What puts Duke so squarely in our crosshairs is that they clearly do not exist on the other side of this gap. They do not have endowments like Harvard or Stanford. They do not have freaks of nature on their team like Kentucky or Kansas. We look at their bench or their student section and we do not see Anthony Davis and John Wall or the next Sergey Brin and Larry Page. We see versions of ourselves, of our kids. And we hate them for it because if they are not from the other side of the gap, they are from our side. And that means they succeeded by doing things right, by doing things we didn’t do: practicing the fundamentals, working hard, studying, sacrificing, persevering, delaying gratification. It’s the same reason people can’t stand Mormons or mock the humility of the heartland. They’re too good to be true.
