ESPN’s Jay Bilas riffs on Duke’s potential, UNC’s problem and basketball’s ‘black market’
Jay Bilas has a unique perspective on the UNC-Duke rivalry.
As a former Duke player, Bilas started for four years for the Blue Devils under coach Mike Krzyzewski from 1982-86. He has since become one of college basketball’s leading voices and will broadcast the Duke-UNC game Saturday in Chapel Hill for ESPN.
A Charlotte resident who is also an attorney, Bilas calls college basketball games all over the country. I caught up with him by phone this week to talk basketball and, particularly, Saturday night’s 6 p.m. game pitting Duke (19-3 and ranked No. 7) on the road in Chapel Hill vs. UNC (10-12 and in the midst of their worst season ever under Roy Williams).
Here’s a transcript, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
What do you expect from this year’s first Duke-UNC game?
Bilas: I say every year the game always delivers, and it always seems to. The high level of performance of these two teams has been legendary. I don’t think any other rivalry in any sport can match it. It’s impossible. People can pretend it does, but it doesn’t.
Last year all three of the games were epic. I don’t doubt Carolina will bring great energy and toughness against Duke; Duke’s just more talented. But how many times has the lesser team in a given year in this thing sort of played their a---- off and done something you didn’t think they could do?
What do you see as UNC’s main problem?
Bilas: It has been eye-opening every time I watch a game. Usually, in years past, North Carolina is close to 50 points by halftime. And this year, they’ve had a bunch of games where they have scored in the 50s for the entire game. They’ve only scored over 80 twice, and over 90 once.
They just don’t score. In years past, Virginia might keep them to 60, but it would have to be a team that could squeeze the life out of the tempo of the game. This year, scoring is difficult for them.
They just got Cole Anthony back, and it’s going to take them a little bit of time. He’s very, very good and an explosive scorer, but he’s having to fit back into a team that had to adjust to playing without him. That’s not an overnight thing.
So their (fast) break isn’t what it has been. They don’t score in transition. They have a hard time making shots consistently. There are no reliable perimeter shooters for them to go to. And a lot of the guys who have played complementary roles are being asked to be load-carriers. And I should point out they have had a ton of injuries.
It’s easy to say this isn’t a vintage North Carolina team. But they’re also way, way better than the way they’re playing.
Where can that improvement come from for the Tar Heels?
Bilas: When they beat N.C. State the other night, they dominated the glass and they did some grittier, tougher things that they hadn’t been doing earlier. And that’s what they’re going to have to do. The rest of their season is going to be determined by how tough and how gritty the rest of the team is going to be.
A number of people believe college basketball in general is having a down year in terms of talent. Do you?
Bilas: Yes. When Ohio State came in and played North Carolina — I did that game (a 74-49 Ohio State win). And after the game you had people saying, ‘Man, Ohio State is legit!’ But I walked out of there and told someone: ‘If this Ohio State team had come in and played last year’s North Carolina team, they would have been blown out of this building.’
The landscape of the game is not the same as last year. But in 10 years, nobody’s going to go: ‘Somebody won the championship in 2020, but it was a down year.’ They’re going to say these teams made the Final Four and so-and-so was the champion.
How good is Duke?
Bilas: As good as anybody when they have all 10 of their guys — and they do need all 10. Earlier in the year, people were asking: ‘When will Coach K go back to being Coach K and shorten his bench and only play 6-7 guys?’ And the answer was this is a different year.
I don’t think Coach K’s bench is all that much better than it’s been in years past. But his starters aren’t that much better than the bench that they demand all the minutes.
You can’t take Tre Jones off the floor. Vernon Carey is going to play a ton of minutes. Cassius Stanley is starting to emerge as a star. But all these other guys — they’re kind of interchangeable.
Are the Blue Devils a potential Final Four team?
Bilas: Yes. Duke and Kansas are the two teams that if you could buy stock in their chances, they’re the ones that you’d probably want first.
Duke is complete. They can shoot it, they’ve got good point guard play, they’re good defensively. They’re a long way from perfect, and they’re not as explosive talent-wise as they’ve been. But this year, I like their chances.
It’s kind of like 2010, when Duke ended up winning. I don’t think Coach K would say, ‘Yep, that was one of my very best teams.’ The 1992 team was better. The 1999 team was better. But in that year, they had a great opportunity. This is very similar.
The ESPN GameDay crew will be in Chapel Hill on Saturday. Will it also be in Durham for the UNC-Duke season finale March 7?
Bilas: Yes. Well, they don’t announce it, but the chances of it not being at Cameron are zero. In all the years I’ve been doing this — we’ve never had the final day of Duke-Carolina where GameDay is not on site.
The hype surrounding this rivalry game has increased since you played in it in the 1980s, hasn’t it?
Bilas: You’ll get a kick out of this. Somebody was asking me last year with 9 p.m. UNC-Duke games how I broke up the day. I go: ‘When I played, we never played when it was dark.’ Not ever! I played in nine Duke-Carolina games, and it was never dark even after the game. We played at 1 o’clock every time. That’s how different things are now — television, and the way the game has been commercialized and professionalized.
How many of those nine UNC-Duke games did you win?
Bilas: Well .... We were .500 after Michael Jordan left. That damn Jordan ruined everything. (Bilas was 1-4 in games against UNC teams featuring Jordan and 2-2 once Jordan left for the NBA).
What did you think of Coach K calling down the Cameron Crazies recently when they chanted something about Jeff Capel?
Bilas: I didn’t think anything of it. I made jokes about it, kind of going: “Well, welcome to the club. I got yelled at for four years, so it’s not a big deal.’
He’s been that way with the students for a long time, like ‘Don’t do that’ or ‘This is the way we want to do it.’ I’ve always appreciated that about him, that he has a feel for what is happening in front of him. Maybe knowing him so well (Bilas was once an assistant coach for Coach K), I know his intentions were nothing but good. The bottom line is he just didn’t understand what the chant was. And if he had understood it, he wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
Roy Williams also made headlines this year for calling the Tar Heels on his radio show “the least-gifted team” he’s coached since taking over as UNC’s head coach in 2003.
Bilas: Yeah, and the majority of coaches in the country are .500 and going, ‘Hey man, I know how you feel. This is not unusual for us. Give me a call and I’ll give you some tips (on how to handle a losing season).’
Does UNC have any chance to make the NCAA tournament?
Bilas: Not if they lose any more games (laughs). Just numbers-wise — the chances of the committee taking an at-large team with 13 losses, or 12 losses, without a bunch of signature wins would be hard to imagine.
Lastly, what do you think about the Michael Avenatti/Nike/bribery trial going on in New York?
Bilas: This is the way college sports has been working for a long, long time. And it’s not just basketball. It’s football, too. If people think in the biggest-money sport (football) that they sell Girl Scout cookies (to make money), they don’t.
They don’t in basketball, either. It’s impossible to run a multi-billion dollar business and not have a black market. And that’s what we have, and the players are commodities in that black market. And they always have been.
Right now it’s a different delivery system. It used to be boosters; now it’s different. Shoe companies are involved, but they’re also involved through grassroots (basketball).
This is the way money has been funneled for a long time now. Basically everybody knew it; it was just the (difficulty) of proving it.
I’ve used the example of insider trading. I know insider trading is happening. Now can I point to the specific people and say they’re the ones and this is how it’s happening? But you’d be a fool to think that insider trading isn’t going on and information isn’t being exchanged.
And you’d be a fool to believe we can run a multi-billion dollar business like this and restrict the revenue drivers and there’s not going to be remuneration coming their (the players’) way. Or they are being used as commodities. That’s beyond naive. That’s ostrich behavior.
You make college athletics sound like a mercenary business.
Bilas: Yes — and that’s OK. There are a lot of those. But quit telling me it’s not, because we all know it is. I am tired of listening to presidents and athletic directors lecture us on integrity when very few of them show any.
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
