University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Cunningham Loved Being A Tar Heel
June 13, 2006 | Men's Basketball
June 13, 2006
By Adam Lucas
The phone would ring in the middle of the night and Joe Quigg always knew who it was.
Most people hear the dreaded late-hour ring and their concern flashes to an elderly parent or a child out late. Quigg knew that in most cases the caller wanted something else.
"It would be the middle of the night," says the man who made the championship-clinching free throws in the 1957 Carolina championship win over Kansas, "and people would be up late drinking. And my number was in the phone book so they would call me. They always wanted to know the same thing: the five starters on our 1957 championship team. They could never think of Bobby Cunningham."
Cunningham, who passed away Tuesday morning, was that quintessential Carolina player: the glue guy. Lennie Rosenbluth was the star of the '57 team. Pete Brennan had the matinee-idol good looks and the game to match. Tommy Kearns was the flashy guard. Quigg was made forever famous by his free throws.
Here's what Bob Cunningham did: he played defense. He shared the ball. And he never particularly cared how many points he scored.
That was a key quality on the 1957 team, where all five starters--and head coach Frank McGuire rarely used his bench, making the starters even more important--had come from impressive high school pedigrees. They could have gone anywhere and been an individual star. But they believed in what McGuire was building at Carolina.
Not that they really knew much about Carolina.
"When I committed to Carolina, I hardly knew anything about New Jersey, much less North Carolina," Cunningham said during an interview six months ago. "The first time I saw a cow I was nine years old. We spent our summers playing ball in the City. You never had any reason to leave New York. So when I saw a cow, it scared me. I didn't know what it was. North Carolina was like another planet. All I knew about it was that `Choo Choo' Justice had gone there."
When he arrived, the school was known for Choo Choo. By the time he left, it was known for the magical accomplishments of the 1956-57 North Carolina basketball team. The Tar Heels went 32-0 that season, sweeping through the Atlantic Coast Conference, surviving several narrow decisions, and squeaking by Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament semifinals to preserve their chance at a national title.
Cunningham stayed largely in the shadows. He was the only starter who didn't average double-digit points per game (7.2 ppg). But his 6.6 rebounds per game were impressive for a guard, and he was the team's designated lock-down defensive artist. He was Jackie Manuel before there was a Jackie Manuel.
Before the home finale against South Carolina, McGuire was pondering how to shut down the Gamecocks' high-scoring Grady Wallace, who had torched the Tar Heels for 35 points in the first meeting.
At a practice the week of the game, Cunningham requested an audience with McGuire.
"Coach, I want to guard Wallace," he said.
The head coach looked resigned to another scoring outburst. "Well, OK," he said. "You can play him. But I think he's too good for you, Bobby."
Wallace finished with just 11 points. Before leaving the floor, he grabbed the hands of Brennan and Cunningham, who had combined to make him virtually invisible most of the night. "That's the best defense anyone has ever played against me," he said.
That was Bob Cunningham. He retained a sense of wonder about the '57 season for the rest of his life. His daughter went to a convention in Las Vegas recently at which the keynote speaker was Bill Bradley. She had a chance to speak with Bradley and told him her father had been a member of the 1957 Tar Heels.
"And he knew who I was!" Cunningham said later. "How about that? That 1957 season had such an impact that even a guy like Bill Bradley remembered it so many years later."
The five starters from that 1957 team had become even closer in recent years. They had scattered for their professional careers--always retaining that bond of teammates who can speak for the first time in months and pick right up where they left off before--but Brennan was beginning to make a point of holding annual reunions. When they gathered in Nags Head last fall, they looked like a team again as they sat on stage and regaled each other with their favorite moments from one of Carolina's most important basketball teams.
Cunningham loved being part of that team. And he loved being a Tar Heel. He traveled to Maui to watch the 2004 Maui Invitational and could dissect the current year's team better than any analyst. But it wasn't just about basketball for him. He got almost giddy just talking about Chapel Hill.
"I can still see everyone's faces in the stands," he said when he visited Woollen Gym in the fall of 2004.
"From day one, being at Carolina was like being part of a family. It wasn't just the typical Southern friendliness that you hear about. It was a genuine family atmosphere. It felt warm. It made you feel good about being there."
Bob Cunningham was 70 years old.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on the 1957 championship team, The Best Game Ever, will be released in October.
