All-Time Duke/UNC VS. All-Time HS To Pro. Just For Fun

 

As I watched North Carolina celebrate their win over Duke Saturday night and the relentless flashbacks of great players from years gone by, I felt the urge to make comparisons and make dumb and fun hypothetical match-ups.

The first thought was the most apparent.  If you made a UNC All-Time squad versus a Duke All-Time squad who wins and why?  But then that question felt too obvious and boring, and I wanted to pose another.  If you took the combined best players from UNC and Duke and made a Super Carolina team, would that team beat a team made up of the best high school to Pro players?

Kobe Could Have Gone To Duke...And Then Played On My Fictional UNC/Duke Team

In the time frame I grew up, more and more high school basketball prodigies were simply forgoing college and attempting to get to the league without a proverbial pit-stop.  For a time, almost all the best players seemed to have skipped college.  Most notably, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett.

In the same time frame, no two schools were better at producing NBA talent than North Carolina and Duke.

Yes, UNC hits the proverbial home run with Michael Jordan, the gold standard for basketball, and this imaginary team would stack James Worthy, Vince Carter, Grant Hill, and maybe Kyrie Irving in for a starting 5.  That would likely be 5 Hall of Famers on one squad including arguably the best player ever.

However, a glance at the High School to Pro contingent over the same period shows just how much talent the college game has missed.

The best HS team obviously begins with LeBron and Kobe, two players who are compared to Jordan incessantly.  Kobe as a near carbon copy, and LeBron as the next evolution of the ‘best’ player argument.  If you take Jordan out of the UNC/Duke team, it becomes obvious that the top tier talent didn’t go to college at all through the mid 80’s and early 2000’s.

The other part that becomes apparent is the raw size and speed of the HS team.  It would be likely that the starting 5 from the squad would consist of Lebron, Kobe, T-Mac, Malone, and KG.  The ability to control the game defensively and through the glass would presumably make up for the 3-point deficiencies.

Imaginary Teams

Then, as we move to the bench, we see a continuation of the same trend of better shooters on the college side, and better defenders and interior players from the HS side.  JJ Reddick, Rasheed Wallace, and Antawn Jamison gives the UNC/Duke 3-point weapons if they can get open.   The sheer length and athleticism ranging from Dwight Howard, Shawn Kemp, Shaun Livingston and Lou Williams would make it near impossible to get good looks inside and contested 3's would abound.

So in this hypothetical, I have the HS squad as a better group than the UNC/Duke All-Timers.  I think the size and speed are too much for the UNC/Duke combo even though I could envision UNC/Duke beating the HS All-Stars one or twice in a 7-game series. 

An argument could be made that the UNC/Duke bench is more balanced than the HS team and that is a point I would concede.  However, the best players are probably playing playoff minutes and a win or go home mentality.  I think you could play the starters 40 minutes a piece easy if we are talking in their prime's.

Now, if I didn’t stop at UNC/Duke, and I were to make one smaller tweak and add the best Wake Forest players to the Duke/UNC team…with the addition of Tim Duncan and Chris Paul, I believe they might become the favorite, so long as they can keep turnovers to a minimum.

Duncan drastically changes the rim protection and rebounding and Chris Paul adds another ball handler that I don’t think depth wise the HS team would have an answer for.