University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Experience Matters
April 1, 2003 | Men's Basketball
April 1, 2003
By Adam Lucas
A few victories didn't make Carolina basketball special. A triumvirate of NCAA championships didn't make Carolina basketball special. Winning 20 games or winning the ACC Tournament or even Michael Jordan didn't make Carolina basketball special. Even--and he'd be the first to tell you this--Dean Smith didn't make Carolina basketball special.
All those things, and all those people, had a hand in it, of course. But what makes Carolina basketball a nationwide phenomenon is the Carolina experience. You can't quantify it or list the details. You just have to believe it. You just have to believe that there's a reason players come back year upon year. You have to believe that there's a reason current players talk about "the family," you have to believe that something makes these teammates eventually become groomsmen in each other's weddings and godfathers to each other's children.
What is it that binds us to this place, Charles Kuralt asks on the television ads for the University.
He's got his own answer for that question. But as for what binds us to the basketball program, it's the Carolina experience.
If at any time something even begins to infringe on that experience, Carolina basketball is in danger of becoming just like any of the other programs that have won a significant amount of games over the past decades. Plenty of programs win. But there is only one Carolina.
If you had forgotten that, all you had to do was turn on ESPN's SportsCenter on Tuesday evening at 6:00. For the first 12 minutes of a 60-minute show, discussion was limited to Carolina basketball. Twenty percent of the world's most-watched cable sports show, all devoted to the Tar Heels, with an offhand mention of some program called UCLA.
That's how big Carolina basketball is, even after 8-20 and after a trip to the NIT. The task is to make sure that Carolina never becomes an afterthought program, never becomes an offhand mention during a discussion of another school's coaching change.
Preserving that distinction isn't easy, and it can sometimes make for some painful decisions.
Anyone who tells you that Matt Doherty's resignation Tuesday night was an occasion for celebration is a pathetic individual. Just as the current players are entitled to enjoy the benefits of the Carolina family, so is Doherty. He played here too, as you might remember, something that seems to have been forgotten as his name has occasionally been besmirched by individuals with no real knowledge of what has gone on at the Smith Center.
Tuesday was not a happy day. The press conference was set up so that the table at which James Moeser and Dick Baddour were seated was almost on top of the location where the student risers would have been located for a game. You couldn't help but think of the hundreds of students who wore "Doherty's Disciples" t-shirts and identified with the new Tar Heel head coach, the guy who would come talk to them in the Pit and meet them in ticket distribution lines.
The press conference table was just across from where the Carolina bench would have been. You couldn't help but think of Doherty picking up a technical foul just six minutes into his Tar Heel coaching career in the 2000-01 opener against Winthrop. The technical very nearly drew a standing ovation from UNC fans.
You couldn't help but think of Doherty hugging fans who had covered their bodies in blue paint after the win over Wake Forest that first year, or of him tossing t-shirts into the student section, or of him going into Cameron Indoor Stadium that first year and giving back just as good as he got from the Cameron Crazies.
Unless those memories don't bring even a hint of a smile to your face, Tuesday was not a happy day.
But in the end, you have to honor the Carolina experience. You have to listen to seniors Will Johnson and Jonathan Holmes admit that the constant questioning of rumors and innuendo became a day-to-day badgering for them. The bottom line is that over the past few weeks and months, it was no longer fun to be associated with the Tar Heel basketball program. The carping, the constant questioning, the persistent undercurrent of tension, made it impossible to enjoy what should be a fantastic treat for every single individual involved. To be a true Tar Heel fan, you have to believe that more important than any win-loss record or any one person is the Carolina experience. As soon as that is ignored, Carolina runs the risk of becoming just another program, and that's not acceptable--to fans, to administrators, to players, or truth be told, to Matt Doherty.
"These last two years have been tumultuous," Will Johnson said when asked if he was happy with his time at Carolina. "No one has a good time dealing with rumors and speculation throughout a season. Is my time here as happy or rewarding as other players who have played here? Probably not. This was a difficult time and a challenging time."
He didn't talk about wins. He didn't talk about championships. He talked about the experience.
And that, in the end, is what makes Carolina basketball so unique. A bad day in Chapel Hill is better than a good day at most other places. If even one player doesn't have a good experience, it cheapens it for the entire rest of them. If we let Will Johnson or any player slide through unhappy and wondering if other players had a better experience, we'll let two slide by next time, and then it's three, and then all of a sudden no one can remember quite what it was that was so special about Carolina a long time ago.
The players are not, as will be endlessly (and ignorantly) written over the next few days, running the program. The experience is running the program.
And the experience, although it is a lofty standard, must be flawless.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
