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Lucas: Family Weekend
February 23, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
UNC New Media personnel spent much of the last 24 hours set up in the Carolina basketball weight room, where they filmed video messages from former players to the family of Dean Smith. The messages will be collected and relayed to the coach, and as you would expect, there were some remarkable testimonials to Smith's influence from the over 100 lettermen in attendance.
Some players filmed their message on Saturday night during a reception for the lettermen. Others waited until Sunday before the celebration of Smith's life, when lettermen again gathered in the practice gym two hours before the service.
Video
Al Wood, a first-team All-America in 1981, filmed his tribute on Saturday night. But then, without warning, he showed up again on Sunday, peeking around the corner and almost apologetically asking, “Would it be possible for me to do mine again?”
This was The Al Wood, so of course it was possible. He scored 39 points in the 1981 Final Four win over Virginia, so if he wants to do a second take on a video to Dean Smith's family, then by all means.
Just one question: why?
“I wasn't dressed appropriately yesterday,” Wood said. “I didn't have on a tie. Coach Smith would be mad at me.”
As Wood clipped on the microphone, he chuckled. “How about that?” he said. “Coach Smith is gone, and he's still affecting everything I do.”
That's the kind of 24 hours that it was in Chapel Hill after Saturday's win over Georgia Tech. Dozens of Smith stories were told and retold. What's the best part of any family gathering? It's when the famous and infamous stories start being told by those who were there. Some you've heard before, some were being told for the first time, and some had names changed to protect the innocent.
Actually, almost all of the really funny ones had names changed. On multiple occasions, a player would sit in front of the camera and begin a story about a time Smith had corrected one of their teammates. Invariably, they would say, as Dick Grubar (UNC '69) did, “Now, I can't say who this story is about, because Coach Smith wouldn't like that. He would never want us to point out a teammate doing the wrong thing.” Decades later, still following his wishes, still remembering his impact.
Charlie McNairy (UNC '97) described one of the rare open practices at the Smith Center. One of McNairy's teammates—not named, of course—did something wrong. Smith blew his whistle and gathered his team around him at midcourt. He began pointing at and appearing to lecture Antawn Jamison, the all-everything forward who did a terrific job speaking at Sunday's service. Except…
“Coach wasn't talking to Antawn at all,” McNairy said. “He said, 'Antawn, I'm making it look like I'm talking to you. But what I'm really upset with is the fact that one of your teammates over here isn't following my directions.'”
The basketball stories were fun. Hearing about being in the huddle during the comeback from eight points down in 17 seconds against Duke will never get old, or, just as Mickey Bell (UNC '75) said in the celebration, Smith's grin as he told his team, “We've got them right where we want them,” when trailing in a big game.
The story of Smith giving his 1982 championship watch to team manager Dave Hart has been well-documented. The NCAA only provided 22 watches, and Hart was the 23rd man on the team, but Smith wanted the manager to make sure he knew he was valued. Hearing it second-hand is remarkable. But hearing Hart retell it over 30 years later, with still the same amount of incredulity that the coach summoned him the day after the championship game to give him the watch, was even more meaningful. Really: would you give away your championship watch--your very first championship watch, the one people said you could never win? Dean Smith did, and it took him less than 24 hours.
What had an even more profound impact, though, were the stories off the court, most of which aren't as widely known. The games run together. Was that great play call in 1984 or 1985? Was Duke or Virginia the opponent in that great comeback? Some memories get hazy. Others, the life-changing ones, never do, and those were the ones at which Smith excelled.
McNairy described Smith taking the team to practice at a prison. Some of the Tar Heels were wary of entering a place where every inmate had at least two life sentences.
“Just because someone made a bad decision doesn't make them a bad person,” Smith told his team.
Dave Colescott (UNC '80) described Smith holding his hand and praying with him after Colescott's grandfather died in 1976. “I will never, ever forget that,” Colescott said.
Brad Hoffman (UNC '75) talked about the birth of his twins in 1977, right in the middle of one of Carolina's best seasons. Hoffman had graduated in 1975, but when one of the twins became critically ill, Smith stayed in touch regularly. The coach helped raise money for needed medical treatment and called Hoffman at least three times a week, all while coaching his current team to the Final Four.
That's how he created that family environment that has been mentioned so much over the last two weeks. He wasn't trying to create “a family feeling.” He really felt his players, and his program, were family.
As anyone with a family knows, no one can fight like family, because no one knows exactly where to hit you like family. But no one can come together like family, either. So it was fitting that on Sunday afternoon it was Roy Williams who prompted the crowd to give a standing ovation to Bill Guthridge. Those two had their differences when Williams decided not to return to Carolina in 2000. But there was too much history to let it linger, and so there was Williams, making it possible for Guthridge to receive the kind of ovation he deserved from an appreciative crowd. The day was meant to celebrate Smith. But Williams understood that part of celebrating Smith was celebrating Guthridge.
Williams is family, too, of course. On Saturday he chastised the Smith Center crowd, surely miffing a few fans. But on Sunday he perfectly and eloquently described exactly why there is no better person to lead the North Carolina basketball program than Roy Williams, and why no one gets it quite like he does. There was an air of uncertainty in the building both on Saturday during the game and on Sunday early in the celebration. Were we supposed to be sad? Happy? Solemn?
By the time Williams asked the crowd to point to the sky to thank Smith, it had become apparent exactly what the right emotion was: gratitude.
Asked on Sunday afternoon what he would say to Smith's family, Grubar summed it up perfectly: “Thank you,” he said, “to a man who changed lives.”