University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Our Way
December 15, 2013 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
This has happened to me and it has happened to you. You are walking through a strange place. Any place, as far away as possible. For me, it was Poitiers, France.
This is not the part of France where they speak English. This is the part of France where they speak French and only French. Normal tourists don't go there. There is no reason to go there.
It was a normal day, maybe a Wednesday. And suddenly-this has happened to all of us-there was someone wearing that familiar blue, a hat with the interlocking "NC," there in Poitiers, thousands of miles from home.
I had on my blue, he had on his blue, and in the middle of croissants and cathedrals, finally something made sense. You know what happened next.
"Go Heels," he said.
"Go Heels," I said.
I love that feeling of belonging like I love a thunderous Brice Johnson alley-oop...but we'll get to that.
One day, you will encounter someone who does not understand your passion for the Tar Heels. They will not understand why you refuse to change location when the Heels are on a run or they will schedule a wedding on a March Saturday and act hurt when you don't show up. They won't get it.
You should feel sorry for them, because they won't get to experience something like Saturday at one of the loudest venues in the country (the Dean Smith Center) watching one of the best programs in the country (the North Carolina Tar Heels) and maybe one of the most fun teams to watch play that program has ever had (the 2013-14 Tar Heels).
The 82-77 win over Kentucky could've come against anybody. It could've come against Michigan State or Louisville. Heck, it already has come against those two teams. You realize it's not even Christmas yet and it's already been a fantastically enjoyable season, right? You're supposed to have a win like that once per season, maybe, if you're lucky. These Tar Heels have done it three times in three weeks.
But this particular win didn't come against anybody. It came against Kentucky, the new wave of college basketball, the program that has embraced the new trends in college basketball as much or more than any other program in America. That's great for them. It worked for them in 2012, because they won the national championship, and that's something no one can probably ever take away from them.
That's not Carolina basketball. It's just not. It never was. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's the complete antithesis of everything that is Tar Heel basketball. There are no two programs in the entire world that, while achieving similar results, have gone about things more differently than Carolina and Kentucky. And it felt incredibly good to get validation that our way, on this day, is better.
This was Phil Ford at halftime on Saturday, speaking about Dean Smith: "He came into my home and told me I might have to play JV ball my first year. Everyone else said I was going to start."
That was 40 years ago. It's still true today. When things are going well, in the years that have been the most fun, it has been about the team and nothing else.
James Michael McAdoo has had a rough couple of weeks. He hasn't shot the ball well and he knows he's taken some criticism. He had 20 points and five rebounds against Kentucky, and was told that Wildcats coach John Calipari had said that "McAdoo killed us."
So this is your chance, James Michael. Smile a little. Tell all the doubters exactly where they can stick their free whiteout shirt. You've earned it. Go ahead.
This is what he said:
"Thank you to Coach Calipari. That's huge coming from such an outstanding coach. But I'm just going to say North Carolina tried to come in today and go against the team that was ranked number one in the country in the preseason. They have great players. We were able to do a lot of good things."
OK, so that attempt at pounding his chest didn't go so well. Let's give it another chance. James Michael, you just scored 20 points and had five rebounds against Kentucky. Let's talk about when you caught the inbounds pass on a fly pattern with about a minute remaining and drew a foul. It looked like Roy Williams was about to chest bump you, which was totally fine, because there were about 21,750 other people in there who wanted to chest bump you.
"He would love to," McAdoo said with a grin. "I didn't want to do that to him..."
Good, now we're talking about you. Go ahead...
"...But the most exciting plays of the game for me were when Desmond got that tip-in. And when I was able to get that tip-out at the very end of the game."
In case you've forgotten, which virtually every human in the world has, McAdoo did indeed tip out a missed Tar Heel free throw late in the game, which led to Carolina points. And Desmond Hubert did indeed have a tip in with about 12 minutes left in the game, which came just after he had cleared the baseline for J.P. Tokoto's layup a minute earlier. Why in the world, in such an epic game, would McAdoo single out that particular play?
"That's just North Carolina basketball," McAdoo said. "To anyone who doesn't watch that much basketball, they're not going to understand that. Those are game changers. It's huge to see Desmond play so well in such a game like this. It's what Coach Williams teaches and I'm sure it puts a smile on his face."
You know something? He's not the only coach who would've had a smile on his face after that comment. The other one was honored at halftime on Saturday in a ceremony that had almost nothing to do with basketball, as Dean Smith's family was recognized for his recent Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Smith Center has rarely been as loud as it was during points of Saturday's game. It has never, ever, been as totally silent as it was during the opening moments of the ceremony honoring Smith. The ceremony mattered because it was the first time my kids had heard some of those stories about the coach, and maybe it was the first time your kids did, too.
We've reached the point in time--we're in the 17th season since his retirement--that we have to tell those stories as much as we can. Yes, he integrated a restaurant and a community. Yes, he took his players to visit prisons. All of that happened and it mattered, and what the comments from Phil Ford, Eric Montross and Smith's wife, Linnea, perfectly showed was that it mattered more than beating Georgetown or inventing a new offensive wrinkle.
None of us did those things, and none of us are capable of doing those things. But we each got to touch a little bit of it through him, and somehow we got to feel like his way was our way, too.
And still, nothing brings us together like a big game on a Saturday at the Smith Center. The play that will live for years from the Kentucky game is Marcus Paige's alley-oop to Brice Johnson, a direct descendant of the Ronald Curry-to-Julius Peppers slam against Wake Forest in 2001.
The Deacons unwisely called timeout after that play, the better to let the Smith Center crowd watch multiple replays and cap each one with an even louder, "Whoooom" on each slam.
The same thing happened against the Wildcats. John Calipari called timeout and the replays began. One.
"Whooom."
Two.
"Whooooooom."
Three.
"Whooooooooooooom."
Four, this time the angle from behind the play.
"WHOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM."
Now you need to enjoy this play with the benefit of the call from Jones Angell and Eric Montross. Somehow, Montross managed to perfectly capture the play without uttering a single word in English.
Eric, you know what? That--whatever that was--was exactly what every single person in that building was thinking.
The only person who could not enjoy all these repeated viewings was Brice Johnson, who said the crowd volume after the slam made his ears ring. But he did not look at the replays.
"I didn't look at them," he said. "Coach was staring me down. I did something, I can't remember what. Coach was staring me down, so I was like, 'Nope, can't look.' Sometimes, you can slip and get one look, but when he's staring at you, you have to stare straight ahead."
That was the highlight reel play. But years from now, when you're talking about how loud it was in the Smith Center on that dunk, maybe you'll also remember Desmond Hubert, the player who got a tip-in that made James Michael McAdoo smile.
"This year, everyone knows what the goal is and wants to achieve the same thing," Hubert said. "If you get a team that can buy in and everyone wants to achieve the same goal and work hard towards that goal, you have a chance to be successful. It's so much fun to be part of a team like that. It's so exciting to contribute and be part of the team.
"With this team, everyone knows what they're good at. Everyone knows they're going to come in and no matter how much they play, they're going to give 100 percent in that amount of time. And if you find a way to contribute to the team during that time, then you've done what you're supposed to do."
Could you have ever imagined that in a win over a team like Kentucky, the team that put together one of the greatest recruiting classes in history, with so much talent on the floor, you'd be reading the perfect summarizing quote from Desmond Hubert?
That's Carolina basketball. You recognize it and I recognize it and when you pass that stranger in that weird, faraway location and give him a "Go Heels," you are implicitly agreeing with each other that both of you know it and love it.
It just becomes part of you. I don't know and I don't expect I'll ever find out, but I suspect other people have other things that have the same effect for them. It doesn't matter, because this one--perfectly captured in two and a half hours on a Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill--is ours. If you have someone you go to every game with or a mom who taught you to love it or a grandfather you call after every game or a sister who texts you after every big play, then that was about as close to perfect as it can get.
Up in the stands with about two minutes left, Phil Ford and Lennie Rosenbluth were reaching over three people to talk strategy with each other. Two of the greatest players in Tar Heel history, two men with nothing in common other than the college choice they've both called one of the most important of their lives, returning to Chapel Hill game after game to touch it one more time.
Rosenbluth, walking out of the arena still wearing his whiteout t-shirt, was just a little hoarse.
"I'm going home and watch it again," he said with a voice that was a little hoarse, the product of two and a half hours of shouting to be heard over the din. "I tape them all. I'm going to watch it as soon as I get home."
Of course he will. Of course I will. Of course you will. We have to. It's our way.
Adam Lucas is the editor of CAROLINA.
