From the time he appeared for warm-ups before playing Florida State at the Civic Center here on Wednesday, J.J. Redick of top-ranked Duke was met by familiar heckling, a crude sign that made an obscene reference to his sister and even a body-painted message that questioned his sexual orientation.
Taunting occurred during the national anthem when someone shouted a curse that Redick was overrated and, when Florida State fans rushed the court with 1.7 seconds remaining in a 79-74 upset victory, Redick said he was briefly grabbed before security guards interceded.
It was further evidence that as Redick and Adam Morrison of fifth-ranked Gonzaga challenge each other for college basketball's scoring title and the national player of the year award, they have become perhaps the country's most polarizing players, highly respected but loathed and subjected to jeering that can be tasteless and cruelly personal.
PHOTO: AP
This kind of fan rebuke is nothing new for Redick, a 6-foot-4 senior whose Duke team is the standard bearer for excellence in college basketball and engenders the same heightened, love/hate emotions that the Yankees do in baseball.
While many say such abusive fan behavior has no place in sports, others say that Redick and Morrison, both possessing a confidence or swagger that is sometimes called arrogance, have been known to give as good as they get.
At the same time, harassment by opposing fans continues to escalate with nasty vehemence, giving a darker meaning to March Madness as the NCAA tournament approaches.
PHOTO: AP
Last Saturday, after a victory over Temple in Philadelphia in which Redick struggled but became the Atlantic Coast Conference's career scoring leader, a local man began screaming and cursing at him across the scorer's table. John Chaney, the Temple coach, confronted the man, who was holding a beer that did not appear to be his first, and yelled at him, "Behave like a human being."
"There's just something wrong with the culture of playing on the road in college basketball," Redick said in an interview after scoring 30 points against Florida State, nudging his season average above 28 points a game and boosting his career total to 2,620 points. "If you say those things on the street, you can probably press criminal charges. But for some reason, in the arena of sport, it's OK"
Morrison, a 6-foot-8 junior forward, also finds himself the relentless target of opposing fans now that he has gained increased visibility with a nation-leading scoring average of 28.8 points. He has been strafed with harsh comments about everything from his sparse mustache to his awkward gait to a battle with diabetes that has forced him to inject himself with insulin as many as five times a game.
PHOTO: AP
On Feb. 18, after scoring a career high of 44 points against Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, Morrison was waiting for a postgame television interview in an emptying gym when a Loyola student yelled, "Don't have children; we're going to eat them."
The student, Carter Skeath, a 22-year-old senior, drew perplexed looks and seemed stunned by his own remarks. He shook his head and said, "I don't know what that meant."
Two nights later in Malibu, a group of students at Pepperdine debated jokingly whether Morrison's mustache left him looking more like a porn star or a pedophile.
"Amber Alert," some students yelled as the Gonzaga players arrived in their team bus.
Perhaps because he has been subjected to serial taunting for a lesser period than Redick, Morrison appears more sanguine about life on the road.
"Stuff kind of makes me chuckle," Morrison said. "I have respect for the fans because our fans do the same thing. They're just trying to have a good time."
Earlier this season, Gonzaga students were admonished by university officials and asked to refrain from yelling "Brokeback Mountain" at rival players, a reference to the Oscar-nominated movie about two gay cowboys. The chant had been directed against a player from St. Mary's and led to campus-wide discussions at Gonzaga, a Jesuit university in Spokane, Washington., about tolerance for homosexuals.
Redick, too, has heard the "Brokeback Mountain" chant. He said last weekend he found it "kind of funny" at first, but "now we're eight or nine road games deep and I keep hearing it."
Rare air
It is extremely rare for two players from highly successful teams -- Duke is 27-2 and Gonzaga is 25-3 -- to lead the nation in scoring. Among major colleges, only Clyde Lovellette of Kansas in the 1951-1952 season has won a simultaneous national championship and scoring title.
Redick and Morrison are long-distance friends and video game partners, and both have demonstrated how hard work can significantly improve a player's ability in college. They have created a feverish interest reminiscent of 1979, when Magic Johnson of Michigan State and Larry Bird of Indiana State met in the NCAA title game.
Since that time, media technology has exploded and society has grown coarser, said Paul Westphal, the coach at Pepperdine. Athletic competition seems more partisan and less directed at the appreciation of great performances, Westphal said. "They show them painted and acting like idiots on the TV, so they keep acting like idiots," Westphal said of fans.
Some fans and sports experts also said they believe that race may play a factor in the treatment of Redick and Morrison, who are both white and often perform before predominantly white audiences.
Students might be reluctant to make such overtly callous remarks and hold up inappropriate signs referring to black players, for fear of being accused of racial insensitivity, or they might be incredulous that white players can be so good in a sport that has come to be dominated by black players, some fans said.
"In some ways, the crowd may feel, `He doesn't deserve it because he's not so different from me,"' said Peter Roby, a former head basketball coach at Harvard who is director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.
Whatever the reason for the unseemly taunting, it has largely been futile. Both Redick and Morrison seem motivated, not intimidated, by the heckling. The self-assured nature of both players and the brilliance of their talent have fostered a curious ambivalence among those who watch them from places other than the home side.
Chris West, 28, a lawyer from Milwaukee and inveterate basketball blogger, wrote of Morrison that "I absolutely love watching him play," but that if he ever met the Gonzaga player, "I would really want to punch him in the mouth."
A number of non-Duke students said of Redick that some players were just too good to be liked. As Eric Kovalkoski, 18, a Temple freshman, photographed Redick with his cellular phone, he said: "I hate him. He's the man."
Such conflicted feelings are also evident among opposing players. Morrison has a fiery, chippy personality and a flair for the dramatic gesture. Opponents say he likes to trash talk, saying things like: "How's it feel to average 10 points on a lousy team?" and "They think you can guard me?"
Some accuse him of instigating contact at the edge of the rules, flopping to the floor to draw fouls and manufacturing confrontations to get under the skin of the man guarding him.
"Faking fights and trying to get people to jump at you to get them ejected, that's not what basketball's meant for," said Chris Ayer, a senior center at Loyola Marymount.
Yet, Ayer added, every good shooter needs confidence bordering on arrogance, which breeds both intense dislike and respect.
"I like that he doesn't back down," Ayer said of Morrison. "He's a tough guy. He'll stand in there."
Morrison said: "There's always trash-talking. It just happens."
Mark Few, the Gonzaga coach, said critics of Morrison should understand that he gets constantly grabbed and scratched and held away from the ball. "When he gets mad, pushed with his back to the wall, he's going to come out with guns ablazing," Few said.
What goes around ...
Chris Paul, a former Wake Forest guard now with the New Orleans Hornets in the NBA, said Redick could be "pretty arrogant at times" and recounted a tangle with the Duke guard in 2004. "I was guarding him and he slapped me right in the face," Paul said. "The ref saw it and he got a technical." But, Paul added, "He's one of the best shooters I've ever seen."
Coach Mike Krzyzewski has guided Duke to 10 Final Fours and has won three national championships without the blemish of recruiting violations, and those who dislike the Blue Devils often accuse them of possessing a moral smugness.
Jeff Schneider, who operates a Web site called truthaboutduke.com, said in an e-mail message that the poetry Redick writes and Krzyzewski's claim in a credit-card commercial that he is a leader who happens to coach basketball "rival Eddie Haskell on the phoniness scale."
Redick, of course, has a different take: "We've done things the right way. So people hate us."
The obscene chants and personal references directed his way have been well-documented through his four years at Duke. When the Blue Devils traveled to Philadelphia last weekend, Temple students held up pictures of his mother, along with a sign that said, "I Dream of Jeanie Redick."
Last season in Tallahassee, several Florida State students said, they were making suggestive remarks about Redick's younger sister during warm-ups when he barked at them, "That's why you're in the stands and I'm on the court about to drop 30 on you."
"And he did," said James Givens, 19, one of the students.
In a recent telephone conference call with reporters, Redick said he once embraced the role of villain -- backpedaling downcourt with his goose-necked arm held high, nodding his head, pounding his chest, talking trash.
"I said, `All right, if they want to call me these things, then I'm going to act like a jerk on the court,"' Redick said. "That made people dislike me even more. Over the past two years, as I've matured as a person, I've just become more secure in who I am. Now there's no reason for me to act like an idiot out on the court or to say stuff to the opposing crowd. Really, the only thing I ever do is just smile because I'm having a great time out there playing basketball."
All this animosity will stop next year in the NBA, assured a former rival at North Carolina, Rashad McCants, who is now with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
"When he gets here, nobody's going to care," McCants said. "Nobody's going to boo or do anything. He's just going to be a rookie."
STANFORD 58, USC 56
A questionable call decided the game. A post-game brawl erupted immediately afterward. Players, security personnel and even a team manager took part in the scuffle.
There wasn't much at stake for USC against Stanford because the Trojans already clinched sixth place, but there was not a more emotional finish this season than Thursday night's 58-56 loss to the Cardinal in front of 5,120 at Maples Pavilion.
Everything transpired in the final seven seconds with the score tied 56-56. That's when Stanford point guard Chris Hernandez drove toward the baseline, tripped and desperately tried to grab the loose ball while on the ground.
It turned out Hernandez did not need to worry. In a delayed call, referee Deron White whistled USC guard Gabe Pruitt for a blocking foul on the play. That allowed Hernandez to make two free throws with four seconds left.
USC point guard Ryan Francis banked a running 17-foot shot in-and-out off the backboard as time expired and that's when the melee started.
An incensed USC coach Tim Floyd followed White off the court and Floyd got bumped by a Stanford security guard. After that, USC players came over to assist Floyd and a melee broke out between players and security personnel.
Even team manager Rob Brooks got into the act, taking on a cardinal-clad security guard by the team bench.
"A security guard bumped coach Floyd," USC forward Greg Gaudino said. "It got really bad, really quick. It was stupid and unnecessary."
USC guard Lodrick Stewart, who thought the cardinal-coat wearing security personnel were fans, went over to protect Floyd.
"The fans came at coach Floyd," Stewart said. "There was shoving and I got in and broke it up.
"I didn't want it to get blown up. That was a bad call. They should let the teams decide it."
Floyd had little to say about the incident or the call that led him to follow White, who is from Santa Clarita, off the court.
"I just told the official what I thought and left," Floyd said. "I can't comment on it. I came to the bench. I went to the locker room. They won't let me comment on it."
The Pacific-10 Conference forbids coaches from criticizing officials. Players are free to express their opinion, however.
"I thought [Hernandez] flopped," Pruitt said. "I didn't touch him. He bulldozed me. I guess they don't see it the same way. He tried to run me over. That's what he does. I thought the whistle was late. It's a pretty tough loss."
The foul and post-game incident overshadowed Pruitt's first game since he fractured his knee on Feb. 6. He scored 13 points and made four 3-pointers.
USC's other top player, Nick Young, struggled and scored just 10 points (none in the first half), his second-lowest output of the season. He made just four of 15 shots and often tried to force his way inside instead of taking an open outside shot.
"I knew they were going to put a lot of pressure on me," Young said of Stanford (15-11, 11-6). "I started shooting more jumpers."
Floyd, who was visibly angry while talking to reporters, stayed positive when talking about the Trojans (17-11, 8-9).
"I was more proud of our effort than I was in the win against Oregon State [last Saturday]," he said.
Ronald Murray made a 3-pointer from the right side with 3.9 seconds remaining, and the Cleveland Cavaliers escaped with a 92-91 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday after blowing a 25-point lead.
Murray, acquired from Seattle at the trade deadline, scored 11 of his 13 points in the fourth quarter as the Cavaliers snapped a five-game losing streak.
LeBron James, who averaged 34.5 points in the first two games against the Bulls, scored 33 -- none in the final 7:40. He had 19 at halftime, matching his total the previous night in a loss to Sacramento.
With forward Drew Gooden out with flu-like symptoms, second-year pro Anderson Varejao got the first start of his career and responded with 13 points and six rebounds. But he missed two free throws with 18 seconds left and the Cavaliers down 88-87.
Eric Snow added 14 points and eight assists.
Kirk Hinrich had 25 points and nine rebounds, two nights after he had 30 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists in a 111-100 victory over Minnesota. Luol Deng finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds, and Ben Gordon scored 16.
Spurs 98, Mavericks 89
At San Antonio, Michael Finley scored 11 of his 15 points in the fourth quarter against his former team, and San Antonio beat Dallas in a matchup of the top teams in the Western Conference.
With the victory, the Spurs leapfrogged over the Mavs to the top spot in the West. The teams have identical 45-12 records, but San Antonio holds a 2-1 advantage in head-to-head play.
The win was also the 500th for Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who took over the team during the 1996-1997 season.
Tony Parker led San Antonio with 23 points and Tim Duncan scored 15.
Robert Horry, back after missing six games with an abdominal strain, made two 3-pointers and finished with 12.
Jason Terry and Dirk Nowitzki each had 23 for the Mavs.
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