University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Catching Up With Hubert Davis
June 18, 2003 | Men's Basketball
June 18, 2003
By Adam Lucas
It's one of those offseason discussions you always wind up having with your Tar Heel buddies. Best dunker. Biggest win. Best leader.
Inevitably, at some point, the discussion turns to shooting, and you're discussing which Tar Heel had the smoothest jumper.
One player who always seems to be near the top of that list is back in Chapel Hill this week, as Hubert Davis organizes his sixth annual basketball camp at the Smith Center. The camp begins on Thursday and runs through Saturday.
Davis, who just finished his eleventh year in the NBA, isn't willing to take the bait on the shooting debate.
"Coach Smith always said a tiger never growls after the kill. He had to tell me that a lot when I was here," Davis said with a laugh.
The Virginia native eventually concedes that he might be on the list, but that he'd get stiff competition from his uncle (Walter Davis), Donald Williams, and Jeff Lebo.
He'll try to teach that sweet-shooting form to 60 campers over the next three days at the Hubert Davis Basketball Camp. But he does far more than just lend his name to the event. Davis and his wife, Leslie, handle every detail of the three-day camp. On Wednesday, Hubert stopped by the UNC basketball office to work out final plans, including dividing up this year's roster into two-man teams to work with the campers and picking out the video that will be shown while the campers eat lunch.
"My wife and I do everything," he said. "She's my secretary and I'm her secretary. One of the things we wanted to do, not to criticize other camps, was to have a hands-on approach with everything that happens."
It's not uncommon for NBA veterans to want to simply relax during the summer and get away from basketball. So why does Davis commit himself to a three-day whirlwind during which he's responsible for 60 children?
The answer, coupled with his ever-present easy smile, tells you plenty about his personality.
"I actually love the kids," he said. "One of the neat things about this camp is that we keep it relatively small. I want to help these kids learn how to play basketball the way I was taught at Carolina and I want to help them learn about God, but I also want to develop a relationship with them. I give them my email address and phone number, and they call me throughout the year. They come see me play--I've had kids come to Detroit to see me, and Washington, and Atlanta."
His most recent stop in a five-team career was in Detroit, where he has a year remaining on his contract. He saw action in 43 games in 2003, averaging 1.8 points per game and making just 12 of his trademark three-pointers. That figure was down substantially from 2000, when he swished 217 trifectas on his way to leading the NBA in three-point percentage.
The Pistons now have a new coach, however, and Davis hopes he will see more action under new Detroit boss and former Tar Heel Larry Brown.
"It was good and it was difficult at the same time this year," he said. "It was great being around the guys on the team, and great being back in a winning atmosphere and making the playoffs. But it was difficult because of my playing time. I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to or as much as I thought I should. But I'm looking forward to Coach Brown being in there and I've already talked to Coach (John) Kuester and Coach (Dave) Hanners."
As it turns out, Davis has a special connection to new Carolina head coach Roy Williams. Williams was an assistant at Carolina during Davis's recruiting process but left to take the Kansas job before Davis entered as a freshman.
"He was the main guy who recruited me," Davis said. "Quite honestly, he was the only coach who thought I could come here and play. Coach Smith had reservations and Coach Guthridge did too. Coach Williams was the only one who thought I could do it."
Eventually, Davis proved Williams right, becoming one of only four Tar Heels in the past 20 years to average 20 points per game during a season (Joseph Forte, Brad Daugherty, and Antawn Jamison are the others).
Of course, Davis also holds one other important distinction to Carolina fans--he was the last player with a signature cheer. Every Hubert three-pointer was greeted with cheers of "Huuuu" by the Smith Center crowd. The adoration unnerved Davis at first.
"At first I thought they were booing me," he said. "I was like, 'But I made the shot.' I quickly found out what they were doing. It was unbelievable. They've done that for me when I was with the Knicks and the Mavericks, but it was nothing like at North Carolina."
That fan appreciation, along with the family atmosphere created by Smith and Guthridge and carried on by Williams, is enough to keep Davis--and plenty of other alums, including Ed Cota, Shammond Williams, Dante Calabria, Brendan Haywood, and several others already this summer--coming back to Chapel Hill as long as often as he can.
"When you do things the right way, people want to be around good things," Davis said. "What better place to come back to than a place where everything was perfect, so to speak? They call it Blue Heaven, and in some aspects it is. It's a place where basketball was terrific and you were growing up as a young man. And it all started with Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge and doing things the right way."
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.
