6 moving stories about the great Dean Smith
Dean Smith, the icon of Carolina basketball, passed away Saturday night at age 83. For the last years of his life, Smith battled dementia.
On Sunday, as news of Smith’s death spread, sports writers extolled his remarkable life beyond the basketball court. It made for weepy reading Sunday. Here are some of the best:
Perspective
Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated
“Almost alone among coaches I’ve known, Smith actually preferred to speak to the press in the hours before tip-off. And if that game turned out to be a loss, he got over it quickly — in part because for every loss he could point to roughly three-and-a-half victories (879 all told), but also because he truly understood that a billion people in China didn’t give a damn.”
The Carolina family
Tommy Tomlinson, ESPN – story written about a year ago, while Smith was still alive
“For 36 years as the Tar Heels’ head coach, Dean Smith built a family. …Dean’s most lasting invention was his simplest: When you make a basket, you point to the player who threw the pass. He taught his team, and those who watched, that everyone is connected.
Inside the big Carolina family, he built a smaller family — the players and coaches and staffers who came to see him as a teacher, a guru, a role model, a surrogate dad. They asked his advice on everything from sneaker contracts to marriages. He called on their birthdays and got tickets for their in-laws. He built lifelong bonds.”
The Kiss
Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer
“This was in 2007, in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels were honoring both their 1957 and 1982 national title teams. Just before Smith was introduced, Michael Jordan pulled him close, leaned down and briefly kissed Smith on the side of his head while Smith smiled.
It was sweet and perfect, the sort of thing a parent will do to a well-loved child just before something big is about to happen.
Then Woody Durham thundered: ‘Dean Smith!'”
Racial integration
Richard Goldstein, New York Times
“Smith drew on a moral code implanted by his parents in Depression-era Kansas to break racial barriers in a changing South. While still an assistant at North Carolina, Smith integrated a popular restaurant in Chapel Hill where the basketball team, all white at the time, often ate, accompanying a visiting black theology student for a meal there.
And he recruited Charlie Scott, an outstanding high school forward from New York City, who became the first starring black basketball player in the Atlantic Coast Conference in the late 1960s and an N.B.A. All-Star with the Phoenix Suns.
‘My father said, ‘Value each human being,’ ” Smith recalled in “A Coach’s Life” (1999), written with John Kilgo and Sally Jenkins. ‘Racial justice wasn’t preached around the house, but there was a fundamental understanding that you treated each person with dignity.’ “
Humility
Wolff, Sports Illustrated
“Indeed, Smith despised attitudes of entitlement in any guise. Freshmen carried the video equipment on road trips, and reporters had to wait to speak to them until after their first game, only by which time, Smith believed, a young Tar Heel might actually offer something worth listening to. Offended by premature ballyhoo over the five recruits he welcomed in the fall of 1990, Smith arranged for them to scrimmage the rest of the team for 20 minutes. What many called the greatest recruiting class of all time lost by 46 points — (or) 92, the coach delighted in pointing out, over a full game.”
Love of UNC
Tomlinson, ESPN, March 2014
“Music seems to make him happy, too. About a year and a half ago, a friend named Billy Barnes came over to the house to play guitar and sing a few songs. Barnes played old Baptist hymns and barbershop quartet tunes — Daisy Daisy, give me your answer true. Music he knew Dean liked. But nothing seemed to get through. Dean was getting restless. Barnes asked if he could play one more song.
After every basketball game, win or lose, the UNC band plays the alma mater and fight song. The Carolina people stand and sing. Barnes knew Dean had heard the song thousands of times. He started to play.
Dean jumped to his feet. He waved at his wife, Linnea, to stand with him. He put his hand over his heart and sang from memory:
Hark the sound of Tar Heel voices
Ringing clear and true….”
Photos: Photos: UNC archives, Gerry Broome / AP, Diedra Laird / Charlotte Observer
This story was originally published February 9, 2015 at 1:25 AM with the headline "6 moving stories about the great Dean Smith."