From The N&O archive: Roy Williams rejoins the UNC family

It took nearly three years. It was the toughest decision of his life -- twice.

But Roy Williams is finally North Carolina’s basketball coach.

In a late-night conclusion to an emotional trek, Williams, the 52-year-old UNC alumnus who coached for 15 years at Kansas, returned Monday to take over the Tar Heels.

The decision was a dramatic and difficult reversal of the choice Williams made three years ago, when he remained at Kansas rather than accepting an offer to succeed Bill Guthridge at UNC. Williams was introduced at a 10 p.m. news conference in the practice gym at the Smith Center, the building named for his mentor, legendary Carolina coach Dean Smith.

Williams, who was born in Spruce Pine and grew up in Asheville, made no secret of the fact that his decision to return to UNC, where he was an assistant to Smith for 10 years, was excruciating.

“I wanted to coach both,” Williams said. “But you can’t. Last time, I decided to stay because it was the right thing. This time, I decided to leave because it was the right thing.”

The quest to land Williams was difficult for Carolina, which needed a replacement for Matt Doherty, who was forced to resign April 1.

Twice -- once Friday morning, once again Sunday -- Williams said he nearly picked up a phone to call UNC athletics director Dick Baddour and tell him he couldn’t leave Kansas. The pull of the entire Lawrence community — Williams named each of his players and several of his friends Monday night — weighed on him.

“I was a Tar Heel born,” Williams said, borrowing a few lines from UNC’s fight song. “When I die, I’ll be a Tar Heel dead. But in the middle, I have been Tar Heel and Jayhawk bred, and I’m so so happy and proud of that.”

In the end, though, Williams said the pull of his basketball roots and the fact that his family is from North Carolina made the decision for him.

That and the mere presence of Smith.

“I tell you, I don’t mind saying this,” Williams said. “The respect I have for Coach Smith, it’s hard to say ‘no’ to him twice. ...

“Sometimes, the right thing is not necessarily what you want to do, but it’s the right thing to do.”

Williams will sign an eight-year contract, though several key issues have not been worked out, Baddour said. His base salary from UNC will be $260,000 and he will have a $25,000 annual expense account. He will receive $21,667 in bonuses for reaching the NCAA Tournament, reaching the tournament’s final eight and graduating players at a rate comparable to that of the student body.

The entire package, though, will be worth more than the estimated $1.2 million Williams made at Kansas. He will have a contract with athletic apparel maker Nike that could bring in as much as $1 million. He also will receive money from UNC’s multimedia contract with Learfield Inc. for television and radio shows.

Baddour said those deals should be worked out in the next few weeks.

Putting aside how much he will make, Williams’ credentials are impeccable.

At Kansas, he won 400 games faster than any other coach. His career record of 418-101 gives him a winning percentage of .805, the highest of any active coach. He led the Jayhawks to four Final Fours and two national championship games, though he hasn’t won the title.

“He’s the total package,” Smith said.

On April 7, the Jayhawks lost 81-78 to Syracuse in the national championship game, and Williams spoke with Smith about the Carolina job the following night. Williams promised a quick resolution, but his struggle to decide kept the Heels in limbo for a week.

Williams’ son Scott, a former Carolina player who now lives in Charlotte, said the decision wore on his father even after he made it.

“Even when he was on the phone with me, his voice was still breaking up,” Scott Williams said Monday evening. “He’s gone through such an emotional roller coaster. He just feels so bad about leaving those kids at Kansas. It’s still tearing him up.”

Williams finally met with the Jayhawks at 3:30 p.m. local time Monday to tell them of his decision. He emerged from the meeting teary-eyed.

“I’ve never had anything more difficult to do than what I went through this afternoon talking to my team,” he said Monday night.

It was a process he never expected to endure again. In July 2000, Williams spent an angst-filled week stewing about whether he should succeed Guthridge, who retired. But he said he had become too attached to his players, and stayed.

That led Carolina to hire Doherty, who had been the head coach at Notre Dame for only one year after being an assistant to Williams at Kansas for seven.

Doherty’s rocky tenure -- which included the worst season in UNC history -- ended when he was forced to resign after going 53-43 and missing the NCAA Tournament twice in three years. Baddour decided that Doherty’s volatile temper had created an uneasy environment around the program and that change was needed.

Baddour, working closely with Smith, immediately turned to Williams, who played a year of junior varsity ball at Carolina and graduated in 1972. He was the leading member of the so-called Carolina Family that Smith built in his 36 years as the Heels’ coach.

Still, some members of that family remembered Williams’ original decision.

“I love Roy Williams,” former Tar Heel Jerry Stackhouse, now a member of the Washington Wizards, said Monday night. “I think he’s a great coach and he’d be great for North Carolina. But the same reason we’re all talking about Roy Williams -- if he’d come three years ago, none of us would be talking about this.”

But other parts of the university community were ready to move on immediately.

Unlike November 2000, when football coach Carl Torbush was fired and current coach John Bunting was hired, key faculty were briefed about the basketball program decisions along the way. The faculty supported the choice.

“You either do the athletic thing or you don’t,” said Sue Estroff, chairwoman of the faculty. “For us, Roy Williams is an attractive guy. He’s got decades of experience. That whole thing about the family can be overstated, but it’s a chemistry factor.

“I think it was clear to all of us that we needed someone who had done this for a while. Roy Williams is an experienced coach. He has a proven record. He doesn’t have any temperamental or temper problems.”

Even as Williams was getting over his departure from Kansas and growing accustomed to his new job, others around Carolina were ecstatic.

“I’m extremely excited about it,” former UNC player and assistant coach Pat Sullivan said. “I think we’ll all be right back to where all of us in the family, all the former players and alumni, want us to be. After Coach Smith, this was the logical progression. We just had to wait three extra years.”

Williams’ new team, dressed sharply in coats and ties, sat before him Monday night, the wait over. Finally, the Heels were pleased with what they saw.

“I was just staring at him,” guard Melvin Scott said, “and he gave me confidence already -- and we’re not even on the basketball court. So I know what he’ll do on the basketball court. He’ll lift everyone’s game and everyone’s spirit.”

Staff writers Anne Blythe and Luke DeCock contributed to this report.

This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 11:39 AM with the headline "From The N&O archive: Roy Williams rejoins the UNC family."