Super-star athlete Charlie Shaffer was the original Dean disciple.
The Durham native died a week ago after a 10-year battle with progressive dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Just like Dean Smith, for whom Shaffer played basketball in the early 1960s, his cause of death was particularly cruel because he had the sharpest of minds.
His fame as a litigator and sports impresario grew in Atlanta, where he went right after graduating from UNC law school in 1967. Shaffer was a key figure in luring the 1996 Olympic Games to the city along with its first Super Bowl and first two Final Fours.
He never forgot his North Carolina or UNC roots. His torrid schedule that also included non-profit work with autism, could not keep him from an appointed trip to Chapel Hill to watch basketball or football, the other sport Shaffer played for the Tar Heels.
He supported and served the Alumni Association and the Rams Club, and donations since his death are being directed to the UNC scholarship fund in his name and that of his family. All his fellow Tar Heels remember this wonderful man and giant of an athlete in the ilk of Danny Talbott, who passed away last year. But because Shaffer became an influencer in Atlanta, that city owns him as much as we do.
After he finished the football season, Shaffer joined the basketball program and was a guard on Smith’s first three teams after he succeeded Frank McGuire. That meant he played on Smith’s only losing team in 1962. But when sophomore Billy Cunningham joined senior Larry Brown on the 1962-63 Tar Heels, Shaffer was one of the first players to truly recognize the brilliance of Carolina’s new coach.
It happened in the game at heavily favored Kentucky in December, when Smith sent Brown into the middle of the new Four Corners offense they had honed at practice and called for a box and one with Yogi Poteet shutting down Kentucky All-American forward Cotton Nash and Adolph Rupp’s Wildcats.
After the 68-66 upset, Shaffer told Smith, “That was the greatest game of basketball anyone has ever coached.” And he stuck to that favorite performance despite seeing more than 800 other wins.
1962 The Chanticleer ( Duke University, yearbook) — UNC 42 Charlie Shaffer, Duke 20 Jack Mullen
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