University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: 'Twan Time
December 1, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Dec. 1, 2011
By Adam Lucas
No one goes inside the Carolina basketball locker room in the minutes before a game. Not the athletic director. Not honored guests. Not television cameras.
No one.
That's the first thing you have to understand about the unusual circumstances before Carolina's 9:30 p.m. tipoff against Wisconsin on Wednesday night.
Pregame runs on precision timing. Players are given a "dressed and seated" time, which is when they are expected to be warmed up, in uniform, and ready for Roy Williams to address the squad. Dressed and seated time is sacred. Ever noticed a Tar Heel sprinting off the court around a half-hour before the game? That's because he's worried about missing the dressed and seated time.
Wednesday night was different. Wednesday night, the Tar Heels got a visitor.
Dressed and seated for the Badgers was at 8:57. At 8:49, Antawn Jamison walked into the locker room. If you and I see Antawn Jamison, we stop and gawk. After all, he is Antawn Jamison, star of one of the most entertaining Carolina teams ever, the national player of the year, dominator of Duke, a two-time NBA All-Star.
In the Carolina locker room, though, he is just `Twan. And on this night, he had something to say.
This is what makes Carolina basketball different. At some places, coaches work hard to bring in famous pregame guest speakers. At Carolina, the speakers call and request the privilege. That's what Jamison did. He called the basketball office on Tuesday to ask if it would be OK to speak to the team.
Everything about that sentence is Carolina basketball. A player with his jersey retired and two Final Four rings called to inquire if it might be OK if he spoke to the team. At other places, they would move the tipoff time or maybe even change the day of the game to accommodate a player with those credentials. In Chapel Hill, he asks permission, because he understands the sanctity of the locker room.
Not surprisingly, Roy Williams thought it was a terrific idea. A coach talks to his team every day. Even when that coach is a Hall of Famer, even when he has two national championships, it can get repetitive hearing the same things from the same person. This was a new voice with a fresh perspective. The players had no idea he was coming. Eight minutes before dressed and seated, they got a surprise.
"I have had a great career professionally," Jamison told them inside the locker room, with a capacity crowd of 21,750 already buzzing outside. "I've had a lot of fun. I've done a lot of things. But if there's one thing I sit back and talk to my teammates about with regret, it's not winning a championship at Carolina.
"You have the opportunity to do that. Enjoy this ride you are on. Don't let it slip away."
I don't know how much that message had to do with Carolina's 60-57 victory over Wisconsin, a rugged win over a very capable opponent. But I do know that it has everything to do with what Carolina basketball is supposed to be about. It's why teenagers continue to want to play here. And it's why those of us who grew up loving it love it the same way even when the players we idolized when we were kids return to games--with their own kids.
Look over behind the Tar Heel bench during Wednesday's game and you saw Tyler Hansbrough, Marvin Williams, Shammond Williams, Raymond Felton, Jamison and Rasheed Wallace. That's a combined nine Final Fours, six NBA All-Star appearances, five honored jerseys, three national championships and two retired jerseys. On one row.
They didn't come because somebody asked them to be there. They came because Carolina was playing a big basketball game and they wanted to be there. Not that they only show up for the games, of course. All of them have attended practice. All of them have played summer pickup with the current players. Tonight, you saw them because the lights were on. They are, if anything, more visible when the lights are off.
"They give us so much support every day," said Kendall Marshall, who combined with Dexter Strickland to harass Wisconsin's Jordan Taylor into a 6-for-20 performance. "They're always giving us pointers. They don't have to be here. The fact that they care enough to come out means a lot to us."
 The more things change: Rasheed Wallace tries to help the officials.  |
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Oh, they care. You could see it the way they got into the game. At one point, Wallace was so wrapped up in the game that his black stocking cap was perilously perched at the highest possible point of his head, looking like a beanie about to take flight. Wallace didn't care. He was busy animatedly telling Henson to, "Shoot that!" rather than pass it after an errant pass to Tyler Zeller. Which is, naturally, exactly what you would expect Rasheed Wallace to say.
Current players don't have the same frame of reference on the alums that you have. They don't remember Jamison playing through an injury to whip Duke in the 1998 ACC Tournament final, and they don't remember him scoring the winning basket at Maryland in 1996, and they certainly don't remember him kissing the Alamodome floor after the 1998 Final Four loss to Utah.
"I don't remember him at all as a Carolina player," Henson admitted. He was eight years old in 1998. Time is ruthless. "But he's front row, and that says it all." He means Jamison is front row in the Smith Center rafters, where they put the legends' laundry.
Jamison has spoken before about his routine upon entering the building. He tries not to look up immediately. But soon after he walks onto the court, he sneaks a look upward, just to make sure his jersey is still there. It's still not completely real to him, and he's afraid he might have imagined it. For those of us who remember how he earned that spot, that's almost as rewarding as yet another double-double to know that even 13 years after he last wore that white No. 33, he's the same guy.
And watching him sit, with his son on his lap, exchanging high fives after Daddy shows up on the video board? It's a safe bet that every weight room session, every road trip, every long night in the Smith Center was worth it just for that one moment.
"I am," as Jamison, Hansbrough, Marvin, Shammond, Hansbrough and Felton all said during a second-half timeout video montage, "a Tar Heel."
"It really was a great speech," Strickland said of Jamison's pregame message. "What he had to say, everyone in that room needed to hear."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter and Facebook.
