Dean Smith North Carolina

Dean Smith had played at Kansas on the national championship team of 1952 for Phog Allen, a Hall of Fame coach who himself had played under James Naismith at Kansas from 1905 to 1907. James Naismith, of course, was the person who invented basketball in Springfield, MA in 1892. Dean Smith was the son of a high school coach and a 3-sport high school athlete who decided at an early point he wanted to go into coaching and teaching as well. Unlike most coaches, however, Smith had wide ranging intellectual interests and active social concerns regarding political affairs. Smith was hired by McGuire in 1958 as an assistant at UNC, and as an assistant coach Smith helped integrate a well-known restaurant in Chapel Hill by walking in to eat with a black man.

Smith's teams struggled during his first 4 years as head coach while local rivals Duke enjoyed a period of ascendancy, and in 1965 the coach was hung in effigy outside Woolen Gym, then Carolina's home court. That incident marked a turning point of sorts–Smith's players, including future Hall of Famer Billy Cunnigham, rallied to Smith's defense, and Carolina beat highly rated Duke in the following game, then went on to finish 2nd in the ACC. The following fall, an impressive 5 man recruiting class, including 6-10 center Rusty Clark, arrived on campus to ensure Carolina would be back among the elite and that Smith would be around for a while. Between 1967 and 1969, North Carolina under Smith won 3 straight ACC regular season titles, ACC Tournaments, and made 3 Final Four appearances, losing twice in the semifinals and once in the Final to Kareem and UCLA. In 1967-68, Carolina fielded the first big-time black basketball player in the ACC, guard Charles Scott marking a watershed in the development of the sport in the ACC area.

This success continued into the 1970s, and after briefly being overtaken by N.C. State and Maryland, the arrival of star point guard Phil Ford in 1974-75 cemented Carolina's status as the top program in the ACC and one of the top powers in the nation. Carolina won the ACC Tournament 5 times between 1975 and 1982, and in 1975 began a record streak of 27 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. In 1976, Dean Smith coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in the Montreal summer Olympics–4 Carolina players were on the team, headlined by Ford. In 1982, Carolina won its first national title under Smith as freshman Michael Jordan hit a game-winning shot against Georgetown.

Carolina's success did not come simply in terms of wins and losses, however. First, Carolina developed a reputation for the way they played the game: Smith-coach teams played unselfishly and aimed to shoot a very high percentage, and became known for making the "extra" pass. Carolina was also known for a very aggressive form of a defense known as the "run and jump," which involved using 2 players to surprise a ballhandler into a trap, forcing either a bad pass and creating a fast break, or simply taking the opposition out of their normal rhythm. Smith's teams pioneered the use of foul line huddles in games, and developed the habit of pointing to the passer who delivered the assist after a made basket on the way down court. Most famously, Smith devised a delay offense known as the "Four Corners" which was used to salt away victories in close games (there was no shot clock in college basketball until 1986). When run by an outstanding point guard such as Ford, it was almost impossible for opponents to come from behind against the Four Corners.

Yet, at the same time, Carolina under Smith showed an incredible knack for winning close games or coming from behind themselves: in 1974, Carolina defeated Duke after trailing by 8 points with 17 seconds to play–in the day before the 3 point line! Carolina's success in such situations were a result of hyper-detailed practice planning and preparation for every conceivable situation: Carolina basketball practices were organized down to the minute. This was rationalization of sports to the ultimate degree–and it worked. Over time, North Carolina basketball developed a reputation for being well-coached, unselfish, displaying incredible teamwork, and incredible self-belief.

These traits reflected Smith's off-court philosophy: While Smith ran the program as a benign dictator, he developed a reputation for taking a sincere and serious interest in the well-being of his players, even long after they left Chapel Hill. Each player was treated equally, from stars to the walk-on at the end of the bench; indeed, the official team statistics for UNC listed the players in alphabetical order, rather than in order of scoring average, the normal practice at most schools. Smith spent many hours each week corresponding with former players and acting as an adviser on professional and personal matters, and in the process began to create what became known as the "Carolina family," namely a network of ex-players united in loyalty to Smith and to his program. To take one example: throughout his NBA career, Michael Jordan wore a pair of UNC practice shorts underneath his uniform for the Bulls and Wizards as a way of holding on to his connection to UNC. The sense that ex-players never really went away became a defining trait of Carolina basketball. That loyalty in turn stemmed in appreciation for Smith's role as not only a teacher of basketball but as someone who imparted valuable life lessons: respect your teammates, being on time, playing unselfishly, learning how to criticize actions without criticizing people personally, working hard, being prepared.

The stability in the program did not consist only of Smith: Assistant Bill Guthridge, another Kansas native, joined the program from Kansas State in 1967 and remained for 31 years as assistant before taking over as head coach. Four other assistants–three former players plus former JV player Roy Williams-- had tenures lasting at least 10 years each. The office staff–secretaries–also remained in place for 20-plus years, with the secretaries playing the role of den mother to both current and former players.

At the same time, the "ethos" associated with Carolina basketball became internalized by large segments of the fan base: that is, for an increasing number of Carolina fans, what they appreciated most about the team was not just the winning, but the sense that in an often sordid business, Carolina represented the "good guys," or "the right way to do thing." Here was an elite program with a graduation rate of over 90%, with a Coach who did not cuss and did not berate his players in public, who taught his players an appreciation for detail and precise execution, and who obviously commanded tremendous loyalty from the people around him. Carolina basketball fans in all sincerity came to believe that a win for Carolina on the court symbolized a victory for class, integrity, and decency off the court.

For many fans, too, especially in Chapel Hill, appreciation of Smith had a political dimension as well. Smith in North Carolina during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s was first and foremost a coaching icon, but he was also a political icon–the state's best known liberal. Over the course of his career Smith had taken public stands against Vietnam, on behalf of a nuclear freeze, and against the death penalty–indeed, Smith would conduct one practice every 3-4 seasons at a state prison, which he thought benefitted both the prisoners and the players. Smith became revered by Chapel Hill liberals as the antidote to reactionary senator Jesse Helms–and for a time Smith's named was floated as a possible Senate candidate. Moreover, and this is one of the hard things for outsiders to understand, in Chapel Hill and in the UNC community, Smith was not just revered as a coach by the kind of people who normally revere coaches–alumni, students, etc. He was also held in reverence and awe by most members of the UNC faculty, and was regarded not as just another jock coach, but as a teacher par excellence and as a moral leader, someone whose intelligence and opinions you took very seriously. When Dean Smith spoke in Chapel Hill, everyone listened.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, then, Carolina basketball was one of the most stable and successful programs in American sports; it had a devoted fan base among alumni, Chapel Hill residents, and sports fans more generally; and it hard a strong and well-defined ethos, or sense of what the program was about. At the same time, however, the college game itself was undergoing an ever-increasing process of professionalization and commercialization, as evidenced most dramatically by the growing influence of television.

Carolina basketball itself evolved into a multi-million dollar operation, with fairly lavish recruiting budgets and coaching expense accounts–all of which remained affordable so long as Carolina kept winning and winning, and generating income from the NCAA Tournament, attendances, shoe contracts, and private donors. But more money and more exposure also meant, and continues to mean, ever-increasing levels of scrutiny for the program: today, in addition to the local newspaper and media coverage, there are two successful print publications exclusively devoted to Carolina sports, each of which also has large Internet sites, two additional web sites which cover UNC on a regular basis, as well as numerous recruiting publications which give reports on every development in recruiting. Yet, even amidst this growing commercialization and heightened scrutiny-- Smith's approach to teaching the game and maintaining a sense of family remained at the core of the operation, and he was able to maintain his way of doing things up until retirement in 1997.