University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Pickup Classics A Chapel Hill Legend
November 1, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 1, 2006
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The following story originally ran in the November issue of the magazine.
By Adam Lucas
Eventually, Jawad Williams had enough of the arguments.
It was a steamy summer afternoon and he'd just been on the winning team (again) in a Smith Center pickup game. Alums were mixed with current players and the intensity was high.
After Williams's team won, there was a dispute about the final score of the game. Players--mostly young ones--were tallying up their individual baskets to try and compute the exact final.
"How many did you get, `Wad?" he was asked.
"I don't know, man," he said. "But I know my team won."
He gave that familiar Williams smile and turned to a couple of bystanders.
"That's what matters, right?" he said. "Awards and rewards."
He was referencing one of Roy Williams's favorite sayings: Winners get the awards and rewards. In the process, he was also teaching younger Tar Heels a valuable lesson. While they were squabbling over layups and jumpers and blocked shots, he was sitting comfortably on a padded chair sipping a cup of water, secure in the knowledge that his team had won and little else mattered.
Summer pickup games in Chapel Hill have always had almost mythical status. In the 1990s, rumors flew of the latest exploits by Michael Jordan or James Worthy or any of the other Tar Heel pros who dominated the NBA during that era. But by early the next decade, the flow of pros coming back to Chapel Hill had slowed to a trickle. Shammond Williams, to his eternal credit, was one of the few players who consistently returned. Vasco Evtimov did likewise.
Others were noticeably absent. But when Roy Williams returned to Carolina, he made it known that the doors to the Smith Center were again open to alums. The turnout has been dramatic.
Just a few years ago, it was sometimes a struggle to find ten players for a full five-on-five pickup game. This summer, a normal day at the Smith Center usually saw two courts teeming with players, 10 athletes on each court, with a handful sitting on the sidelines waiting for the next opportunity to enter the game.
Part of the explosion is due to a rapidly growing current team. The Tar Heels have 17 players on this year's roster and all were around for at least one semester of summer school.
But the numbers have also swelled thanks to an increasingly impressive turnout of pros. A sampling of the names who made an appearance this summer: Sean May, Raymond Felton, Marvin Williams, Rashad McCants, Antawn Jamison, Brendan Haywood, Jackie Manuel, Melvin Scott, Evtimov, Shammond Williams, Jawad Williams, and Jerry Stackhouse.
Find a way to fit it under the salary cap, and that would be a competitive NBA team.
"I think we have the best competition in basketball on this floor every day," Danny Green says, pointing to the Smith Center hardwood. "The ACC will always be good. But the competition I've seen this summer is unbelievable."
It's the only way to see such made-in-Tar Heel-heaven matchups like Reyshawn Terry trying to guard Stackhouse or May posting up Tyler Hansbrough. Ask the current players for their favorite plays of the summer, and several are mentioned.
But one is almost unanimous.
"I don't want Tyler to get mad at me," says Wes Miller, sneaking a look over his shoulder to make sure Hansbrough isn't within earshot. "But there was one play this summer where he came over from the help side to help out on Marvin Williams. Marvin took one step, cocked it back, and just dunked it all over Tyler. It shocked everybody in the gym, including Tyler."
So what happened next? Did the intense Hansbrough snap the basket support in half?
"I think everybody just started laughing, even Tyler," Miller says. "That's how good a dunk it was. At first we started running down the court like it was nothing, but then everybody stopped and looked at Tyler and he cracked a smile."
The fancy dunks are nice--there's even a rumor that Hansbrough had an eye-popping slam of his own over May. But the returning alums are even more important because they've reestablished the link from former players to current players.
"I met Jerry Stackhouse this summer," says sophomore Mike Copeland. "He had seen me play in a couple of games and he was telling me things I needed to work on."
Copeland, a lifelong Tar Heel fan, flashes a big smile.
"I mean, it's Jerry Stackhouse," he says. "He played in the NBA Finals. And now he's telling me what I need to work on? I never thought I would be in the position to get advice from Jerry Stackhouse."
"I got the chance to play with Dante Calabria this summer," Miller says. "I had no idea how good he was until I was on the same court with him. He can shoot it as well as anyone I've ever seen and the way he understood the game was amazing. He was such a nice guy, and I've got his email address now so I can stay in touch with him."
Copeland and Stackhouse, Miller and Calabria. In some ways, they're the most unlikely of acquaintances. But in the only way that matters--their college choice--they've become fraternity brothers.
"People get dunked on in pickup almost every day," Quentin Thomas says. "You get used to it. You start thinking plays like that happen everywhere. You take it for granted.
"And then you go play somewhere else, and you remember that games like this only happen in Chapel Hill."
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
