University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati
Lucas: Family Traditions
April 2, 2021 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
On the day after, a look at what's next.
By Adam Lucas
On Thursday afternoon, I had made the very mature decision that I was completely cried out, that it was time to straighten up and act like an adult. It had been a more emotional day than I expected. I remember going to see the movie "Field of Dreams" in the theater with my dad, and when we left I teased him about tearing up at the end when Kevin Costner has a catch with his dad.
He just looked at me incredulously. "How could you not cry during that scene?" he asked.
That's how I felt about Roy Williams' retirement. This was someone who had been an integral part of nearly two decades of my life, and that period of time was ending. All the wins, all the laughs, all the incredible players and people that he brought into our lives, and it was ending. I wasn't prepared for it.
But now I was ready to be mature. Until, that is, I looked on the podium at the Smith Center. There sat three chairs, one on either side and one in the middle. The one in the middle had a strip of white athletic tape across the back. It was Roy Williams' chair.
Since the very first game of the Williams era, that's how a Carolina manager has signified the head coach's chair. During the course of a game, the organization on the bench can get a little jumbled. It helps to have an easy way to immediately recognize where the head coach is supposed to be, and everyone else falls into place around him. For nearly 20 years, the strip of white tape on the back of the chair has indicated Williams' place. The Smith Center maintenance crew made sure the tape was present on Thursday.
And this was the last time we would see it set up that way in the Smith Center.
Have you ever tried to casually cry while wearing a mask? It is very inconvenient and I do not recommend it, unless you enjoy essentially having a tear reservoir strapped to your ears.
That was the kind of day it had been. The memories stretched all the way back to Williams' very first Carolina team. Now we remember that group as the core of the eventual 2005 national champions. But there were some struggles. It was Jackie Manuel who was the first Tar Heel to unequivocally commit to everything Williams was asking him to do, a pledge that was even more notable because a significant part of Williams' request of the junior was to take fewer—and better—shots.
Manuel visited Williams' office on Thursday before the press conference. "Thank you," Williams told him, "for buying in." There were tears. But also, some great memories, the kind you only get by allowing yourself to be coached, and by coaching.
For the next nearly two decades, Williams never stopped trying to coach his players. At one of his last practices at the Smith Center, Williams became very emotional when trying to explain to his players the importance of buying in, of playing as a team for one common goal. He felt he had struggled to convey that message for the entire season. After one early-season loss, he had tears in his eyes after the game when he said, privately, "It just doesn't feel like I'm reaching them."
So it might mean something, then, for Williams to hear this from Garrison Brooks. Thinking back over that last challenging 2020-21 season, the Tar Heel senior said this: "We will never have a more competitive and caring coach than him. He is a man who brought the same energy and passion every day about getting us better as a basketball team. The lessons he taught will carry me throughout my life on and off the basketball court."
If Thursday was difficult, Friday dawned similarly painfully. It felt like the morning after one of those excruciating losses, when there's that moment of blissful unawareness and then you recall that yesterday actually happened.
I woke up this morning and Roy Williams is not the head coach of the University of North Carolina basketball team, and if we can't rely on that to be the truth, then what else in this world can you count on?
But there are smiles somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina this morning, where Roy and Wanda Williams escaped late on Thursday night. And maybe even a little hope. As in, at some point in the very near future, I hope some poor unfortunate volunteer dad coach in Charlotte Little League walks to the home plate meeting the day that he's facing Aiden or Court Williams' team and the opposing head coach is Roy Freaking Williams.
It's going to be OK, eventually. OK for him and OK for us. It won't be the same. It never could be. And his life is going to change dramatically, and he's going to ache on the first day of practice in the fall of 2021 when he doesn't get to walk to center court and blow the whistle.
But he is needed in other places. Remember that Williams lost his father-in-law this season, the man who he says set the standard for how to be a grandfather. That type of fundamental life change can make you ponder your own impact. As hard as this is for those of us to hear who would have been content with Roy Williams on the Tar Heel sideline forever, he's done it. There is an argument to be made (Coach, avert your eyes) that he has done it better than anyone who has ever coached basketball in Chapel Hill.
Maybe now there are other things for him to do.
Easter has always been one of his favorite holidays. His Easter egg hunts for children Scott and Kimberly were legendary among the duo's friends (find the right egg, and you might find crisp dollar bills stuffed inside). That tradition has continued now that both kids have their own children, and it stops for nothing. That's why, on the morning of the regional final in 2016, Roy Williams could be found hiding eggs on the streets of Philadelphia. The family will do it again this weekend, this time closer to home, with no deadlines, no looming tip-off times.
It must have been incredibly odd when a lifelong coach woke up on Friday and remembered that he is not—officially, at least—a basketball coach. What happens when you've finished the one job that you were indisputably, perfectly, meant to do?
Maybe, if you're lucky, you start doing the other thing you were indisputably, perfectly, meant to do.
Starting today, Roy Williams doesn't have to be a recruiter. He doesn't have to be a coach. He just has to be a grandfather. There is no film to watch or calls to return. But there are eggs to hide.
It's going to be a good weekend.
On Thursday afternoon, I had made the very mature decision that I was completely cried out, that it was time to straighten up and act like an adult. It had been a more emotional day than I expected. I remember going to see the movie "Field of Dreams" in the theater with my dad, and when we left I teased him about tearing up at the end when Kevin Costner has a catch with his dad.
He just looked at me incredulously. "How could you not cry during that scene?" he asked.
That's how I felt about Roy Williams' retirement. This was someone who had been an integral part of nearly two decades of my life, and that period of time was ending. All the wins, all the laughs, all the incredible players and people that he brought into our lives, and it was ending. I wasn't prepared for it.
But now I was ready to be mature. Until, that is, I looked on the podium at the Smith Center. There sat three chairs, one on either side and one in the middle. The one in the middle had a strip of white athletic tape across the back. It was Roy Williams' chair.
Since the very first game of the Williams era, that's how a Carolina manager has signified the head coach's chair. During the course of a game, the organization on the bench can get a little jumbled. It helps to have an easy way to immediately recognize where the head coach is supposed to be, and everyone else falls into place around him. For nearly 20 years, the strip of white tape on the back of the chair has indicated Williams' place. The Smith Center maintenance crew made sure the tape was present on Thursday.
And this was the last time we would see it set up that way in the Smith Center.
Have you ever tried to casually cry while wearing a mask? It is very inconvenient and I do not recommend it, unless you enjoy essentially having a tear reservoir strapped to your ears.
That was the kind of day it had been. The memories stretched all the way back to Williams' very first Carolina team. Now we remember that group as the core of the eventual 2005 national champions. But there were some struggles. It was Jackie Manuel who was the first Tar Heel to unequivocally commit to everything Williams was asking him to do, a pledge that was even more notable because a significant part of Williams' request of the junior was to take fewer—and better—shots.
Manuel visited Williams' office on Thursday before the press conference. "Thank you," Williams told him, "for buying in." There were tears. But also, some great memories, the kind you only get by allowing yourself to be coached, and by coaching.
For the next nearly two decades, Williams never stopped trying to coach his players. At one of his last practices at the Smith Center, Williams became very emotional when trying to explain to his players the importance of buying in, of playing as a team for one common goal. He felt he had struggled to convey that message for the entire season. After one early-season loss, he had tears in his eyes after the game when he said, privately, "It just doesn't feel like I'm reaching them."
So it might mean something, then, for Williams to hear this from Garrison Brooks. Thinking back over that last challenging 2020-21 season, the Tar Heel senior said this: "We will never have a more competitive and caring coach than him. He is a man who brought the same energy and passion every day about getting us better as a basketball team. The lessons he taught will carry me throughout my life on and off the basketball court."
If Thursday was difficult, Friday dawned similarly painfully. It felt like the morning after one of those excruciating losses, when there's that moment of blissful unawareness and then you recall that yesterday actually happened.
I woke up this morning and Roy Williams is not the head coach of the University of North Carolina basketball team, and if we can't rely on that to be the truth, then what else in this world can you count on?
But there are smiles somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina this morning, where Roy and Wanda Williams escaped late on Thursday night. And maybe even a little hope. As in, at some point in the very near future, I hope some poor unfortunate volunteer dad coach in Charlotte Little League walks to the home plate meeting the day that he's facing Aiden or Court Williams' team and the opposing head coach is Roy Freaking Williams.
It's going to be OK, eventually. OK for him and OK for us. It won't be the same. It never could be. And his life is going to change dramatically, and he's going to ache on the first day of practice in the fall of 2021 when he doesn't get to walk to center court and blow the whistle.
But he is needed in other places. Remember that Williams lost his father-in-law this season, the man who he says set the standard for how to be a grandfather. That type of fundamental life change can make you ponder your own impact. As hard as this is for those of us to hear who would have been content with Roy Williams on the Tar Heel sideline forever, he's done it. There is an argument to be made (Coach, avert your eyes) that he has done it better than anyone who has ever coached basketball in Chapel Hill.
Maybe now there are other things for him to do.
Easter has always been one of his favorite holidays. His Easter egg hunts for children Scott and Kimberly were legendary among the duo's friends (find the right egg, and you might find crisp dollar bills stuffed inside). That tradition has continued now that both kids have their own children, and it stops for nothing. That's why, on the morning of the regional final in 2016, Roy Williams could be found hiding eggs on the streets of Philadelphia. The family will do it again this weekend, this time closer to home, with no deadlines, no looming tip-off times.
It must have been incredibly odd when a lifelong coach woke up on Friday and remembered that he is not—officially, at least—a basketball coach. What happens when you've finished the one job that you were indisputably, perfectly, meant to do?
Maybe, if you're lucky, you start doing the other thing you were indisputably, perfectly, meant to do.
Starting today, Roy Williams doesn't have to be a recruiter. He doesn't have to be a coach. He just has to be a grandfather. There is no film to watch or calls to return. But there are eggs to hide.
It's going to be a good weekend.
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