Bill Guthridge: The No. 1 No. 2

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on February 10, 1996.

He is to Dean Smith what Ed McMahon was to Johnny Carson.

Robin to Batman.

Tonto to that masked man, the Lone Ranger. Perhaps Tonto too could have had his own show.

So could Bill Guthridge.

But thick into his 29th season as Smith's top assistant basketball coach at UNC-Chapel Hill, Guthridge is content being No. 2 and for much of his career fought off temptation - and lucrative offers - to be the head man, the skipper of his own ship, the conductor.

"Leonard Bernstein once said that the most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle," says the Rev. Dave Chadwick of Charlotte, who played basketball at UNC from 1967 to 1971.

"I have a sense Guth knows that. He knows every head man needs a second fiddle. No great general is anything unless he has great lieutenants. And I think he's content to know he's one of the nation's best second fiddles."

In the basketball world, he is. He's helped coach more college basketball victories (754 at UNC; 81 at Kansas State) than any assistant, and his tenure as an assistant is the game's longest.

So isn't it heartening, when society pushes us to claw for the top and subordinate roles are less fashionable, that someone is happy with what he's doing, even in the shadow of greatness?

Guthridge is one.

He is the ultimate company man, working 16-hour days during the season, in by 8:30 a.m. on most days and ready with a full agenda for Smith when he arrives. He does whatever necessary - scheduling planes, making sure the team has enough socks or roaming high school gyms for prospects - so Smith can focus on coaching. Three weeks every June, he runs Smith's basketball camp.

He coaches shooting, and before each practice works with the frontcourt men.

"The way I look at my job is: What can I do to help Dean do his job?" Guthridge says. " . . . Dean coaches everything. This is his program. As assistants we have to look for ways that we can help him because there are just 24 hours in a day and Dean's working 16 or 18 of those hours and there's a lot of things that have to be done."

A fine vinaigrette

On the surface, Smith and Guthridge are like oil and water.

Smith is the outfront guy, the one in expensive suits and Cadillacs and BMWs. He's the basketball program's image, polished and contemporary. There's nothing slick about the bespectacled Guthridge. He's unassuming in blazers, tweeds or Carolina blue suede. He drives Pontiac Bonnevilles, has for 20 years even after a dealer offered him a Mercedes.

He's the straight man. You've seen him, clutching several pieces of paper folded in thirds or gently patting a player on the shoulder as he comes out of the game for a rest, while Smith dances and waves his arms as he works over a ref or shouts his nasal instructions.

But they're a match, right down to their Kansas blood and heartland upbringings. The way they swallow certain words like "interesting" (it comes out "innersting"). Their knack for saying a lot but providing only rare intimate glimpses of themselves.

Smith may be the one in the TV eye, while Guthridge sits on the edge, but when victory is secure, Smith always reaches over to Guthridge for a handshake.

"He is a great balance for coach Smith," says Kansas head coach Roy Williams, a former Smith assistant. "He fits in. He cares. He has a great feel for what an opposing team might be doing to prepare for Carolina.

"And he's fantastic for the players. He's another example of someone not just concerned about points and rebounds."

Smith says over the years Guthridge has discovered "great prospects" that no one else noticed, and made game-saving suggestions.

Still his greatest imprint on the program may be continuity.

Players leave, and other assistants - like Williams, Eddie Fogler (at the University of South Carolina) and Larry Brown (of the NBA's Indiana Pacers) - have gone to high-paying head coaching jobs.

But for three decades Guthridge has been one of the few constants in Smith's revolving door.

"There is a perfect marriage working here," says Bishop McDuffie, a student manager in the 1970s who has stayed close to the basketball program as headmaster of Laurinburg Institute.

"There is so much money and influence involved in that level of basketball there. And to remain supportive to a personality that is so visible and so powerful and to stay in that position year after year - through all the basketball camps and all the recruiting trips - is a tribute to the man's real sense of his own identity. So many other people would have to be seen. Coach Guthridge is content to remain just behind the door.

"That's his real character: This is a guy who is real secure of what he's doing and who he is."

Happy? Don't worry

The itch for his own team almost took him away in 1978.

Penn State's basketball program was in the dumper, and hired Guthridge to rebuild it.

As Smith's teams prospered, Guthridge became a hot property. He'd already turned down Utah State in 1973, and the following year, Arkansas.

Four years later, he said yes to Penn State, after a hard sell from one of his heroes, football coach Joe Paterno.

Guthridge then flew to Tempe, Ariz., where the Tar Heels lost All-America guard Phil Ford's last college game to San Francisco in the NCAA tournament.

"Be sure to tell the players you're leaving so they don't read it in the papers," Smith told Guthridge. As Ford pulled off his sweat-soaked jersey, tears falling, Guthridge gnawed on the prospects of leaving Chapel Hill - and Smith - and couldn't.

He was due at Penn State for a news conference, but decided to check his bags as far as Chicago and settle his quandary on the flight. Late that night, the phone rang in Smith's hotel room: "Dean, this is Bill, my bags are on their way to Chapel Hill."

"I felt I had the best job in college basketball, and I feel I still do," Guthridge says. "My goal had been to be a head coach. But I came to the realization when I was ready to leave: Why leave?' The family loves Chapel Hill and the university, and I had everything going for me.

" . . . I decided then that if I stayed I was not going to ever get involved with another job."

So he hasn't.

But sometimes at lunch with Smith and their close friend, the late Dr. Earl Somers, a Chapel Hill psychiatrist, Guthridge would seek free counseling.

"Earl would ask Bill, Are you happy with what you're doing?' and Bill would answer Yes,' " Smith recalls. "And Earl would ask Do you feel you're helping?' and again the answer was yes.

"So don't worry about not being a head coach."

Dream job: Coaching

Now at 58, he appears headed to his ultimate career goal: retiring as a basketball coach.

Few do. The percentage of head coaches who retire as coaches is in the "single digits," he says.

"Maybe if I had taken one of those head coaching jobs I'd be out of coaching now," Guthridge says. "Dean Smith is unusual; very few people retire from coaching. They get tired of it, or can't handle the pressure, or get fired."

Coaching basketball is all he ever wanted to do.

At 5, Bill was mascot of the Parsons (Kan.) High Vikings. He'd sit at the end of the bench, and throw balls to players. His parents, Wallace and Betty, were educators in the little southeastern Kansas town.

He saw his first college game when he was a sophomore guard at Parsons High. His high school coach took the team up to Lawrence to see Kansas play. On the Jayhawk bench was a little-used guard who dated Guthridge's older sister, Joan (pronounced: Jo-Ann).

His name was Dean Smith.

Joan introduced the two that night. Over the years their paths crossed, until the summer of 1967.

Guthridge played guard, mostly a reserve, at Kansas State University in Manhattan, and returned after graduating as coach Tex Winter's assistant. Smith by that time had begun coaching at UNC, and when he visited relatives in Kansas he'd go see Winter.

"Tex was always bragging on Bill, but what he didn't know was that I was taking notes," Smith says. "I knew Bill's family . . . my mother knew his grandfather. He was academically very bright and very personable."

In 1967, Larry Brown, a Smith assistant, quit to play professionally. Smith found Guthridge in Puerto Rico coaching summer basketball. Puerto Rico wanted Guthridge to coach its 1968 Olympic basketball team, but Smith offered Guthridge the job.

He assigned Guthridge, then 29, to coach the freshmen, in those days ineligible to play varsity.

Guthridge quickly showed his players he was a competitor, sometimes reacting to bad calls by tossing his coat on the floor in one sweeping motion and stomping on it, then sitting and chewing an occasional antacid.

The freshman teams from UNC, Duke, Wake Forest and N.C. State played a "Big Four Tournament." His 1967-68 team had less talent than the others, Chadwick says.

But with Guthridge's strategy, the Tar Heels won. "All we had was a bunch of rag tags, and we beat Duke twice and Wake twice," Chadwick says. "All because of coach Guthridge. The man can coach. He could have been a great head coach."

His record coaching the freshmen for six seasons: 75-25.

A sense of humor

What makes Guthridge so endearing is his loyalty and humor. That's right, humor.

He can be funny, not off-color funny - he, like Smith, doesn't cuss - but spontaneous and dry. It makes him a popular speaker at civic clubs, sometimes standing in for Smith.

"Mostly it's junior high stuff," he says. "I enjoy our players and my relationship with them." Like when he appears to be retrieving a ball for a player, but stops and ties his shoes as the ball rolls past. Or when he whistles the opposing team's fight song.

"A lot of times there's a lot of pressure on these 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids," he says, "and I like to try to relieve some of that pressure."

Once Guthridge, Smith and Williams were in an airport, when a rude UNC fan muscled in, and pushed his watch into Guthridge's face.

"See what it says? See what it says? See what it says?" the fan barked. On it was printed "Carolina" and "Go Heels."

Guthridge looked at the watch, then said blankly: "Hmmm, looks like it says 10 after 2."

Outwardly, Guthridge may be mild-mannered, yet inside burns a fire that can turn loyalty into anger.

When a game against Maryland ended in a benches-cleared brawl, Chadwick, the son of a Presbyterian minister, played peacemaker. He pulled warring players apart, patted Maryland players on the back and pleaded for cooler heads.

In the locker room, Guthridge greeted him: "Chad," he said, face reddening, teeth clenching, "when in a fight we do not pat the enemy on the backside."

After 29 years, Guthridge enjoys the anonymity of being second fiddle. "I can still go into the grocery or a high school gym without being noticed where Dean Smith can't." And during the bad seasons, the head coach absorbs all the heat.

Smith says Guthridge could have taken the heat as head coach. "He feels the win/loss as much as the head coach. It bothers him when I'm criticized, more importantly, not me, but the program."

The best job

Dean Smith is 65. The basketball world wonders when he will retire and who'll replace him.

There was a time when Guthridge would have wanted to be a candidate. Not now.

"Not as head coach," he says. "I certainly didn't stay around to have a shot at being Dean's replacement. Not even in the top 10 reasons (for staying). I'd like to stay as assistant.

"I always felt I could do a good job as a head coach, but I really thought that I had the best job. I've enjoyed working with the players we've brought here. And Dean has given me a lot of free reign. I can do about anything I want to and make about any decision I want to."

He pauses, then grins:

"Besides, if I don't want to make it, I can simply say, You have to see Dean, I'm just the assistant coach.' "

This story was originally published May 13, 2015 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Bill Guthridge: The No. 1 No. 2."