In ‘The Last Dance,’ Roy Williams emerges as the keeper of Michael Jordan’s UNC legacy
As the third and fourth episodes of “The Last Dance” air Sunday night, Michael Jordan’s story moves on. But it was impossible to start telling Michael Jordan’s story without starting in Wilmington and Chapel Hill, and no one made more of that trip down memory lane than Roy Williams.
Dean Smith’s familiar visage and his distinctive voice appeared in a few archive clips in the ESPN documentary, and Jordan teammate Buzz Peterson was interviewed, but the current North Carolina coach stole the first two episodes last week.
Williams managed to work a “youngster” and a “frickin’” into a mere 57 seconds of screen time. (Presumably a golf analogy ended up on the cutting-room floor.) It was a virtuoso OI’ Roy performance highlighted by three impeccably timed — almost Shakespearean — pauses.
“I’m going to show you.” Beat. ”Nobody will ever work as hard as I’ll work.”
“Michael Jordan’s the only player that could ever turn it on and off.” Beat. “And he never frickin’ turned it off.”
“We had heard he was pretty good.” Beat. “Five days later when he left here, we thought he was the best player in America.”
This kind of folksy racounteurism is nothing new to UNC fans or college basketball fans. But it was new to casual fans, and especially the kind of casual fans who were watching “The Last Dance” because it was the only thing on. Like a moon landing.
This was a new, and receptive, audience for Williams, who wasn’t exactly underexposed before, and led to an amusing undercurrent of reaction along the lines of “the fact that Michael Jordan played at North Carolina ought to help recruiting.”
But it also underlined how without Smith and Bill Guthridge, the current North Carolina coach has emerged as the venerable bard of Jordan’s time at North Carolina, the protector of the legend, keeper of the flame.
In stoking those flames, Williams often goes back to the summer before Jordan’s senior year at Laney High School, when he was on the UNC campus for basketball camp and the North Carolina coaching staff realized just how good Jordan really was.
Other Jordan origin stories start with him not making varsity as a sophomore at Laney. Williams’ preferred version starts in the hot summer of 1980, when Jordan walked back and forth between Carmichael and Granville Towers to test himself against each group of campers until Williams finally told him to stay at Carmichael and he’d give him a ride back to Granville at the end of the day.
“I really believe that at that time it stood out more than anything I’ve ever seen,” Williams said before the documentary aired. “By the end of (camp), coach Smith was having lunch with him and Eddie (Fogler) and I were having breakfast with him, so we got a pretty good head start on everybody.”
That bond has remained strong over the years, even as Jordan’s personal circle got smaller, strengthened by a common love of golf. When Williams finally came back to North Carolina in 2003, it happened to be the same day as Jordan’s final home game with the Washington Wizards, an ill-advised detour at the end of an otherwise extraordinary career.
After the game, amid all the uproar about Jordan’s legacy and his future with the Wizards, Jordan was asked one final question about Williams’ return. He could barely hear it.
“Coach Williams to North Carolina?” Jordan asked, unaware of the news. “Good!”
Jordan has made infrequent but notable appearances on campus during the Williams era, from his famous buss of Smith’s head in 2007 to proclaiming “the Ceiling is the Roof” in 2017.
“To this day, he still treats me like he did 30 years ago, or 40 years ago I guess it almost is now,” Williams said. “Just an incredible person, incredible work ethic. A will to win better than anybody I’ve ever seen. A focus better than any basketball player I’ve ever seen. The only person that’s ever compared to him basketball-wise in how he focused was Tyler Hansbrough. Michael’s just at a different level than anybody, other than Tiger Woods.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "In ‘The Last Dance,’ Roy Williams emerges as the keeper of Michael Jordan’s UNC legacy."
