University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Generations
December 17, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Shammond Williams made a basket on one of the most memorable, where-were-you-when plays in Carolina basketball history.
Virtually no one remembers he made the basket.
Williams, you see, made a three-pointer against Duke in 1998. Let me be more specific—Williams made a three-pointer after Vince Carter missed a dunk against Duke. Wait, that's not quite right either. Williams made a three-pointer after Ed Cota threw a pass off the backboard to Vince Carter in the middle of a Carolina second-half blowout of Duke, and Carter missed the jam. Watch the 1:50 mark. Heck, watch the whole thing, because Stuart Scott is on the call:
Now maybe you understand. Those who were there will never, ever forget it. As recently as his last visit to Chapel Hill, Carter said it's still the play from his Carolina career he gets asked about the most (his explanation, by the way, is simply, “I tried to dunk it too hard”).
But Shammond Williams is actually the one who scored on the play. That was one of 233 three-pointers in his Carolina career, the school record that stood for 17 years. On the way to the Carolina-Tulane game Wednesday night, I asked my 10-year-old son what he knew about Shammond Williams.
His response: “I don't think I know anything.”
We need to fix that. For example, Asher should know, and you should know, that Shammond Williams had a grand total of zero scholarship offers coming out of high school in South Carolina. None. Zero. Not zero big-time offers, but zero offers.
He went to Fork Union for a year of prep school and was terrific. He received offers from Kentucky (this was a different era of Kentucky) and Carolina. As he will tell you, his mother is the one who picked Carolina, largely because of Dean Smith.
He played on some of the most exciting Tar Heel teams of all time. He played (sparingly) on the 1994-95 team that included Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace. Smith taught him to play point guard that year, and you wondered if this little kid from South Carolina would ever figure it out. It turned out that Smith knew best, and those point guard skills eventually helped him become a versatile backcourt partner to Ed Cota.
He played and contributed heavily on the 1997 and 1998 clubs that also featured Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison. Got some free time over the holidays? Look up some of those 1998 Carolina highlights. And—I am required to say this, just as my dad said it to me and you will say it to your kids one day, when you tell them how the bloated 24-team ACC of the year 2030 can't compete with the 15-team league of your youth—the ACC was way better in Shammond's era. I saw it. I know. I don't need stats or names or proof. I was there. It was better.
And Williams was a star. Not always the brightest star, because, well, Stackhouse and Wallace and Jamison and Carter. But he was always there, and without him firing in those three-pointers, maybe Jamison doesn't get loose inside quite as much on the way to being National Player of the Year. There's an argument to be made that Williams is the best player who does not have his jersey honored in the Smith Center rafters.
One of my favorite Williams memories came in 1998 in Atlanta. He was on his way to 42 points, and he was absolutely on fire. He made eight three-pointers. And before one of them, a 23-foot rainbow from in front of the UNC bench, he turned and looked at head coach Bill Guthridge, as if to ask permission.
Guthridge nodded.
Williams fired.
Swish.
As always, like that night against Duke in 1998 when the Smith Center roof almost blew off when Carter missed the slam, Williams will sneak up on you.
“Before I got here, all I knew was he played with Vince Carter and Antawn,” Paige said. “I knew he went to a couple of Final Fours. Before the season, I was watching NBA Classic, and he was playing with the Sonics. I was like, 'Oh, that's Shammond!'”
Here's the thing about Williams: he loves, really loves, North Carolina basketball. He loves Dean Smith. He loves the blue. He loves the Smith Center. Before he got into coaching, you could find him playing pickup with the current team every single summer. Not just the years when it was cool to come back, but the years when Carolina wasn't as good, and sometimes the alumni ranks were a little thin. He was always there.
“Ever since I've been here he's been a really good ambassador for the program,” Paige says. “He helped me a lot in pickup games.”
That's what happens at Carolina, and that's what makes it Carolina. The young guys become the old guys, and before you know it Sean May is back as a coach and he has two kids, or George Lynch is stopping by to see the team in Texas and he has some gray hair around his temples, or the perpetually young Shammond Williams is standing at midcourt at the Smith Center before a game saying, “I'm 40 years old!” and there is no way that is true.
But they come back. They come back because they love it and because some of the best memories of their lives are here, and they want to be around others who have those same memories. And they want to take part in making those memories for the next class.
Which is how Williams came to compete in shooting games with a freshman Marcus Paige. After summer pickup games, the rash rookie would challenge the longtime pro to shooting contests. And like an older brother humoring the youngster, of course Williams would participate.
“He would always tell me, 'Nobody has made more three-pointers at your institution than me,'” Paige says. “'Your institution,' he would say over and over again. So to have it come full circle is kind of cool.”
Because it is Paige's institution, and it is Williams' institution, and Williams still considers it Dean Smith's institution. So he appreciates Paige. Appreciates his basketball ability and the way he plays the game, but appreciates much more than that.
“For me, the best asset he has is what he has exemplified as a North Carolina basketball player,” Williams says of Paige. “More than anything else, that's the most important thing. Him breaking the record is awesome. What's greater than that is what he's stood for and what he's been since he's been here. For me as a former player, to see the things he's done as a student-athlete, I know Coach Smith would say, 'That's the Carolina Way.'”
And you probably don't believe this, but as I write this it is over an hour after the game that Carolina won, 96-72 over Tulane. And do you know what is happening?
Tulane assistant coach Shammond Williams is out on the court, shoeless, and he's playing one-on-one with Nate Britt. Eventually, Britt goes to the equipment room and retrieves some basketball shoes for the veteran. Britt returns, and they commence arguing about the outcome of the current player-vs-alumni games at the annual Roy Williams Basketball Camp. Britt believes the alums get all the calls. Shammond believes the opposite. And they chirp, and shoot, and chirp, and do what teammates do, except these teammates are 20 years apart. It is mostly quiet, except for the squeaking of the brand-new basketball shoes, except for when Williams says, "That was good defense," or "That's a good shot right there" or "Alright Shammond, let's go."
And so, there is a lingering question:
Shammond, what in the world are you doing out here right now? The rest of your team is gone. You've got an early flight in the morning. And you're on the Smith Center court playing one-on-one with Nate Britt. So, uh, no offense, but why are you here?
“Hey,” he says, “I'm just doing my part.”
