very good returning players, something the Michigan team of 1991 did not have. Player-of-the-year candidate Chris Duhon, sophomore Daniel Ewing and senior swingman Dahntay Jones will lead this year's Duke team, not the five incoming freshmen.
Second, despite the obvious talents of Redick, Randolph, Sean Dockery, Michael Thompson and Shelden Williams, it is hard to imagine that this Duke class will mirror the abilities and capabilities of Webber, Howard, Rose, King and Jackson.
Third, as I already have tried to argue, the Fab Five of Michigan a decade ago had a profound effect on basketball-at-large. No matter what success this Duke class has on the court, I doubt they will have any long-lasting impact on the sport.
Fourth, there is little chance this year's Duke class will encounter the amount of controversy the Fab Five garnered during their two short years together. Because of their baggy shorts and constant trash talking, the Fab Five were condemned by many of basketball's so-called purists. Whether it was hanging on the rim after a dunk or jumping on the press tables after a victory, the Fab Five were criticized extensively for the trash talking that now pervades both college and professional basketball. It was such overt displays of emotion and confidence that rocked the basketball world back on its heels and made youngsters fall in love with their brash style of revolting against the establishment.
It is for these reasons that I believe calling this year's Duke freshmen class the "Fab Five" is inappropriate and unacceptable. Such a statement is as much a misnomer as calling Stackhouse the next Jordan -- it's just not right. Although Virginia will get to see the Duke rookies up close, no one will ever see the likes of the Fab Five again. Their accomplishments and impact stand alone in basketball lore.
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