Chansky’s Notebook: Long But Loving

The inaugural Dean Smith Award dinner was a bit long but very loving.

The Carolina Club ballroom was packed, every table and nearly every seat sold out. And while it went on so long that Roy Williams had to buy up the last live auction prize – a foursome at Pinehurst No. 2 – so his players in attendance could get to bed, the first Dean Smith Award was given and received a success of stories.

Master of Ceremonies, former coach and current TV analyst Bill Raftery got laughter when he poked fun at Jay Bilas and Dookie Vitale, but like all the speakers he waxed poetic about Smith, the legendary late UNC basketball coach whose off the court contributions prompted creation of the award.

Scott Smith, Dean’s son, called his father a change agent who did so many things for people without being asked . . . because it was the right thing to do. Williams said he regretted not telling Smith, I love you, but told charter recipient and former Georgetown coach John Thompson that he loved him and reminded Thompson that Coach Smith did, too.

When Thompson, the 74-year-old 6-10 giant with failing legs, was helped to his seat at the podium, he rambled on but made some salient points about what Dean Smith taught him from the day they met back in 1970. Early in his coaching career, Thompson would point to his head when his player made a mistake, and Smith told him not to do that because fans will think that player is not smart.

He recalled one late-night phone call with Smith when he spent the good part of an hour getting some stuff off his chest and then asked his mentor why he hadn’t said anything back. “You’ll be all right,” Smith told Thompson, “because you are blaming yourself and not your players.”

And Thompson certainly was all right, winning 569 games and the 1984 national championship and fighting culturally biased rules like the old Prop 48 that made less qualified players ineligible as freshmen. He also learned from Smith that “love” was an action, not a word, and that action was how you treated someone who you supposedly loved. “Don’t tell me you love me, show me,” Thompson said, echoing Smith.

These two kindred spirits, the big black man from Washington, D.C., and the short Midwestern Kansas point guard, met for the 1982 NCAA championship in New Orleans. “I can’t lose this one,” Smith told Roy Williams before the game. “If we win, great. If we lose, I will be happy that one of my best friends won.”