Dean Smith: More than a Coach
By The Charlotte Observer and Phil Ford
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Reviews for Dean Smith
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Dean Smith - The Charlotte Observer
Hugh Morton © North Carolina Collection, U.N.C. Library at Chapel Hill
02.tifPhotographer Hugh Morton made this photograph after Dean Smith won his first NCAA title as UNC beat Georgetown in 1982. Looking spent in this photo following the on-court celebration are (from left) Smith, sports information director Rick Brewer, finals MVP James Worthy and point guard Jimmy Black. (Hugh Morton © North Carolina Collection, U.N.C. Library at Chapel Hill)
Contents
Foreword by Phil Ford
Legacy of Dean Smith
‘I’m Going After It’
A Challenging Start
8 Points Down, 17 Seconds To Go
When Rivals Clash
National Champions
Unguarded Champions
A Second Championship
Victory No. 877
Dean vs. Coach K
‘I Have Decided to Resign…’
‘I’m Trying to Disappear’
A Perfect Moment
Remembering Dean
Coach Smith’s Final Lessons
From First Game to the End
03.tifObserver File Photo/Jeff Siner
Foreword by Phil Ford
Coach Smith was my coach and friend for more than 40 years, and I am honestly still trying to get my arms wrapped around his passing. A lot of us are. You probably are, too.
I can tell you that he’s really going to be missed. He was such a great man and a guy who always wanted to do what was right. They say we should care for others more than we care for ourselves. You won’t find a person on the face of this earth that was willing to help another person more than Coach Smith when that person couldn’t repay him in some way.
See, everybody will do something for somebody when they expect to get something back. Coach did things for people and never expected anything back.
Coach Smith was like a second father to all of his former players. I used to kid him all the time that he was the only person I knew who had well over 300 kids. And only four of them — Coach’s actual daughters — were girls!
I first met Coach Smith in 1973, when I went to Carolina’s basketball camp after my junior year. Later he came to our home in Rocky Mount, N.C., to recruit me. Usually my mom didn’t sit in on the recruiting visits — it was just myself, my dad and my high school coach. My mom was a French and English teacher and saw me play basketball in person maybe five times in my entire career. She wasn’t a basketball fan. But she sat in on this visit. At first, she thought Coach Smith was actually a dean of some sort at the college.
For the first 30-40 minutes of the conversation, we didn’t talk about basketball at all. We talked about being a good citizen, a good friend, a good student. We talked about race relations. And when we finally got into the basketball portion, Coach Smith told me he just didn’t know where I would fit in. He said they had a JV program and I might have to play JV some. And I think that’s when my mom really fell in love with Coach Smith and became a big fan of his. She knew he would tell the truth.
04.tifDean Smith and point guard Phil Ford, the player who ran Smith’s Four Corners offense better than anyone else during his career in the 1970s. Ford became an assistant coach with Smith and the two remained close until Smith’s death. (Hugh Morton © North Carolina Collection, U.N.C. Library at Chapel Hill)
I wanted to go to North Carolina partly because of Charlie Scott. When he became the first black scholarship basketball player at UNC in the 1960s under Coach Smith, I was in seventh or eighth grade. So you can imagine when all the kids were playing ball in the schoolyard, that’s who everybody wanted to be. And it was not just because he was black — it was because we all thought Charlie Scott was the best player out there.
I ended up starting at UNC as a freshman, which was a surprise to me. I was terrible at first. I wanted to do well so badly and instead I was dribbling the ball off my foot. One headline read: ‘This Ford was an Edsel.’ Coach Smith really didn’t say anything about it to me, though. And I got better.
Under Coach Smith, everyone got better. You hear people say things like, ‘Coach Smith had so much talent and ability on his teams, he should have won more championships.’ But they are looking at the finished product. We all were 15-20 times better when we left Chapel Hill than when we first got there.
People say North Carolina has a system. But we don’t have a system. We have a philosophy. A system doesn’t bend or deviate. A philosophy does. We knew we wanted to play hard, play smart and play together, and we wanted to have fun. But depending on the talent we had, Coach Smith developed different things for us to do offensively and defensively. He gave us a chance to win every game.
05.tifDean Smith in high school yearbook photo that was taken in 1949 at Topeka High School in Kansas.
06.tifDean Smith, right, playing for Kansas in 1952. The Jayhawks won the national championship that year. (University of Kansas)
Coach Smith was so dedicated to basketball and to his family, but he still found time for social causes. We always knew that side of him, but that’s a side he never forced on us. He always just strongly recommended that we get involved with one thing that was very important to us. One cause. One charity. Something. But he wanted us to decide what it was and to do it ourselves.
I went to see him as much as I could for the past few years once I moved back to the Raleigh area. He was still going to his office every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I’d go by and see him and sit by his desk with him.
Sometimes he would look up and smile. Sometimes he would sleep a