Dean Edwards Smith coached his first UNC basketball team in the fall of 1961, my first year at Chapel Hill. His team eventually finished 8-9, recording Smith’s only losing season at Carolina. I flunked both French and mathematics in my own first semester, spending way too much time worrying about whether Smith would flunk out completely.

Somehow during that season, smart as I clearly was, I decided to sign a letter to the Daily Tar Heel questioning Smith’s skills as a basketball coach. A few weeks later, I got a phone call at the fraternity house. It was Smith, asking if I would mind visiting his office. I didn’t want to go, of course, figuring I might be banned from Woollen Gym for the rest of my life.

Smith was 30, I barely 18. I shook hands with him, sat down, and waited. Then, this still-young man asked me about the idea of “loyalty.” He went on to say that he wasn’t referring to loyalty to him necessarily, but loyalty as a concept that might come in handy as life moved on.  He did, however, ask for a better chance to win basketball games than he’d been given by me and a few fraternity boys.

Frankly, I had never thought much about loyalty up to then, but I gave it plenty of thought during a long walk across campus to 200 West Cameron. After all, Smith wasn’t talking to me about absolute loyalty; he was only urging that people always consider loyalty as a first option.

I have not fully lived up to the Dean Smith loyalty standard since that first meeting. But he has always made me at least think about it, and you can be damned sure I was nowhere near Woollen Gym the night those bastards hung their effigy in 1965.

***

The game against Georgetown in New Orleans, it seems to me, is the most important game in UNC basketball history. A case can be made for Kansas City in 1957, but never have so many people in so many places cared so much about one coach as was the case that night. That’s the tie-breaker.

I was there with my 10-year-old son, 25 years since my mother had sent me to Kansas City. That just made the pressure worse. It seems a little silly now as we look back, but Carolina winning that Monday night seemed to be the most important thing in the world to a lot of people who ought to know better.

That said, time seemed to freeze when Jordan put up The Shot. The Superdome suddenly seemed to go dead silent. Most of the following 10 minutes are blurred.

One thing we know is that Dean Smith had very little to say afterward and most of that was about his opposing coach and friend, John Thompson. We know Smith embraced point guard Jimmy Black, who had said time and again how much he wanted this for his coach.

Young Alfred and I were standing a few feet from the late Hugh Morton when Hugh took the incredible photo of Coach Smith, Rick Brewer, an exhausted James Worthy and a pensive Black as they waited to speak to the media. They were not even talking to each other.

Twenty minutes later, the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter was a madhouse. The team hotel’s lobby was packed with nearly-hysterical fans. Everywhere you heard, “We did it for Dean, we finally did it for Dean.” Outside on the sidewalk, team “house mother” Lil Lee wept and kissed each player coming off the team bus.

Somewhere in the night, Coach Smith was having dinner, surely with family and maybe a friend or two. I am certain he was happy for all of us, but he simply did not need to be there.

***

In the waning season of 1982-83, the defending national champion was on its way to winning 18 straight games. I did something I had never done; I visited the Carolina basketball office and asked if I could get two game tickets, so my parents could actually see UNC play in person.

Long story here, but my late mother was the real fan. She cared about Dean Smith, Carolina basketball and the Boston Red Sox. She was also very quiet about it and had her own game rituals. She would retreat to a small bedroom and listen alone to the Heels on a white clock radio. I can’t remember ever seeing her watch a game on television, and she had never attended one.

I wanted to end that. Soon, a nice note arrived in the mail from Coach Smith’s office, saying I could get the tickets at Will Call. They would be for the awaited second matchup with Virginia and Ralph Sampson. Carolina had earlier snapped a 34-game Virginia home winning streak, beating the No. 1-ranked Cavaliers 101-95.

When we walked into Carmichael a week or so later, I was stunned to find the seats on the first row on the arena’s east side, about even with the top of the key. A game program and stat sheets were waiting on each seat. Proud as could be, figuring mission accomplished, I retreated to press row high across the way.

As Carolina finished pre-game warmups, I was stunned to see Coach Smith walk away from his bench, find my parents’ seats and spend perhaps 30 seconds with them. He had no reason whatsoever to do that, other than simply being kind.

About two hours later, Jordan stripped the basketball from Rick Carlisle about 35 feet from my parents and unloaded a windmill slam that sealed a 64-63 victory, in front of a crowd gone nuts.

A few months later, I asked Mom if she would like to see another game in Chapel Hill. Her response went something like this, “No thank you, son. Dean Smith came to talk to me. There’s no reason to go back.”

 

***

In the late winter of 1988, friend and co-writer Art Chansky and I traveled to Kansas to work on some pieces for the Carolina Court publication. Coach Smith had telephoned his quite elderly parents and asked that Alfred and Vesta Smith give us some time during a visit to Topeka, Smith’s hometown since his sophomore year in high school.

It was a cold and drab day, but we found a warm and comfortable home. The Smiths plied the road-weary visitors with hot chocolate and spent much of the afternoon sharing memories of their boy made good. Upstairs, they showed us his bedroom, pretty much left the same since young Dean headed to the University of Kansas on an academic scholarship given to veterans’ sons.

As the day waned, Alfred Smith drove me to see the basketball court at Topeka High School, where his son played and where the elder Smith had coached Emporia High School to its single Class A state title.

Smith recalled, “You know, Dean liked football more than anything because he enjoyed diagramming plays. But he felt there were too many players in football and basketball allowed him to be closer to players.”

Smith also told one of the two stories we heard that day that sounded a lot like the coach  later to be known as both a great competitor and a deeply caring man.

“It was a city league baseball game,” his father remembered. “Dean was catching.  He knew a pitch was over the plate and the umpire standing behind him didn’t. So Dean turned around and told him. He got ejected.”

Later, as we readied to leave, Vesta Smith added the second story I remember today. She said of her son, “He was an unselfish boy. He got a 25 cent allowance every week and was supposed to spend some and save some. But he almost always ran out because he was giving the extra to his buddies.”

***

Eight years ago, I was privileged to spend nearly two hours alone with Coach Smith, interviewing him in his post-coaching cubby-hole of an office somewhere in the Smith Center. As every reporter who covered him knows, he always played his cards close to the vest. I am not sure he was ever comfortable with the media. The attention looked and felt too much like self-absorption, and he didn’t like that. That, of course, is just my opinion.

On this day, 75 then and 10 years away from the job, he was reflecting. He admitted to learning some lessons late, and repeated some opinions long held. Among those he shared:

  • “When I was coaching, I never understood fans who said they were nervous during games, but now I understand. When you’re coaching, you face one decision after another. You never really have a chance to be nervous.”
  • “I would rather watch the team play now on television, instead of in person. That allows me to be alone and it is much easier for me to take notes.”
  • “Coaching the Olympic (1976) team is the first time I ever talked directly about winning as a goal. We were there to do one thing, win the gold medal…I’m sorry the decision was later made to put professionals on the Olympic team.”
  • “We need to lengthen the collegiate 3-point shot. My major concern is not just that players can easily make it; it’s the shot’s negative impact on learning fundamentals.”
  • On physical play: “The officials still aren’t calling anything, especially away from the ball…They make a few calls early in the season but it’s all back to the same story by January and February.”

 

Much of the remaining time was spent on things that had no place in the piece I was writing. He even asked me about my son, whose high school team had completed a 31-0 season on the Smith Center court 17 years before. He didn’t ask me about being loyal, thank goodness.

It would be our last meeting, 45 years since our first, and one of the last before there would be no more interviews at all.