"30 for 30" on ESPN is always worth a watch. On Sunday, they aired a show on why people hate Christian Laettner. For those who never saw him, he was a 6-foot 10-inch center who in the '90s was the dominant player for the dominant team, Duke University. He was a tough kid with Abercrombie good looks. While he looked like a choir boy, he played like a street kid. The show points out his contradictions. First and foremost, Duke is and was an elite school and the assumption was that he was a rich hid. His dad is a printer and his mom an elementary school teacher. He grew up in Buffalo, not Beverly Hills. He went to a prep school but did janitorial work to defray the cost of tuition.
We face these issues as lawyers. The megastar who is actually shy. The Gatsby, a self-made man who comes across as royalty. Teaching a jury who your client is represents the art of trying a case. If you cannot peal back the layers and present the real person, perhaps you should be writing wills.
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