Look, it's obvious not every single one of you despises Duke All-American J.J. Redick. Some of you reading this piece happen to be related to him. Blue Devils fans don't need to be convinced he's thoroughly wonderful. And you young ladies, wishing he'd dial up your pink cell phones and ask you to the prom—well, you know how special he is, even if you know more about the dark curls on top of his noggin than the curls he runs around teammates' screens.

But there are many more of you who believe Redick should be the next villain for Jack Bauer to chase down on 24. His crime: terrorizing opponents from 3-point range. A few of you go to games carrying signs that question Redick's sexual preference or disparage his family or appearance. No player in recent college history has faced more road rage. Many of you electronically eviscerate him, writing nasty stuff on blogs or message boards. “Everybody hates J.J. Redick,” says sportswriter Jay Mariotti on ESPN's Around The Horn, referring to, of course, everybody but him.

But this really isn't written for any of you.

This is for the moderates, the vast middle ground, the undecideds, the soccer moms, NASCAR dads and all the rest who haven't been able to figure out how a 6-4 senior shooting guard who never had a contract holdout, never publicly excoriated a coach and never once referred to his teammates as “my supporting cast” could inspire such enmity in so many sports fans. The truth is, we're not sure, either.

But we do know several reasons why, after almost four seasons wearing a Duke uniform, Redick deserves the affection of college basketball fans:

1. He's not perfect. Though he is the NCAA's career leader in free throw percentage (.921), he misses one every so often these days. On average, he has missed one for every game this season, more than in his first two seasons combined. If he continues at that rate, it's possible he might not finish his career No. 1.

“It's been frustrating for me,” Redick says. “I think it's mostly mental. I just haven't felt as comfortable on the free throw line.”

2. He can take a punch (or a pinch). Scout.com recruiting analyst Dave Telep recalls a highly anticipated game from the 2000-01 prep season in which Redick's Cave Spring High of Roanoke, Va., faced Oak Hill Academy. Redick and Oak Hill star Rashaad Carruth, reputed to be the two best prep shooters, were matched against each other.

“J.J. made his first 3; Carruth made his first. The place was buzzing,” Telep says. “So then Redick was coming off a screen, and Carruth goosed him. He did such a good job of goosing him, I don't think anybody saw it. J.J. took it in stride. I don't think you can rattle him. Carruth knew the truth—that was the only way to slow him down.”

3. He can become the ACC's career scoring leader. Think about that. We're talking the Atlantic Coast Conference. This is the league of Michael Jordan, Phil Ford, Tim Duncan, Christian Laettner. Even with a below-average performance, Redick, who entered the week with 2,360 career points, could stand above all of them and record holder Dickie Hemric of Wake Forest (2,587).

“I'd be lying if I said it hadn't entered my mind,” Redick says “It's there, but it's not really on my radar. Now, if I get closer and people start talking about it more, it's going to be pretty hard to ignore.”

4. He's loyal. After Redick averaged 21.8 points and became a first-team All-American as a junior, one Division I coach was savagely critical of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski for not encouraging Redick to enter the draft. The theory: He might not have been a 2005 lottery pick, but his appeal never would be greater.

Redick's father, Ken, says the only time he saw J.J. waver regarding his decision to stay at Duke was after he traveled to Los Angeles for the Wooden Award ceremony last year and had lunch with draft-bound North Carolina star Sean May, among others.
“He admitted that it hit him then, for about a week or two,” Ken Redick says. “But I like what he said: 'I owe it to Duke. Duke's been really good to me.' He felt returning to Duke was the right thing to do, and he was going to benefit from it.”

5. He comes from a great family. Two older sisters played basketball at Campbell, and a younger brother will play football at Marshall next fall.

6. He's not on steroids. You can see that, right? J.J. carries only 190 pounds on his 6-4 frame. While other players fixate on adding bulk, Redick works to stay lean. His weightlifting regimen involves light weights and a high number of repetitions. He has worked intently to improve his stamina. And the greatest secret to his physical improvement might be the Pilates class he sneaks in each week.

7. He's not perfect. Redick wasn't always so committed to extraordinary conditioning. He once was more committed to his social life. “I think a lot of college students, when they go through those first two years, they're trying to figure out who they are and who they're going to be,” Redick says. “And I struggled with that for a while.”

Raised in what he calls “a conservative family,” he says he got to college and saw things he'd never seen. He did not avert his eyes.

“Maybe if you've never partied before and you go to a party on Saturday night and have fun—in your eyes—well there's another party on Sunday night. Should I go to that, too? You just kind of get caught up in what everybody else is doing.”

Redick's family was aware— and concerned. His teammates, too. “It was kind of like, 'Man, what are you doing? We've got a game tomorrow,' “ says forward Lee Melchionni, also a senior. “It's sort of hard being in that place, but you needed to say that for the good of our team.” Eventually, Redick figured it out for himself.

“At some point, you wake up one day and think, 'I'm not really headed down the road I want to head down.' And I had that day.” That was in mid-May 2004. He went to see Krzyzewski and spoke with him about redirecting his life. Ten months later, Redick was ACC Player of the Year.

8. He has made himself into a lottery pick. The basketball world isn't always kind to great college players with limited NBA futures. No need to worry about that with Redick, who has grown from a shooter into a scorer— able not only to hit from long range but to drive the ball to the goal, finish with either hand and hit pull-up jumpers.

“I was impressed with his physical conditioning,” says Texas coach Rick Barnes, whose team allowed Redick a career-high 41 points in December. “He's like a mountain stream of running water. It goes up against one rock and turns another way—it never stops flowing.”

With assistant coach Chris Collins, Redick studied players such as Reggie Miller and Richard Hamilton, guys known for running defenders through an armada of screens. “Those guys never wear down as the game goes on,” Collins says. Redick has averaged 36.8 minutes per game over the past two seasons.

“The last two years, I've been the guy in our office lowest on him,” says one NBA Eastern Conference scout. “I thought he would have a lot of difficulty with the speed of the game, and I didn't know who he would guard.

“But he's kind of crawled up my list. Now, I think he's going to get picked in the lottery. He's one of those guys you put on a list that you're scared to pass up on because he could be great.”

9. He's unselfish. Although Redick shoots 17.2 times per game, he has averaged 2.7 assists in his past 10 contests. Double-teamed on nearly every catch against N.C. State, Redick delivered a season-high six assists in a 13-point Devils win.

“There's really not an aspect of the game that he's weak in right now,” Krzyzewski says.

10. He’s motived by all the all harassment. You could sense that, probably. You could discern that from his 18.9 career scoring average in ACC road games. It's not getting to him. Sometimes, he has fun with it.

“This is going to sound terrible,” he says. “At Wake Forest, I hit a shot in the second half. It was a tough shot, off a spin move, and I was going down the front row—this is going to make me sound like a jerk—but I just shook my head and said, 'Man, I'm really good tonight. I don't know what it is, but I'm just really good.' 1 said that to the entire front row. That's probably the reason people dislike me so much. I guess that's part of the persona I have on the floor. I would never say that off the court.” Redick had 32 in that game, an 18-point Duke win. He was really good.

11. He has hair. After three seasons of an on-again, off-again relationship with a buzz cut, Redick is allowing himself to look his best. In the year of the NBA dress code, isn't that important?

“The buzz was kind of like my thing in high school. A cleansing thing,” he says. “But it's so hard to grow your hair out when you buzz it so short because it grows back in different places, different lengths in different parts of your head. From the feedback I've gotten, I'm going to keep my hair. My mother and my girlfriend—they want me to have hair.”

12. He's a monogamist. Though he sometimes gets the teen idol treatment from young ladies after games at road arenas—they wait outside the Duke locker room for him to walk toward the team bus—Redick has been dating the same Duke student, a junior from Minnesota, for about 18 months.

13. He's not perfect. Redick did not have a detailed plan to arrive where he is today. He had a grand plan: hard work. But when he went into the gym last May to turn himself into a more complete offensive player, he had some instructions from his Duke coaches and improvised the rest.

He had a rebounder with him occasionally but did not work with a personal trainer. He wrote down what he wanted to do for a daily workout on a scrap of paper, then wadded it up and made one more shot—into the wastebasket. The next day, he came back with something else. “For me, that made it fun,” Redick says. “Every day was a different day. It wasn't like I got into this routine.” A history major, he admits to being equally disorganized with his classwork. He writes down an assignment, then—as the due date approaches—ends up scrambling through his things to dig up that essential piece of information.

So this package you see—everything from the good looks to the shooting form that almost seem to be manufactured—really is human and fallible. When it comes to making jump shots from long distances, Redick is just less fallible than most.

This story was published in the Feb. 10, 2006 issue of The Sporting News