University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Back In The Mix
July 14, 2008 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
July 14, 2008
By Adam Lucas
By the time Danny Green, Ty Lawson, and Wayne Ellington walked into the Smith Center on the night of June 16 to rejoin their teammates for the normal summer pickup sessions, most Tar Heel fans assumed all of Roy Williams's worldly problems were solved.
For the 99th year of Carolina basketball, the Tar Heels would return the consensus National Player of the Year, Tyler Hansbrough. They'd add one of the nation's best recruiting classes. And the trio of players that had submitted their names for NBA Draft consideration had pulled out of the draft, meaning the 2008 ACC champion and Final Four participant would return all five starters.
But the UNC head coach, who kept a log of his NBA-related phone calls during the process and made over 100 phone calls on behalf of Ellington, Green, and Lawson, was frank with the trio.
"I told all three of them that they have to understand their teammates wondered if they wanted to be with them or not," Williams said. "That's human nature. And even more harmful, they were wondering if they wanted to be with us or not.
"But everyone's dream is to play in the NBA, especially for high-quality players, which is what we have. The NBA is a big monster that dominates with all the marketing they do, and for many players, college basketball is not the dream it was 20 years ago."
While the trio had been jetting around the country to work out for NBA teams, the returning Tar Heels had been working out under the watchful eye of strength coach Jonas Sahratian. Weights had been lifted, pickup games had been played...summer life as normal had continued for Carolina Basketball.
Now the challenge was to make sure that life enveloped the new returnees. The trio would no longer be "the trio." They'd just be Tar Heels.
"I just wanted them to be around a little more," Ginyard said. "We missed those guys where they were gone. We just wanted them to be back here, to go through workouts with us. We know all of them are back in the team mindset and are here for the team. Coach made it one hundred percent clear to them that if they came back, they would come back for North Carolina. We know they'll be ready to play just like everyone else."
"I understood where Coach was coming from," said Wayne Ellington. "We'd been gone for so long while we were trying to make our decision. If one of my teammates did that, I'd wonder whether he wanted to be here playing with us or not. Our teammates understand we have a goal. And we have such good team chemistry that everything is back to normal."
How normal? Just a few hours after being on the verge of being a candidate for a million-dollar contract, the trio--yes, that's officially the last time that phrase can be used--was already taking good-natured heat from their teammates. When Ellington, Green, and Lawson walked into the Smith Center on the June evening that they announced their intention to return, Ginyard was one of the first to spot them.
"And where have you guys been?" he asked with mock seriousness. It was a question that called to memory Bill Guthridge's famously wry greeting to Michael Jordan in the late 80s upon spotting the Tar Heel legend--who by then was already a household name around the world--on campus: "Michael, what have you been doing with yourself since Carolina?"
Just like Guthridge, Ginyard and the rest of his teammates already knew the answer to his question. Over the last month, it's been the returnees' goal to make sure any other question from a teammate has an easy answer. They don't want to talk about their commitment to Carolina basketball. They want to show it.
"We show it by being around the guys," Ellington said. "We show it by being willing to work hard. We're going to show them that things haven't changed."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
