To me, it makes sense that I should write the obituary of Greg Paulus’s career as a Duke student-athlete on the back page of this newspaper rather than the sports page. Because when it came to the now-former Duke point guard, I always cared more about what he was like off the court than on it.
Between the sidelines, he was intermittently frustrating and inspiring—half a step too slow to keep up with the ACC’s elite point guards, but always willing to stick his face in the arc of someone’s elbow. But like I said, I don’t care about that. I’m also not interested in rehashing the story about how he was so unselfish this year because he accepted his seat on the bench and didn’t complain.
On the quad, he was a model ambassador for the University, something that I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as I’ve made the gradual transition (yes, gradual transition—go to grad school here and you’ll understand) from wild and crazy, tent-sleeping, beer-drinking, face-painting Duke undergrad to reasonable and rational, call-room-sleeping, (still-)beer-drinking, 80-hour-a-week-working Duke alumnus.
When I used to see Paulus around campus, he’d give me a “Hey man,” and a fist bump. He knew me because I wrote sports for The Chronicle, but I don’t doubt that he said “Hey man” to plenty of people he recognized on the quad. I remember a friend telling me she overheard Paulus walking out of Soc Sci one afternoon explaining to a girl that he’d be missing “Grey’s Anatomy” that night because his basketball game that night was more important. (The girl’s response: “Maybe...”)
Paulus was a two-time Academic All-American and a political science major. The first time I interviewed him—he was a freshman, I was a junior writing a story about his relationship with Josh McRoberts—he talked to me about how difficult it was transitioning to college life and living on his own.
He was a college kid who just happened to play basketball. He was “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!” Most of all, he was ours.
And I’ll be honest, I’m willing to trade national champions for competitive teams that have guys like Greg Paulus. I don’t want any part of the Final Four if it means I can’t have a Paulus on my team.
Give me Lance Thomas hanging out with his BME grad student neighbors on Friday night. Give me Sean Dockery staying up late on East Campus, studying math with his dormmates.
Give me Shavlik Randolph posing for a photograph wearing a Viking hat in front of the Chapel, as my friends protest Duke’s egregious lack of Viking professors. Give me Grant Hill and Christian Laettner rolling up to a fraternity party (on Main West! with kegs!) with the rest of their teammates in tow. (Actually, just give me Duke University circa 1989-1992.)
Give me Lee Melchionni offering my girlfriend and me a ride to an AEPi date function because he saw us waiting for a cab outside Few Quad. Give me Chris Duhon and J.J. Redick hanging out at Tailgate, and Brian Zoubek trying to blend in with the crowd at LDOC.
Give me student-athletes, or at least athletes who try to find the time in their busy lives to be students, and we’ll see where the chips fall when it comes to won-loss record and how far the Blue Devils advance in the Tournament. Give me kids who want to come to Duke as much as they want to play Duke Basketball, even if they’re only stopping by for a year or two.
Paulus is the kind of guy that Duke’s basketball program needs—no matter how limited he was on defense, no matter how unlikely it seems that he’ll play in the NBA, no matter how much other teams’ fans hated him. He was the guy that linked the rest of us—the less athletically gifted, the fans, the mere mortals—to the superheroes that were his teammates.
He was someone of whom we could all be proud.
And when you strip it all down—past the white-painted D on the blue-painted chest, past the stomping and jumping on the wooden bleachers, past the legendary coach and the legendary games and the legendary wins and the overmatched opponents and the less overmatched opponents, past the banners in the rafters and the arguments with your jerk Maryland friends from back home, past Gerald Henderson and will-he-or-won’t-he, past Redick and Laettner and Hurley and Hill and Gminski and Dawkins and Ferry, past whether the shot falls through or bounces out, past points in the paint and shooting percentage and free throw percentage steals and rebounds and blocks, past the basketball even—isn’t that what school spirit is all about?
This column ran on the editorial pages of The Chronicle Thursday.
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