Real 'bad' guy -- self-made -- in Duke-UNC fracas is Coach K

As for that final point ...

A reporter on that ACC conference call Monday -- OK, me -- noted Coach K's tough personal stance on dirty play and asked how many games he had suspended Christian Laettner for stomping Kentucky's Aminu Timberlake at the 1992 NCAA Tournament.

"First of all," Coach K said to me, "would you call that a stomp?"

Absolutely, I said. I'd seen the replay many times.

"Well then," he said. "My judgment and yours would differ."

So there you have it. Laettner didn't stomp Timberlake, and Henderson didn't mean to hurt Hansbrough.

The thing is, Henderson didn't mean to hurt Hansbrough. Not in my opinion. I've watched it over and over, slowed it down, paused it. He was revved up to block a dunk, and when the ball popped free, all hell broke loose in mid-air. But there was no intent by Henderson to do anything more than challenge Hansbrough at the rim. That's what I believe.

What you believe will be colored as much by who you are as by what you saw.

On a Duke message board run by Scout.com, "WastnAway" wrote: "I honestly think if that ball hadn't been stripped on the way up you might have had one hell of a block. There was no way for GH to pull out of that once that arm got moving."

On Scout's UNC message board, "Dinguses" wrote: "Hans should file criminal charges against Henderson. A ball game is no excuse for an assault with battery."

How can two groups of people -- many of them educated at these top-notch schools -- have utterly different views of the same play? Because we're prejudiced. All of us. About everything. Show me a person who claims to be "objective," and I'll show you someone who hasn't paid enough attention to the topic to have a credible opinion. Or someone lying about their objectivity in the first place.

Me, I'm not objective. I wrote a fawning book on Krzyzewski in 1999, back when I was drinking the Coach K Kool-Aid. One of the worst books of all time. Don't buy it. Please.

No Coach K Kool-Aid for me. Not anymore. He's a great coach and recruiter, but is off-the-charts manipulative. He's eerily insightful, yet able to see no evil when the mood strikes. I'm not a Coach K guy. There's my bias. I admit it.

Which makes me an incredibly credible person to say this:

Gerald Henderson doesn't deserve your scorn, because he wasn't trying to hurt Tyler Hansbrough.

Coach K? Scorn him all you want. That seems to be his goal.