UNC Basketball: 7 reasons that North Carolina fans hate Duke

J.J. Redick

Some players would be bothered by the fact that an opposing fan base doesn’t like them. And most players would be bothered by the fact that every fan base doesn’t like them. But J.J. Redick was not one of those players. Redick didn’t care how fans, players or anyone else felt about him. And make no mistake, they hated him. It simply had no effect on him. If anything, he fed off of it. Redick even went as far to say that it gave him additional motivation, and fueled him during games.

He was commonly the aggressor during exchanges with fans, taunting the crowd with a wink or a smile or some demonstrative gesture with his arms after knocking down a three-pointer. Redick’s on-court production was enough for UNC basketball fans to hate him for the four years that he spent in Durham, but those things made it nearly impossible for them not to.

But for all that he was antics-wise, Redick was a great player. He averaged nearly 20 points per game for his career, and shot better than 40 percent from the three-point line. He converted an outstanding 91.2 percent of his free throw attempts, missing just 64 of the 726 he attempted while at Duke. He was a two-time first team All-ACC selection, two-time ACC Player of the Year, two-time consensus first team All-American and the 2006 National Player of the Year. He held the ACC’s all-time scoring record with 2,769 points for three years before North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough broke it.

There’s no denying Redick’s worth as a player, and that’s enough for some fans to hate him. It was his confidence, cockiness, showmanship and antics that earned him the majority of hate he received at Duke, though, which by his admission, probably only made him better.