He was, even before Saturday, an outsized figure. Two students had been hired to help him handle his mail, and the letters that deluged him contained requests that stretched from the ordinary to the provocative. Pubescent young things already squealed his name, wore shirts proclaiming their love and pounded on the windows of his team`s bus in hopes of attracting one of his beatific smiles.
He was, even before his jump shot cut the heart out of Kentucky, an icon that had burst through college basketball`s boundaries. The novelist Stephen King was one of his pen pals, and Gentleman`s Quarterly had contracted to print his diary. People magazine already had profiled him, and had decided to include him in another edition as well, the one that lists the world`s ”50 Most Beautiful People.” Vogue was after him for ”Men En Vogue,” and even The Cat Companion was planning something on his Orea (which he shares with roommate Brian Davis).
It seemed only natural question, then, to ask Christian Laettner how he kept all the attention from affecting him.
”It does affect you sometimes,” he blithely admits. ”But no one thinks more highly of me than probably myself. I think that`s fine.”
– – –
He is a certainty, now, to be named college basketball`s Player of the Year. But one voter pointedly refused to include him on his All-Atlantic Coast Conference team. He is the kind of rough-hewn, cold-blooded competitor all would love on their team. But when Duke travels, he is the Blue Devil most vilified. He is exquisitely talented, outrageously confident, a nerveless performer who has now twice sent his team into the Final Four by ignoring the pressure of the moment and burying last-second shots. But always, he strikes a chord, tingles people`s nerves.
His manner, so contained, so often haughty, accounts for some of that, as do his drop-dead good looks. ”He`s gorgeous. If you`re a girl, you swoon,”
says Mickie Krzyzewski, the wife of Duke`s coach.
”A nasty streak,” is what one NBA talent scout says separates Laettner from the masses.
”I think that`s right a little bit, I guess,” Laettner says of that description. ”What it just means is I`m very competitive . . . (and) I think that`s a good quality to have. I`d rather have that said about me than he`s docile on the court. It`s something my teammates enjoy. `Coach K` (Mike Krzyzewski) demands it of me at times. It`s just a totally positive attitude to have.”
Finally there is that attitude itself, an attitude so poised, so assured, so certain, and so obviously not nagged by either the self-doubt or other cares mere mortals possess.
”If I really told you where his confidence is, you wouldn`t believe it,” says Davis, his closest friend. ”Where do you go after arrogance?”
”But I don`t think you should confuse confidence with arrogance,” says Mike Krzyzewski. ”I think players who are candidates for National Player of the Year honors are going to be very confident players.”
”I just don`t want to put any limitations on myself,” says Laettner himself.
– – –
He arrived at Duke four years ago with his combativeness already established, honed back home in Buffalo and while competing against older kids. Yet then it largely was roundly ignored as most questioned just how much toughness could be contained in this unlikely package.
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Georgetown`s Alonzo Mourning was that season`s freshman of the moment, but when they met in the East Regional final, Laettner simply outplayed him and helped Duke upset the heavily favored Hoyas. That game was his coming-out party, the moment he announced himself a burgeoning star, and as a sophomore he began building his legend by burying the shot that beat Connecticut at the buzzer of their East Regional final.
That year, too, with Danny Ferry graduated, he started asserting himself, cajoling teammates, yelling at them in practice and during games.
”I didn`t like it,” remembers Bobby Hurley, then a freshman. ”I`d never had a player tell me how to play my game, what to do on the court. He did that a lot. He might have had some good things to say, but he needed to work on his delivery a little bit.”
Did you ever want to reach up and grab him by the throat?
”At times. But I couldn`t reach that high.”
Are there still times when somebody wants to belt him? sophomore Antonio Lang is asked.
”Everybody,” says Lang, and then he laughs. ”Happens every day on the court. People want to tell him to shut up. People do tell him to shut up. But it doesn`t faze him. Nothing fazes him.”
Did that surprise you?
”I saw him his freshmen year, when he had that great game against Alonzo. But I still thought he was just another pretty boy, that he wasn`t tough, even after that game. But when you`re around him, you learn he`s a very tough player. A very, very tough customer.”
Laettner finally proved that convincingly during Duke`s championship run a year ago, and all this season he has only reiterated that message. The foot massage he gave Kentucky`s Aminu Timberlake last Saturday reiterated it, as did-in a better way-the basket he made at game`s end, the basket that set up the Blue Devils` Saturday showdown with Indiana.
Those were telling moments, moments that revealed the searing fire in Laettner`s belly. The first was ugly, the second was celestial, but still they were the flip sides of one coin, contrasting manifestations of a raging, roaring desire to succeed and of a willingness to do anything necessary to manage just that.
He cares little about outsiders` love, about being remembered fondly, about topping anyone`s popularity poll. But he will grind, glare, rebound, take charges, exchange elbows, toss out taunts, swear at teammates, do anything to win, no matter how gritty the job.
No convenient label fits Christian Laettner. He just refuses to be stuck into some pigeonhole, and that`s why he unnerves so many observers, why so many demean and despise and denigrate him. But labels can grow into walls that restrict possibilities and obstruct success, and so his reluctance to wear one is also the reason he is so brilliant, the reason so many others cherish and exalt him.
”He would love to be thought of as one of the greatest players, but he would never forsake who he is to be thought of like that,” is how his good friend Davis finally puts it. ”But no matter if you like him or you don`t, he can play basketball.”