University of North Carolina Athletics
OFR Deleted Scenes: Hansbrough On Criticism
December 21, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 21, 2009
Through the magic of Amazon.com's two-day shipping (or a visit to your favorite bookstore), you can still have One Fantastic Ride under the tree for your favorite Tar Heel this holiday season.
By Adam Lucas
One of the best parts of any DVD release is the "deleted scenes" feature. It usually contains a few comedic--and sometimes insightful--moments from the film's production process. Sometimes, those scenes are so good you wonder how they ever ended up on the cutting room floor.
Authors go through the same process in writing a book. Often, as a project nears its completion, you discover there's not quite as much room in that chapter as you thought, and an anecdote you loved doesn't make the final cut.
I went through the same process with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers during the writing of One Fantastic Ride, which is now available in bookstores and online at tarheelblue.com. We interviewed Roy Williams for over an hour, and talked to every Tar Heel player for at least a half-hour.
Two hundred and forty-six pages wasn't enough for us to include every story we enjoyed from the interview process, so we'll be running some in these pages over the next few weeks.
This week's deleted scene features Tyler Hansbrough talking about some of the criticism he took during the 2008-09 season. It came during the middle of his extended interview--the session runs nearly 20,000 transcribed words; the entire book One Fantastic Ride clocks in at about 65,000 words. As he spoke, his intensity began to increase with every word, to the point that when he finished he looked like he was ready to go hunt down Gerald Henderson.
Hansbrough's quote:
"I thought there was more pressure just because I was getting criticized this year. People were saying, "Oh, most overrated player ever." I mean, I know I'm not overrated, to be honest with you--all the things that I've done, and I prove it, you know. I'm pretty consistent on the court, and people criticize me because they don't like me.
"It's because I beat their team or, you know, I've done things to them that makes them mad at me. That's why people are ticked off at me when I go and play them at road games. No one likes me, and I love that. I mean, I love coming in there, and it's because I've done something to them that they don't like. So they're really not going to welcome me.
"So in a way I'm happy for the criticism, and I know there are some media guys out there that criticize me. To be honest with you, screw them. I could care less about them. They've probably never played a game in their life, and they can never see me on the court, so that's the way I look at it."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the just-released book on the 2009 national title, One Fantastic Ride. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
