by Roy Williams
In our senior year it looked like David Crandall was not going to graduate because of his grades. David had decided to join the Marines and he’d let his grades slip, but I convinced him that it was important to get his high school diploma. So the last three weeks before final exams I stayed at the Crandall house every night and quizzed David because I wanted him to graduate. I heard that his typing teacher, Mrs. Mathews, wasn’t sure she was going to pass David, so I went to see her. She said, “Roy are you here about your grade?”
I said, “No ma’am, I want to talk to you about David’s grade.”
“Youngsters like you are the reason I’m in teaching,” she said. “I’ll take care of David. You don’t worry yourself about it.”
When graduation came around and they gave us our diplomas, Mr. Crandall said, “Roy, do you want half of this, or do you want to let David keep all of it?”
David was a great friend and he and his family helped me in so many ways that it made me feel good to help him. It never bothered me that people were doing nice things for me as long as I had an opportunity to make it square.
ONCE I STARTED PLAYING basketball, gosh, I wanted to be good. It was a passion with me. From the seventh grade until the end of high school, I got a basketball for Christmas every year because I’d worn the last one out.
I would practice basketball in the house. We lived in a four-room house and I made a route from my bedroom and laid the ball up right-handed over that bedroom door, took a left-handed dribble and laid it up left-handed over the kitchen door, laid it up right-handed over the living room door, laid it up left-handed over my mother’s bedroom door, and then I’d go back past the bathroom and fake laying it up on one side and then lay it up on the other side of the doorway. Once a week or so, I had to take a washcloth and some soap to clean off the spots over the doors where the dirty basketball had bounced up against it so many times. When she was home, my mother never once told me to put that frickin’ ball down, even though it must have driven her crazy.
Just like Coach Baldwin had suspected, I started on the varsity team the first game of my sophomore year. I had a dream the night before the game that our center, David Crandall, got the opening tap, tipped it to me, and I took it down the court and dunked it. I was in my 50s before I ever stopped dreaming about dunking the ball.
The next night the ball was tipped to me and I made a nice pass to Walt Stroup, who scored to put us ahead 2–0. A few minutes later, Coach Baldwin called a timeout because we were down 19–2. We weren’t very good that year. Our record was 1–19 and that made me work even harder in the summer. Walt and I would go to the Biltmore courts and work on the screen and roll for hours every day; when more kids would show up, we’d try to execute in a pickup game what we’d been practicing. Walt and I played together so much that we became good teammates because we could read each other’s minds on the court.
By my junior year I’d grown to 5'7" and 125 pounds. We weren’t really sure how good we were going to be that season, but I got more confident with each game. We raced the ball up and down the floor, and we had three or four guys that averaged in double figures. That was the way I liked to play, as fast as possible. Erwin High was the best team in the county, and they froze the ball against us for most of the fourth quarter because we were too fast for them and they knew that was the only way they could beat us. We lost in the semifinals of the county tournament and then in the semifinals of the district tournament.
I was a good little high school player and I made the All-County team. I had always played with older guys growing up, so I’d learned early to pass the basketball. I became a much better shooter as I got older, but I got as much satisfaction out of passing as I did shooting. In the open court I could really attack people because I could score with either hand. Defensively, I worked extremely hard and I was never afraid to take a charge against anybody. I was limited by my size, but I never played against anybody who I thought was quicker than me. Even though I was a point guard, Coach Baldwin told me he needed me to score.
Coach Baldwin was very demanding. He was not a curser, but he would lose his temper with us at times, and when he did, he’d run us really hard until he thought we got the message. Throughout my high school career, Coach Baldwin preached to me about three things: working on my game, being a team player, and caring about my teammates. Each and every day at practice he reinforced a part of that and he became the most influential male in my life. He was like a big brother who gave me a better idea of how to act in the world. He taught me that when I shook someone’s hand, I should do it firmly while I looked them straight in the eye. He was the first person to give me a great deal of confidence. He made me believe I could be somebody.
I was doing all right in the classroom, but Coach Baldwin inspired me to study harder. In his history class, he gave a test on the U.S. Constitution and he told us it was going to be the toughest test we ever took. That was a challenge to me. I really studied and I scored 100 on it and he stopped me after class and said, “I have never had a student make 100 on that test.”
I said, “You talked about how tough it was going to be, so then it became a competition, and I wanted to show you I could win it.”
In the summer after my junior year, I finally went to Coach Baldwin and told him what I wanted to do with my life. I don’t know if I waited so long because I was afraid he’d laugh at me or think I was crazy. I went into our team meeting room one day before practice and I said, “Coach, I know what I want to do. I want to be a coach.”
He said, “That doesn’t surprise me. I thought you might want to do that.”
Coach Baldwin made me believe I could accomplish things that probably nobody in my family thought I could. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. When I started high school, I didn’t even know what college was. One day in the eighth grade, my friend Eddie Payne told me he’d gone to Wake Forest’s basketball camp — I had no clue what he was even talking about. I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to appear stupid, but I didn’t even know that world was out there.
Coach Baldwin was the first person to talk to me about college. I realized that if I wanted to be a coach I had to be a teacher, and if I wanted to be a teacher, I had to go to college. I took the SAT, and eventually I had basketball scholarship offers from six smaller colleges in the area: Piedmont College, Asheville-Biltmore, Wofford, Winthrop, Catawba, and Mars Hill. I remember visiting Mars Hill and working out with two other players and then going into the coach’s office. The coach set scholarship papers in front of all three of us, and the other two guys signed them. I just pushed mine back to him and said, “I’m not ready to make this decision yet.” He got a little mad at me.
By that time Coach Baldwin had started talking to me about going to college at the University of North Carolina if I really wanted to be a coach. He laid out a plan for me to try to make the freshman team and then I could watch Coach Dean Smith run his varsity practice. Coach Smith was not totally established yet, but Coach Baldwin really felt like Coach Smith had turned the corner and was on his way to becoming a big-time coach. Coach Baldwin thought that Coach Smith could be a great role model for me.
I WAS VERY BUSY in high school. Along with playing varsity basketball and baseball, I kept stats at all of the football games. I had gained so much confidence that I also earned the lead role in the senior play and was elected president of the student body. My girlfriend in my junior and senior years, Pam, was a cheerleader. She was also on the square dance team and she nagged me all summer before my senior year to try out for that team. I didn’t want to be on the stupid square dance team, but she kept badgering me.
The first night of tryouts I struggled with it, so I got two of my basketball teammates who had been on the square dance team the year before, David Crandall and Rick Scarborough, to help me. They came back to my house and I made them write out every move during the whole dance routine. Those two dummies and I went through the whole dance over and
over in my living room for hours, because if I was going to try out, I was going to make the team. I was not going to not make the square dance team.
I wasn’t very good, but the team sponsor was the home ec teacher, Miss Weir, and she thought the sun rose and set on me. So I was going to make the stupid team.
The first event we ever participated in was the Duke University Folk Festival in the fall of my senior year. I’ll never forget the list of performers: Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, B.B. King, and the Roberson High square dance team. We square-danced on the stage at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The next morning, Miss Weir asked the bus driver to drive us over to Chapel Hill. We walked around a little and talked to some girls from Roberson who were going to UNC. As we got on the bus to go back to the hotel, Miss Weir turned me around to face the campus and she said, “Roy, this is where I want you to go to school. This is where you belong.”
THERE WERE SO MANY people like Miss Weir, who made an effort to look out for me. Mrs. Baldwin was the toughest teacher I ever had in high school. I had her for Algebra II as a junior and Advanced Math as a senior. The clock was behind us in the room and it was months into my junior year before I built up enough courage to turn around and see what time it was. She was tiny, but she was so intimidating. On the floor she had marked four little x’s and that’s where the legs of your desk were supposed to be. No excuses. That’s the way she was.
Now, by the time I was a senior, I’d go into her class and tease her a little and say, “Mrs. Baldwin, why are you teaching us logarithms? That junk isn’t ever going to help us.” I was just agitating her all the time. Her nephew was Coach Baldwin, which might explain why she took such an interest in me succeeding.
One morning before home room, I said to her, “You got a second?”
She said, “I’ve always got a second for you, Roy.”
She knew I was deciding between going to Georgia Tech, where I’d been offered a full scholarship to be an engineer, or going to North Carolina.
I said, “I wanted to tell you before you hear it from somebody else that I’m going to go to North Carolina because I want to be a coach.”
“That engineering scholarship would be so much better for you,” she said. “I’ve told you that 100 times. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
So she stood up and I hugged her, and then I left. That morning, in second period, I sat down in her class and said something smart-alecky to her like I always did, and then she announced, “Before we start, I want you kids to listen to me. I want you girls to not mess with Roy, because Roy is going to North Carolina to be a coach instead of going to Georgia Tech on a full scholarship to be an engineer. One of these days Roy is going to come to my house to borrow a loaf of bread.”
She told all the girls not to have anything to do with me. A girl named Wanda Jones was sitting in the room at the time.
BEFORE MY SENIOR basketball season, all I thought about was finally getting a chance to play in the state tournament. I had listened to state playoff games on the radio after my sophomore and junior years, and I had dreamed about a moment like that.
But Ken Wilson, our biggest player at 6'3", tore up his knee playing football that fall and couldn’t play for basically the whole year. David Crandall was 6'2" and weighed 160 pounds, and he was our center and our only rebounder. We had two 5'11" forwards. I was 5'8" and the other guard was 5'7". We felt like we were undermanned the whole season.
I scored 21 points in the first game of the season, but we lost. I got 26 in the next game, which we won, and then in the third game I got 35 in a win and I broke Walt Stroup’s school record for points in a game. Then I had 16 in the fourth game and we lost. The next day before practice, Coach Baldwin said, “Roy, I’ve got to talk to you. We’re 2–2 and I don’t think we can keep running the ball like we’ve been doing.”
I said, “Why?”
“Crandall’s the only rebounder and if he outlets the ball to you, I’m happy, but if he passes it to Ronnie or Ricky or Boodie, I don’t know where they’re going to throw the dadgum thing. We need to slow it down. It’s what’s best for our team.”
That decision took away the best part of my game, which was pushing the ball up the floor. Coach Baldwin had a great feel for the game and what kids could do, and it was what was best for that team, but to this day that decision has had a great influence on me. I want to attack people and I want my team to have only one option to receive the outlet pass.
The day after the fourth game, I sprained my ankle badly in practice and I went to the doctor the next morning. Dr. Cappiello told me not to play for the next 10 days. Luckily, there was nobody else in the room to hear that. I soaked my foot in a bucket of ice for three days straight, and I played in our next game. My ankle was killing me. Dr. Cappiello saw my name in the newspaper and he called Coach Baldwin the next day and asked, “Did Roy not tell you what I told him?”
Coach Baldwin pulled me out of class to ask me what the doctor said. “Coach, it’s my ankle,” I said. “I want to play.” I was not going to miss a game in my senior year.
I was the team captain that season, and during games I was already thinking like a coach. I was always thinking about what adjustments we should be making. I was a pain in Coach Baldwin’s butt a few times, trying to think through the game so much instead of just playing it.
I averaged 17 points a game that year and finished my career as Roberson’s all-time leading scorer. We got to the district final, just one win away from the state tournament. In that game, we had the ball out of bounds with five seconds to play and down by one point. Coach Baldwin diagrammed a play for me to throw it in and then for a teammate to pass it back to me. When we broke the huddle, Coach Baldwin looked at me and said, “Take it to the basket and make a play.”
I was very comfortable with that. I felt like I could do that better than anybody. I was going to take it to the basket and either make the basket or get fouled and we were going to win the game. I was sure of it. So I threw the ball in to one of my teammates, who dribbled it directly to the corner, jumped up, took a shot . . . and missed. We lost the game and I was so mad at him in the locker room. I was screaming at him, “Why didn’t you give me back the ball?” We went to Burger King afterward and I wanted to fight him. I still haven’t forgiven him.
MY MOM NEVER MISSED a game. She would bring along a pencil and one of those tiny pads with the spirals at the top. If I scored a field goal, she’d write down 2 and if I made a free throw she’d write down 1, and then at the end of the game she’d know before anybody else how many points I’d scored. She would always show me her little sheet of paper when I got home.
I’ll never forget one game when this guy tried to steal the ball from me and I just dribbled it behind my back and made a little bounce pass and we scored. A fan from the other school sitting in front of my mother said, “Oh, big deal, who does he think he is?”
My mother tapped him on the shoulder and said, “That’s my son. That’s who he is. That’s why it’s a big deal.”
In my senior year, deep in my soul, I thought I was the best basketball player in Western North Carolina. My dad lived eight miles away, but he never came to see me play a game. I put that aside and told myself that it didn’t bother me, but it did.
That year we played Enka High School and the game went to five overtimes. One of my cousins came to see the game and I played all right in regulation, but during the five overtimes, I was great. He went home and told my dad what I’d done, and then he told me that Daddy was going to come to the next game. That next game I played my butt off, but later I found out he wasn’t there. Every once in a while somebody told me my dad was coming to a game and I always played great, but he was never there.
CHAPTER 4
A Small Fish
I FIRST MET Wanda Jones in ninth-grade algebra class. From the 10th grade on, we had almost every class together and we became friends. While I was president of th
e student body, Wanda was vice president of the senior class, and she was dating the president of the senior class.
Like me, Wanda decided to come to UNC. I was glad she was there at the start of my freshman year in college because I struggled the first five weeks. We started our college education on Friday, the 13th of September. Roberson was a small high school with only 130 students in our graduating class, and I had been a big fish in a very, very small pond. In college I was nobody. I was a number. The place was so big and I couldn’t find my niche. I couldn’t find my comfort zone. Wanda was a friendly face, someone to go to dinner with; she loved college from the beginning and I needed to keep hearing that. She provided me some stability.
For my entire life I’d had all of these people helping me out. All of a sudden I was in Chapel Hill and my girlfriend was back home and my mom was struggling because I was gone. I was homesick. My roommate was even more homesick than I was, which only made it worse. I hadn’t brought home a schoolbook my entire senior year of high school and suddenly I needed to study two or three hours a night. I was wondering if I shouldn’t have taken one of those scholarships to play basketball at a smaller school closer to home.
But then everything changed. On October 15, 1968, I began tryouts for the freshman basketball team. I knew one thing: I had worked harder for those tryouts than anybody. If somebody was going to be giving in, it was not going to be me. Sometimes at a tryout coaches will let you play a little and then run you a lot to see who quits, because no coach enjoys cutting people. So for 10 straight nights before tryouts I had run the steps at my dorm, 10 flights up and down, 10 times every night. A couple of times I thought my heart was going to explode. I was motivated by fear. I didn’t know if I was going to make the cuts, but at least I knew that I was in better shape than anybody.
I tried out on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and made the first cut. I had another practice on Friday. Then my mom called and told me she was going to see a doctor for some tests. She sounded anxious about it, so I asked my coach, Bill Guthridge, if I could leave early on Saturday to go check on my mom. I played through about half of the practice, walked out in front of Carmichael Auditorium, hitchhiked home to Asheville, made sure my mom was all right, and went to the Homecoming football game that night because my girlfriend was cheerleading. Then on Sunday morning I walked back out to the highway and thumbed back for freshman tryouts that night. Seventy-seven guys tried out for the UNC freshman team that year and they were going to keep 15. Seven guys were on scholarship, which meant that 70 guys were trying out for those other eight spots.