Cream of the Conference

There are a lot of things Shane Battier can do. He can show up to the ACC's basketball press conference in a drab olive suit. He can show up to said preseason press conference in said drab olive suit and make it look good-real good. He can become preseason favorite for national player of the year despite never having been the best offensive player on his team. He can even become the favorite for said award despite a penchant for said drab olive suits. But there's one thing Shane Battier can't do: absent-mindedly twirl a championship ring. "Hmmph," he says, making a sound more Eeyore than preseason player of the year, when asked why he came back for his senior season, his thumb tapping his ring finger like he was beating out his own heart rate. His coach, Mike Krzyzewski, twirls. Matt Doherty twirls between jokes about bringing some guy named Michael Jordan (who twirls in waves of sixes these days) back for a senior season. Even Dave Odom twirls these days in his own NIT kind of way. And our drab olive Eeyore sits tapping his finger, surrounded by the media like a well-studied painting in the Louvre. And then he speaks the obvious. "I came back to get a ring." But it's not get, not really, it's more like reclaim. There was a time when he had four rings. One for each of the members of his recruiting class, the recruiting class that would make Duke Duke again, the class that would march to San Antonio and St. Petersburg and Indianapolis and Minneapolis and into the rafters of Cameron. Battier, Brand, Avery and Burgess. Three seasons before the program had fallen apart. A 2-14 ACC record in 1995 signaled the end of one of the most incredible runs in NCAA history-seven Final Fours in nine years. Even in 1997, the bright red gash had turned into a bruised purple. In hushed tones, they talked like conspirators in their Bassett dorm rooms, matching the sounds of the North Carolina summer outside. They spoke in a rapid staccato of titles and banners and championships voices rising and falling beat by beat, muted only by the dull hum of an air conditioner and the bond of secrecy they had-four against the world. And they talked of rings, rings with giant diamond studs that rose like mountains and deep blue finishes that might as well have been oceans. "When I came here with the four guys that came in, we talked about winning four national championships up in the night thinking as freshmen," Battier says, flashing his million-dollar smile that would make you believe the sky was yellow if he so insisted. "That's why I came back." They were Remus and they were Romulus and they wore baggy shorts with a D on the side that meant more than any letter had ever before and meant everything and meant just one thing, one number-one. Four years, four guys, four titles, but always No. 1. Second place was like a round earth, it didn't exist until somebody proved it to them. And nobody did until they did and when they did it wasn't even second, it was a hopelessly flailed shot and a 17-point lead gone and it was eighth. When it finally was second, it was over. Brand, Avery, Burgess. Battier. The 1999 NCAA tournament ended with a loss in the finals-an improbable, impossible loss in the finals-and suddenly the letters and numbers didn't mean so much. Except to Battier. It was obvious from the beginning that while most Duke basketball stars of the '90s grew out of the Christian Laettner branch of the family, Battier had sprung from the Grant Hill side. And when the rest of his class parted ways, the torch went from Grant to Trajan Langdon to Shane. About that same time, he decided to major in religion, probably because right then he understood a whole lot of what it meant to be God. The expectations hadn't gotten any lower and instead of four against the world, it was one man trying to patch together a sinking ship. Nobody knew how it was going to right itself, they just knew who to look to. You could've called him Atlas, for he too had to shoulder the weight of the world, but he never had to dribble a basketball while doing it. But the spotlight didn't slow him down-he adjusted. He played like Earl Monroe, talked like James Monroe and found a cult following like Marilyn Monroe. Whatever did not kill him made him stronger. And after his junior year was over and another mythical ring disappeared into another empty night and into the strains of someone else's version of "One Shining Moment," he decided to come back to reclaim what was his, what was Elton's, what was Will's, what was Chris's and most importantly, what was Duke's. He didn't come back to play with this team-he came back to lead it. "There's no question that this is Shane's team," Krzyzewski said. "Shane will go down as one of the top players ever in this conference. Shane's going to be up there with just about anybody." He apologizes for everything-early entry in the NBA, not being Chris Carrawell-though he gets blamed for nothing. He's the kind of man every mother wants to find on their daughter's arm and for his greatest trick, he can even make Krzyzewski gush. Getting Krzyzewski to gush is like getting the Pope to deliver Mass in Hebrew. "I'd love to see him when he gets on a roll not to be too humble," Krzyzewski said. "Shane can score in every way. I'd like to see him take the shots that he is practicing. Grant was a little bit like that. Grant wouldn't do all of the shots he was capable of. Part of it is being such a team guy.... There wasn't anybody better than him the second half of last year. He carried our basketball team." Dead-lifted, cleaned, jerked and then carried, to be exact. And after two seasons of representing not just Duke but college basketball, he came back for another. He came back for his brother, he came back to graduate ("I know it's unconventional thinking nowadays," he quips) and he came back to try something he's never done before-shutting the hell up. "I'm my mother's boy," Battier said. "I love to talk. One of my goals this year is to shut up. Last year, because there were so many young guys, I found myself constantly blabbing. And although I had a good year, I felt that sometimes I could have been better. So my goal this year is to shut up and let younger guys be more vocal." And he's going to do whatever he has to do, because he's Shane Battier and because there's one thing he desperately wants to do. "When it comes down to it," Battier says, eyes sparking a smile he won't let his face reveal, "I came back to get a ring." That, too, is something Shane Battier can do.