Lucas: Big Night For Scott

By Adam Lucas

For the last 49 years, Charlie Scott has been well aware that honors bestowed at the whims of others are unpredictable.

It was 1969 when Scott, an All-America selection by both the AP and UPI and the only Atlantic Coast Conference player so chosen, was left off a handful of All-ACC ballots and lost the ACC Player of the Year award to South Carolina's John Roche.

Scott went on to collect numerous other awards; he was an Academic All-America pick, ACC Athlete of the Year, and his jersey hangs in the Smith Center rafters. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics and enjoyed a decade-long professional career.

But he wasn't sitting by his phone waiting on a call from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame because, well, that was up to other people. In fact, he didn't even know he was being considered for induction until he received a telephone call this spring.

"At first, I thought it was a friend playing a joke on me," Scott said this week from Springfield, Mass., where he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight. "I was shocked. I had absolutely no idea I was being considered."

Just two weeks ago, Scott was in Chapel Hill for the two-day basketball reunion. The festivities in Springfield this week will be yet another reunion of sorts, as numerous friends and family will attend the event. Among his presenters at the ceremony will be Tar Heel Hall of Famers Roy Williams, Larry Brown and James Worthy, and several other Carolina teammates and friends will be in attendance. Phil Ford will be there, and so will Vicki Lotz, the wife of former UNC assistant coach John Lotz—the coach sent by Dean Smith to Laurinburg on a recruiting trip who was Scott's first-ever recruiting contact with the Tar Heels.

Scott didn't grow up fantasizing of being a Hall of Famer, saying that type of wild dream was beyond his reach as a child in Harlem. But he knows that Smith would be enjoying this week. "This is something that Coach Smith would have wanted for me," he said. "He would be loving this."

The high-scoring guard, who is one of only two Tar Heels (Lennie Rosenbluth is the other) to surpass 2,000 career points in three Carolina seasons, knows he already had a special place in Chapel Hill. This season, there will undoubtedly be fathers in the Smith Center explaining to their children the significance of the name "Charlie Scott." What would he want them to say?

"I always felt that I had a great responsibility being Coach Smith's first black scholarship athlete," Scott said. "I wanted to set a great example and a very high standard. I hope that when people think of me, they'll think of someone who tried to embody what Carolina Basketball is all about."

Of course, you don't reach the sport's greatest heights without a healthy dose of competitiveness.

Scott will become the tenth Tar Heel to join the sport's most elite club, joining Ben Carnevale, Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, Billy Cunningham, Bob McAdoo, Larry Brown, James Worthy, Roy Williams and Michael Jordan. Asked what it means to see his name beside those luminaries, Scott paused for just a moment and considered that he will enter the Hall tonight alongside Grant Hill and Lefty Driesell, who are joining Christian Laettner (as a member of the 1992 Dream Team) and Mike Krzyzewski as members in Springfield.

"It means," Scott said with a grin, "that we have six more than Duke."

University of North Carolina Athletics

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