Duke basketball: Pundit takes cheap shot at Coach K

An ESPN employee posted a distasteful tweet about a Duke basketball legend.

Dan Dakich has a history of unfairly criticizing Duke basketball figures.

Just replay the ESPN commentator’s unwarranted “selfish player” tag for one-and-done Blue Devil Marvin Bagley III in 2018 and his over-the-top take on former four-year Blue Devil Grayson Allen during NBA Summer League action in 2019.

In fact, perhaps the only nice thing the sneering 58-year-old has ever done for Dukies came in 1984.

As a role player for Indiana, Dakich kept North Carolina star Michael Jordan in check. In doing so, he helped the Hoosiers beat the No. 1 Tar Heels in the NCAA Tournament East Regional Semifinal, thereby preventing the Blue Devils’ chief rivals from dancing all the way to a crown.

Speaking of the past, immediately following No. 10 Duke’s 83-68 home loss to No. 6 Illinois in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge on Tuesday night, Dakich suddenly felt the need to tweet about a head coach’s health issue 26 years ago.

For all intents and purposes, Dakich predicted that if the 2-2 Blue Devils continue their losing ways, then the 73-year-old Mike Krzyzewski will soon conveniently suffer a similar back problem to when the Hall of Famer was a 47-year-old:

“Duke keeps playing like this…Coach K’s gonna get a bad back.”

What happened to the Duke basketball treasure in 1995?

Prior to the 1994-95 Duke basketball campaign, Mike Krzyzewski underwent surgery on a ruptured disk in his back. Then 12 games in, citing exhaustion and with the Blue Devils sitting at 9-3, he decided to sit out the rest of the season and hand over the reins to his longtime assistant, Pete Gaudet, who proceeded to guide the squad to a 4-15 record the rest of the way.

That’s what happened. And Duke-hating folks like Dakich still refuse to let Coach K ever forget it.

Stay tuned to Ball Durham for more Duke basketball news and views.