Lucas: Thankful

By Adam Lucas

PORTLAND—I'm thankful for Carolina basketball.

You can't say that in certain company because you get weird looks. Thanksgiving is supposed to be reserved for big stuff like family and America and love.

But we're among friends, so you'll understand—Carolina basketball makes all the big stuff more fun. Normally we just think about how crazy it makes us, how we stress over every three-pointer and injury and timeout (or non-timeout). Today, though, it's OK to be thankful.

Here we are, 2,800 miles from the Smith Center, and there are thousands of people wearing blue shouting, "Luuuuuuuke" when Luke Maye makes a basket (pretty often when you score 20 and get 10 rebounds) and shouting, "Biscuits!" when Shea Rush drains a three-pointer to break 100 in what would eventually be a 102-78 victory over Portland.

Family doesn't have to only be the people with whom you cut the turkey. It can also be the people with whom you point to the passer after another Theo Pinson assist.

Out here, you get the people who don't get to see the Tar Heels play quite as often, so you get big cheers for the "I'm a Tar Heel" video and lines of people ringing the court in warmups just to take a photo of the players shooting layups. They don't take it for granted quite as much as some of us do, and it's a nice reminder of what a big deal this is to so many people.

In a cab this week somewhere on the west coast, the driver asked incredulously, "You came all this way for basketball?"

Well, no. For Carolina basketball. It's completely different.

Roy Williams did a perfect job of summarizing Thanksgiving in his pregame interview on the Tar Heel Sports Network.

"I'm thankful to live in the United States of America," he said, "and to have the freedoms we have and the people who do so many things to guarantee our freedoms…I'm thankful for the universities at Kansas and North Carolina I've worked for and the way I've been able to recruit the kids I really love. And I'm thankful for my family."

A lot of people are angry in America these days. This isn't meant to tell you that you can't be angry. But it's really, really difficult to believe the country is in terrible hands when I spend my days meeting people like this:

Reggie Bullock, who remembered to bring Roy Williams a takeout bag of barbecue from Kinston when the player went home to bury his beloved grandmother.

Joel James, who dodged drive-by shootings to make it to school but remained relentlessly positive and now gets paid money to play basketball.

Marcus Paige, who will be the President one day unless he gets sidetracked by something more important, like being the Carolina athletic director.

There are more of those types of individuals on this year's team, which goes back to what's really amazing about this entire situation—that for the better part of six decades, Dean Smith, Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty and Roy Williams figured out a way to bring these people together in Chapel Hill. How many kids play basketball at a high level? Hundreds each year?

And yet, somehow, those four head coaches assembled a remarkable group of not just players, but people. Maybe this is just an old guy with kids talking, but you don't realize how difficult it is to find a teenager who wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. Finding a whole team of them, year after year after year? It's incredible.

So, yes, we get this crazy about a simple game of college basketball. But it's not merely the putting the ball in a hoop. It's the people putting the ball in the hoop. That's why we eat early on Thanksgiving to make sure we're ready for the game at 2:30, then gather around the TV with our family while Dad tells us that Joel Berry reminds him of Phil Ford just a little and Mom swoons over Luke Maye and everyone sits in their lucky seat while ignoring that one cousin who inexplicably once said he thought maybe J.J. Redick was a little misunderstood.

It's why our bucket list is easy: attending a Carolina-Duke game at the very top and then, more towards the bottom, less important activities like seeing Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

It's not really so much that we are thankful for Carolina basketball. It's that we are thankful for all the people and places and moments that Carolina basketball has brought into our lives.

They'll play again tomorrow. We all know exactly where we'll be and who we'll be with and who we will celebrate/commiserate with afterwards. Something that happens will remind us of our grandfather, or our kids, or the first time we watched a game with our spouse. There simply aren't that many moments like that in life, and we get to do them dozens of times per season.

So I'm thankful for Carolina basketball. And all the big stuff that it makes possible, too.

Players Mentioned

Luke Maye

Theo Pinson

Shea Rush

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