A Quote by Grant Hill
My teammates at Duke - all of them, black and white - were a band of brothers who came together to play at the highest level for the best coach in basketball.
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Duke has had many lightning rods over the years, it's a long list of 'em, a long list of white Duke basketball players that have been lightning rods. I didn't fully understand it before I came to Duke, but obviously I do now.
Coach K, he's just the most legendary coach to coach college basketball. I felt like going to Duke University I can learn a lot from him in my time there.
For whatever reason, the people that don't appreciate Duke basketball or don't pull for Duke basketball, they have a tendency to vilify one of the players. And a lot of times, it might be a white guy. And has it happened over and over in the past? Yes.
It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South.
With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black.
As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.
We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.
I went to Duke, and I stayed at Duke all four years because I wanted as many years under Coach K's tutelage as I could get. I think every year you get with him, the more it's going help you for basketball and life. So I wanted to play for him as long as I could.
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas...
Trying to speak English, to learn what my teammates were saying, to learn what I wanted to say - basketball, you have to learn the way to play here and get used to your teammates, but for me the toughest part was communication.
I had a coach when I was getting recruited say maybe you should play basketball at a Division III level, because you're not good enough to play football in college.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
I want to play at the highest level, the NBA, and one day be one of the greatest basketball players ever.
You need to possess more than a little nastiness to play basketball at the highest level.
In high school, my dream was to go to the NBA. But when recruiting came around, the letters for football compared to basketball were like 25 to one, and my one wasn't from Duke.
I remember the night when I was playing at Birdland, and Duke Ellington walked in wearing that cap of his and with all his elegance. The Duke then came backstage, and I was there with my band. That's the one thing I miss.
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