It hardly seems possible to those of us who lived it -- again and again and again, in slow motion. But this month will mark the 25th anniversary of the greatest shot in the greatest game ever in college basketball, and one of the greatest of all time in any sport.
On the night of March 28th, 1992, with 2.1 seconds left in overtime and Kentucky leading Duke 103-102, the Blue Devils’ Grant Hill threw a 75-foot inbounds pass to Christian Laettner, who had not missed a field goal or a foul shot all night. Laettner dribbled once, turned and fired, with 0.2 seconds on the clock. “The shot fell straight through.”
That last sentence is from the best sports book I have ever read, The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds that Changed College Basketball by Steve Wojciechowski. It traces the long march of the two programs -- Kentucky having gamely fought its way back from a major scandal and suspension, and Duke having won its first-ever NCAA championship the previous year after a bitter humiliation by UNLV in 1990. (Coach Mike Krzyzewski, one of my very few living heroes, forbade the use of the phrase “defending champions” in reference to the 1992 squad. There is nothing to defend, he always said; we won it.)
No one who watched the game that night can ever forget it. And just about all of America was indeed watching. It seemed then -- and certainly seems now, in the age of one and done -- the paragon of what college sports was supposed to be all about.
Everyone remembers the shot, and some even remember the intense drama of the game up until then, with each side making one impossible shot earlier in the overtime. But not everyone remembers Coach K hugging Kentucky’s Richie Farmer, telling him what a classy bunch of guys they were -- or making a beeline for the Wildcats broadcasters’ table, so he could tell the people of Kentucky what a great opponent their team was.
You can probably tell that I’m not objective in selecting The Last Great Game as my all-time favorite sports book. But don’t let that obscure what a genuinely great read it is -- nor how definitive. Jay Bilas, the 1980s Duke basketball star and longtime ESPN broadcaster, said, “I was there, and I learned things I didn’t know from this book.”
©2017 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Nick reviews current books, articles and research findings in his monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive (www.nickmurraynewsletters.com). His latest book is Around the Year with Nick Murray: Daily Readings for Financial Advisors.