- Believe me when I tell you I’m saying this in the most un-biased way possible: Luol Deng is making the right choice by leaving Duke after his freshman year to enter the NBA Draft.
OK, maybe I’m a bit biased. After all, I was an advocate for Maryland’s Chris Wilcox staying in school after the Terps won the National Championship in 2002, but hey… if John Kerry can flip-flop on positions, so can I.
Deng’s departure (and it is a departure, Duke fans. Don’t hold out any hope that Deng is coming back just because he has yet to hire an agent. He’s projected to be a top-3 pick along with Emeka Okafor and Dwight Howard) is a crippling blow to a Duke team that also loses emotional leader and all-around tough-guy Chris Duhon and superstar reserve Nick Horvath. (In case you’re a new reader of Chris’s Sports Blog, please note that the last sentence is dripping with sarcasm, except for the crippling blow part.)
Without Deng, ACC teams will feel free to focus their big men on Shelden Williams and put a little defender on J.J. “I create shots as poorly as Jewel creates music” Redick to shut down the Devil’s offense.
And to add insult to injury, if point guard signee Shaun Livingston spurns Duke for the NBA (he is also projected as a lottery pick), the Dukies would be left with Daniel Ewing and Sean Dockery battling it out for starting point guard.
Ouch.
Ewing has zero ball-handling skills and Dockery hasn’t played much in the past two years. That’s great for college basketball fans with a soul, but for Dukies it might suggest that tough times are on the horizon.
If Deng and Livingston do decide to go pro (and frankly, who can blame them. If you’re a guaranteed lottery pick, you have to enter the draft. Passing up millions to play in college for free and risk a career-ending injury is crazy. Taking the money is not.) then Duke will be hurting come November, especially with Wake Forest, North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Maryland returning most of their starters from last year’s tournament teams.
Giddy up.

- Derek Jeter has zero hits in his last 28 at-bats, and is batting a frigid .169 on the year which lands him at dead last in the American League among players with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting title.
The Yankee captain is also slugging an anemic .205 which puts him behind perennial power-hitters Pokey Reese, David Eckstein and Mark Bellhorn. Jeter is second-to-last in that catagory with only teammate Bernie Williams behind him. (Resist the jokes, resist the jokes.)
Deng leaving Duke, Jeter having historic struggles in the Bronx… ahhh, if it wasn’t 70 degrees outside I’d probably think it was Christmas.