Lucas: 879

By Adam Lucas

The amazing thing is not that Dean Smith won 879 basketball games.

The amazing thing is not that Roy Williams won 879 basketball games.

The amazing thing is that, as Tar Heel fans, we got to watch them both.

This being the year 2019 and almost 2020, in the wake of Carolina's win over Yale, some people will feel obligated to argue about which coach is better. The correct answer is that it doesn't matter. From a Carolina perspective, all that matters is that for the vast majority of the last 60 years, we've had the privilege of watching one of the best coaches in college basketball history on the Tar Heel sideline.

Coach Smith had Phil. Coach Williams had Tyler. Coach Smith had eight in 17. Coach Williams had Marvin's shot. Coach Smith had "assists the way we keep them." Coach Williams had "tough little nut."

And we got to see it all.

The story is going to be about the quantity of wins. Eight hundred and seventy-nine of them for both men now, and you can be fairly certain that if Williams had his choice, he'd just stop counting right now, staying on 879, tied with his mentor. But that's not the story. Any coach—any person—can win a certain number of games. It takes no other skill besides basketball genius.

And that's important, don't get me wrong. There are very few people in the history of sports better at being a basketball coach than Dean Smith and Roy Williams. The best thing about being a young Tar Heel fan in the Smith era was that he could prolong your bedtime. "There's only 54 seconds left, Mom!" you'd say. And 12 minutes later Dean Smith would still be calling timeouts and substituting and orchestrating. Williams, perhaps because he came second, has never gotten the appropriate credit for his technical acumen. Everyone likes to believe they could play fast the way he wants his teams to do, or hit the glass the way his teams do. It's just that none of them do.

But what non-Carolina fans often miss is that the win total isn't why the building is named for Dean Smith and the court is named for Roy Williams. What they've done, more than win games, is change lives. It's true. Ask Phil Ford or Walter Davis where they'd be without Dean Smith. Ask Wes Miller or Marvin Williams where they'd be without Roy Williams.

Before he ever coached a single game as Carolina's head coach, Williams said, "I didn't come back here to build a team. I came back here to build a program." The difference is so much more difficult, and so much more important, than most outsiders realize.

The program means Williams is going to give up an off night to fly to Chicago to watch Coby White play for the Bulls. The program means Williams will spend a couple days every summer attending weddings of former players. The program means people, not players, which is exactly why Williams emerged from the Carolina locker room on Monday night with tears in his eyes, because he was concerned about Anthony Harris. Not about Harris' six points and one rebound. But about Harris, the person.

Smith and Williams both have the uncanny ability to lecture a player—sometimes at a very high volume—in practice without ever demeaning him and without the player ever wondering for even a second if it's personal. Think of all they have done. Smith persuaded George Lynch to give up his jumpshooting dreams in favor of rebounding and leading and defending, and Carolina won a title because of it. Williams showed Jackie Manuel not just how to play basketball, but how to win, and Carolina won a title because of it. Those are two stories out of 200. The two men have changed lives, every single year that they've been employed.

So what would you rather do, win 879 games or change one life? Dean Smith and Roy Williams did both.

Dean Smith was known to grab the microphone at Carmichael Auditorium and admonish fans who were waving their arms during an opposing free throw. "We're going to do it the right way here," he would tell the crowd. Just a couple weeks ago, Roy Williams grabbed Virginia's Mamadi Diakite during pregame warmups at John Paul Jones Arena, just to tell him how much he enjoyed watching him play during last year's NCAA Tournament. There were no cameras around, just a coach appreciating the hard work of an opposing player. This many decades later, still trying to do it the right way.

Roy Williams said Smith's son, Scott, told him, "Dad would be really happy," when the pair were at center court after the win over Yale. "I think he would be," Williams added, which is about the closest he'll ever come to giving himself Dean Smith-level credit. Scott Smith and Williams both knew the elder Smith wouldn't care at all about the 879 wins. For years, Smith threatened to retire before he broke Adolph Rupp's then-record as the all-time winningest college coach. Players and former players had to persuade him that the record was really a tribute to all of the players, not to Smith. The stubborn coach finally relented when he saw it that way, and when he won his 877^thgame in the 1997 NCAA Tournament in Winston-Salem, which broke Rupp's mark, it was one of the toughest tickets in Tar Heel basketball history.

After that game, Serge Zwikker forcefully demanded the game ball from an unsavvy security guard, and then Smith sprinted off the court as quickly as possible. After this game, Williams was presented with a framed photo of he and his mentor, and then sprinted off the court as quickly as possible.

"Let's talk about something else," he said in the postgame press conference when two straight questions were about his 879^thvictory.

There is a mistaken belief that Williams is a clone of Smith. That doesn't give either man the proper credit. When you think of Smith, you think of him standing, unflappable, on the sidelines while holding up four fingers. When you think of Williams, you think of him as he was with two minutes left on Monday night, knees bent, fists clinched, imploring his team for one stop. But there is one overwhelming similarity, and virtually all of their players will tell you the exact same thing: they care. It's just that simple, and it's just that difficult. They care in a way that very few people in your life care about you. And that is what has made Carolina basketball different.

Carolina players who make the NBA report that, almost unfailingly, they get one specific question from their non-Tar Heel teammates in the pros: "What is it that you Carolina guys have?" they ask them. They want to know why every city seems to have another Tar Heel family member, why the Carolina players know each other's children, even when they never played together.

The answer is so very simple. We had Dean Smith. And we have Roy Williams. That's what the Carolina guys have. Two individuals who care about a program more than they care about themselves. Everyone else follows, and that is Carolina basketball.

It's an incredibly fortunate time to be a Carolina basketball fan. Our grandfathers went 25 years between the 1957 and 1982 championships, and then our dads saw another 11 years between the 1982 and 1993 titles. We've seen three—three!—NCAA championships in the past 15 seasons. Smith was famously insular with his program. Williams has stretched it out. On Tuesday, on what could be an off day, he'll throw open the doors of the Smith Center and any kid who wants to attend can come to a holiday clinic with the current Tar Heel team. He's raised millions of dollars to fight cancer. He's written more letters than anyone will ever know to Tar Heel fans encountering hard times.

And if you're just the right age, you got to see all of this while having lived the first 20 years of your life knowing no Carolina basketball coach other than Dean Smith. What Williams is cultivating now, Smith planted. No one in college basketball ever—ever—will have the impact of Dean Smith telling his team that Charles Scott was going to join the team, and that he expected his teammates to look out for him. 879 wins is just a footnote to changing the world as we know it.

"The Carolina basketball family," Williams said Monday night, "is the strongest there's ever been and there ever will be. Anybody else can do what they want to do, but I know that ours is the best and the strongest ever."

He knows it. You know it. I know it. And that's why 879 wins is an incredible total. But not even close to the whole story.

Players Mentioned

Anthony Harris

Coby White

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