Chansky's Notebook: Linchpin Years

ACC Tournament, Episode 3, is all about Dean Smith’s maiden years.

The third and fourth installments of the ACC Tournament documentary aired this week on the ACC Network, and Carolina fans have to love the beginning of Smith’s 36-year career as head coach of the Tar Heels. It goes from some students hanging him in effigy in 1965 to Larry Miller and Charlie Scott capping three straight ACC championships Smith won in his 6th, 7th and 8th seasons, the first conference coach to do it.

UNC men’s basketball head coach Dean Smith and assistant coach Roy Williams (sitting, black suit) during the 1982 Final Four. (Photo via UNC Libraries.)

Miller was fantastic, the All-American boy who admitted he “played hard and partied hard.” He hasn’t returned to Chapel Hill much over the years, but his new book and this special will get lots of attention. “I never felt like that any other time in my life,” Miller said with emotion.

Scott’s recruitment as UNC’s first black scholarship athlete captures the heartache and heart throbs his presence created. Dick Grubar, the point guard on those three-in-a-row Tar Heels, shared some wonderful anecdotes, but more on his linchpin Class of 1969 is needed. “Coach Smith said after the first one, ‘Thank you for saving my job,’” Grubar revealed.

The segment ran all the way into the early battles with Maryland and Tom McMillen, who jilted Carolina for College Park at the last minute and was part of Lefty Driesell’s brazen claim to become UCLA of the East.

McMillen’s spot in the lineup for one year was filled by Bob McAdoo, the juco transfer who had grown up in Greensboro. He said he was taken aback by the whiteness of UNC until Smith told him, “I understand about your social situation,” and then added, “If you wanted to date my daughter, I would have no problem with that.”

Can you imagine a white basketball coach saying that to a Black recruit in 1970? McAdoo remembers those words to this day as the “most impressive thing I ever heard from a white man.”

Captain Clutch took over the 1967 @accmbb Tournament and delivered Dean Smith his first ACC title 🏆 @UNC_Basketball

🎥 The Tournament pic.twitter.com/dKmZqq1xoh

— ACC Network (@accnetwork) February 15, 2022

The episode ties up those first 11 years – less than one third – of Smith’s career, with McAdoo leading Carolina over Maryland for the 1972 ACC championship and winning tourney MVP in his hometown. “UCLA of the East!” McAdoo said, smiling. “They weren’t even the North Carolina of the East.”

It includes a little Frank McGuire and South Carolina and ends by teasing the sequel with a picture of David Thompson, whose two-year rivalry with McMillen and Maryland would cover the entire part 4 of this don’t-miss doc.

Anybody who watches it closely understands how Dean Smith brought ACC basketball into the modern era.

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Chansky’s Notebook: Linchpin Years

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