Lucas: Telling Stories

By Adam Lucas

In the last few days, we've been telling Eric Montross stories.

We've talked to our kids about them and we've talked to his kids about them. We have talked about car rides and snowstorms and photo shoots and hugs and of course we have talked about Big Grits.

And just now, as I was thinking about it, is the first time I realized this: we never talked about basketball.

Eric Montross died Sunday night, surrounded by the family that loved him—that loves him—so much. I don't know how many sentences I have written. Millions, surely. That is the most unbelievable one, and it isn't close.

This is stunning, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching news. It is OK to be shocked, because it is shocking. If you can, though, try not to let the jolt of the moment overshadow who this person is.

I have spent most of the past 20 years traveling to games and random places with Eric Montross. At those places, from Maui to Spokane to Starkville, someone would inevitably approach him with the exact same question. It got to the point that we could spot them in advance. You could just see them processing the opportunity in their head, and you knew what was coming:

"Do you remember when your head was bloody that time against Duke?"

He would be unfailingly polite to them. This had been an indelible moment for them, and he would kindly let them share their memories of the 1992 Carolina-Duke game. Maybe they were in the Smith Center that night and rushed the court, or maybe they watched it at home, or maybe they listened to Woody Durham at some outpost around the world while a loved one in Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast range pressed a phone to the radio.

I get it. I was in the Smith Center that night. My parents let me run on the court. I remember it vividly today, 31 years later. There wasn't a moment on that night that I dreamed that one day I'd get to be friends with the big guy who made it possible. Does Superman even have friends? Don't they just live on another planet with other extraordinary beings?

I don't remember exactly where. But I do remember that one time when another bloody head game person walked away, Eric smiled that big grin and said, "I'm really glad it was such a big deal for them. But it was kind of a big deal for me, too, and do they really think they remember and I don't?"

It was the only time in his entire life I ever heard Eric admit that anything he did was kind of a big deal. Whether on the basketball court or at UNC Children's Hospital or at home with his beloved family, there was never an acknowledgment that anything extraordinary had happened. We were all just supposed to pretend that this seven-foot man was normal, even as things happened that made it very clear that he absolutely was not (Have you ever tried to rent a car with a seven foot human being? It is a little more complex than just, "Got anything available?").

But in Chapel Hill, as the impact of he and Laura accumulated, something weird happened. People stopped asking him about the bloody head game.

Maybe everyone in the crowd of 21,572 had already told him their story. That's entirely possible. There had been so many.

But I think it was something else. The stories people told him weren't often about basketball anymore. They were about the Father's Day basketball camp and Be Loud! Sophie and the Children's Hospital or how kind he had been to one of their children.

This is not an exaggeration: There may be no one as universally loved in Chapel Hill in so many different ways and in so many different places as Eric Montross. At the Smith Center, sure, where he played on national television so often and his jersey is in the rafters and we all think, when we are there, that these two hours when people try to shoot a ball in a hoop are the most important thing that could ever happen.

Please don't misunderstand. It matters. In these last few hours, I have been looking back at my texts with Eric, smiling at some and crying at others. And there is a healthy dose of every single Tar Heel anywhere in those texts. We may not have all been seven feet tall or been drafted by the Celtics. But we've all been this guy from these texts during a game just a few days—just a few freaking days—ago:

"My man Jalen. Go get em big fella."

"Ingram—I like him."

"That was a bullshit foul."

So understand this: Eric cared deeply about being a Tar Heel, and about Tar Heel basketball, and about Carolina as a whole.

It's just that he realized, way before the rest of us, that life continued when the lights turned off in the Smith Center. And that's why he was beloved in a way that normal people aren't in places far beyond a basketball court.

There will be people in tears this morning who don't care about basketball. There will be people in tears who don't like the Tar Heels. And that's the most important thing you could know about Eric. He was—he is—so much more than basketball.

In 2017, I found out—not from the source, of course—that Luke Maye had been paying regular visits to a UNC Children's Hospital patient named Yash, including a surreptitious visit the day after Maye's unforgettable shot against Kentucky.

It seemed like a gesture Eric would appreciate, and I mentioned it to him. It turned out he was the one who had introduced Luke and Yash. Of course he was. Why would anyone ever expect otherwise?

Eric never thought about a legacy. In that way, he was the embodiment of Dean Smith's admonition, "You should never be proud of doing the right thing. You should just do the right thing."

But if he had pondered his legacy, he would have known that it can be shooting a jump hook or winning a title or playing in the NBA. Eric did all those things.

It would have made him much happier to know that, even now in these stunning first few hours, his legacy is just as much, "Eric helped me get involved with the Hospital," as it is, "Eric made some baskets."

Think about that. He won a national title and was one of the very few people on earth to have a long career playing professional basketball…and it won't be the top line that so many people think about today.

Eric Montross family photo 2022 Father's Day camp — Andrew, Sarah, Eric & Laura Montross at his Father's Day camp

In the last few months, we've been collecting videos and written messages to share with the entire Montross family as they supported him during his treatment. There were big names that you know, but also names that you don't. Teammates, but also some competitors. Basketball people, but also non-sports people. There were even…yes…there were even Duke fans.

They all had one thing in common—every single one of them dropped what they were doing to be part of it, to take a few minutes to wish Eric well, because he meant that much to them. And reading through those messages now, not one person mentions a single shot on a basketball court.

Two months ago, Eric's son got engaged. Eric wanted to be there, of course, because Eric always wanted to be there. One of the first ways we got close was during the 2005 NCAA Tournament run, because we both had young kids and wanted to be home with them while also following the Tar Heels. So we tracked late night and early morning flights, and we shuttled between Chapel Hill and Charlotte and Syracuse and St. Louis, pumping our fists while we watched Roy Williams and Sean May and Raymond Felton at night and then pouring the cereal at our respective breakfast tables the next morning with kids who at that age cared very little about the games.

The engagement happened at the Smith Center. During the preparations, Laura asked a seemingly innocuous question: "Is there somewhere we can hide Eric until it happens?"

Have you ever tried to hide Eric Montross? Even in a building the size of the Smith Center, it is not easy. He came walking in that morning, looking absolutely blissful. He was getting to make a memory with his kids, one of his favorite activities in the entire world.

We stashed him along with the rest of the family at the top of the lower level, in a booth where they could see but not be seen. And when the question was asked, and the answer was yes, there came a huge roar, with one unmistakable sound very clearly coming through above everything else:

Eric Montross, cheering and clapping and almost giddy.

We stood around that morning, and it felt like no one wanted to leave. Word soon circulated that Eric Montross was in the building, so numerous people stopped by. He showed them pictures of the engagement and bragged just a little on his kids and gave out big, giant hugs and talked about preseason practice.

His daughter, who officially graduated from Carolina on Sunday, watched him do what he always does, which is make sure everyone else gets their moment with no regard for himself. She's been there for every day of the last nine months, from the defiant first few days to the agonizing last few days. She knew the signs. He had taken care of her for her entire life. And now, she'd learned how to do the same for him.

"OK," she said, "we need to get Daddy home now."

She was gentle, because she is her mother's daughter. But she eventually persuaded everyone that it was time to go, that the joy could continue at home. She walked out of the Smith Center with her father, and just before they walked out of the back tunnel, up a ramp to their car, he turned around. And I think he would want you to know what he said, because this is very much him, walking out of that place where all those people had cheered him, where we first got to know him before we realized how much more he was than just the guy who could score points and get rebounds.

What he said was very much him, and it's also very much us, today, as we try to figure out what to do next. Because all six-foot-12 of him turned around, and flashed that big grin.

And he said, "I love all you guys."

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