Hard Work

by Roy Williams

  When it was time for the final cut, I walked up to the door of the basketball office where they had the list posted. I saw my name up there on the final roster. I didn’t yell out because there were people around, but when I walked away my feet were not touching the ground. I was so happy and relieved to have made that team. I called my mother and then Buddy Baldwin and told them I’d made it.

  I’d never seen a big-time college basketball game before I played in the preliminary game for one. We played Gaston College in the Charlotte Coliseum before the varsity played Vanderbilt. I only played a few minutes in the game, but I was amazed at my lack of confidence. I was shocked at how much bigger and faster the competition was than in high school. That shook me. In that game I was dribbling the ball down the court in a 4-on-3 fast break — which I’d done hundreds of times — and all of a sudden the frickin’ ball was not there. Nobody took it. I just lost control of it. I was thinking, “What is the matter with you? Can’t you even dribble?” Later in the game I got fouled and missed a free throw because I was nervous. I had never felt that way in my life. I have never forgotten how nervous I was that night, so as a coach I always try to be prepared for the fact that my freshmen may be feeling the same way. That’s why I am always trying to instill confidence in my players, so that they’re better prepared than I was for that game.

  It had never really been my dream to wear the North Carolina jersey, so what was most memorable to me that night was that the coaches gave us all $3 postgame meal money. Hot dogs in the Charlotte Coliseum were only 25 cents and I thought, “My gosh, why do I need all this money? I’m not going to eat 12 of them.”

  We had some really talented players on our team. Basketball Times picked us as the No. 1 freshman team in the country, so we had our team picture in that magazine. Back then freshman basketball was a big deal. We had 3,300 people in Carmichael Auditorium that year to watch us play Duke and there was no varsity game following us that night.

  We finished the season 16–2; we lost one game at North Carolina State and the other at Gardner-Webb; with Artis Gilmore as Gardner-Webb’s center, they were the top-ranked junior college in the country. I was one of the last guys off the bench. Every day in practice, I faced a guy named Steve Previs, one of our scholarship players who would become a star on the varsity and play briefly as a professional. It was very humbling for me because Steve was so much more talented than I was. I think that was good for me. It opened up my eyes to what kind of athlete was out there.

  I still remember the two baskets I made that season. One of them was in a game when we were beating N.C. State badly in Chapel Hill and I came in for the last minute. In the final seconds of the game, I drove the left baseline, and one of their big guys, Paul Coder, came over to block my shot, but I shifted the ball around and scored over him right before the final buzzer, and the crowd cheered like crazy. Coder was cussing and I just turned around and ran to the locker room. The other basket was a jump shot at Duke. There was another jump shot I took later in that game that hit every part of the rim and bounced out, and I couldn’t believe it didn’t go in. That could have been my career high.

  I also remember one game against Duke when I drove into the lane and shot a floater, and Don Blackman jumped up and caught it with one hand over the rim and outletted it for a fast break basket the other way. It made me so mad. I will always believe that was goaltending.

  In high school I’d been the king of the court, but in college I was nothing. I may have been our least talented player, but I cared more than anybody else on the team, so I had to figure out how I could contribute. I thought my job was to work really hard in practice and try to push the guys who played to make them better. During warm-ups before every game, I would walk up to Bill Chamberlain and say something like, “Big fella, I’ve got to have 18 points and 13 rebounds out of you tonight.” Then I’d go to Previs and say, “You need to give us 14 points and nine assists.” I said something like that to every starter before every game.

  I guess I was already coaching.

  Even though I wasn’t playing much, I still found ways to compete. Early in that season the coaches took us into the physical education lab and had us run on a treadmill with the incline at 12 degrees. We were supposed to run until we couldn’t run anymore and then we’d ask them to stop the treadmill. I knew Previs had run for 5 minutes and 50 seconds and that his was the best time. Chamberlain was right in front of me and he went for just over a minute and nearly collapsed with exhaustion. I had heard from those who’d gone before me that it was hard to get your arms comfortable, so when it was my turn, I kept stretching my arms, and the guy conducting the test came in and asked, “Are you okay?”

  I said, “I’m fine.”

  After a few minutes, he came back in again and said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Then he went out and came back in. “Is everything still all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Finally, he came back in the room and told me, “Well, this is all we need. I’m going to go over and cut the machine off.”

  I’d done 7 minutes and 10 seconds on the treadmill before they stopped it.

  Two days later, we were leaving the court after freshman practice while the varsity team was walking on, and one of the varsity players, Joe Brown, said, “Hey, you’re the guy who ran so long on the treadmill.”

  I was so dadgum happy that the word had gotten out to the varsity. I kept walking and I heard someone else say, “Did he really run for more than seven minutes?”

  It was all about the competition, and I kept trying to be the best teammate I could possibly be. In our last freshman game we won the Big Four freshman tournament in Fayetteville, and I came into the game at the very end. On the bus ride home that night, I walked up to where Coach Guthridge was sitting and said, “I appreciate you allowing me to be on the team. I really enjoyed it.”

  He said, “I would have liked to have played you more, but—”

  I interrupted him and said, “Coach, you played the right people.” And I turned around and walked back to my seat.

  Playing on that team had turned my whole world around. I don’t know if I would have made it through my freshman year at UNC if it hadn’t been for basketball. I found something that I could love. It allowed me to be part of a team again.

  AFTER MY FRESHMAN SEASON, I knew that if I wanted to continue playing basketball, it would have to be somewhere other than the University of North Carolina. I had gotten a five-page letter from the coach at Oral Roberts saying that if I was not happy and wanted to play more I should consider transferring there. It was flattering. Piedmont College, Asheville-Biltmore, and Mars Hill all still wanted me to come, too. Each one of them had heard from Buddy Baldwin that I might be considering leaving North Carolina, but I was never really serious about that.

  I knew that when I left the tournament in Fayetteville that night it would be the last organized basketball game I was ever going to play in. By then I knew for certain that playing wasn’t my goal. My goal was to learn to be the best coach I could be.

  My freshman year I started staying after our team’s practices to watch Coach Smith’s varsity practices. I tried not to be a pest. I didn’t want to be underfoot, getting in everybody’s way. I sat high up in the bleachers to keep my distance and also so that I had a good view of everything happening on the court. I had a legal pad and a pencil and I wrote down every drill and diagrammed the alignment of the players. I wrote down whatever Coach Smith said. Whatever Coach Guthridge said. I wrote down what time each drill began and how long it took. I was writing out my own practice plan.

  I knew that was what I wanted to learn more about. I only had one worry: would I have enough money to stay in school? That was the driving force behind everything.

  I was barely piecing together the tuition payments with a few scholarships that I had received, including a $500 good-citizen scholarship from the Civitan Club in Asheville, but I did
n’t want to take out any student loans. One of my financial aid checks turned out to be a $200 loan, so I gave it back. I just didn’t want to owe anybody any money. When I went to the university cashier to return the check, the lady said, “Son, we don’t very often have people come by here to give us money back.”

  I basically had no money to live on. The night we got back from the Big Four freshman tournament, we were dropped off in front of Woollen Gym. At that moment, my checking account was down to 35 cents, but I wasn’t going to call my mom for money. I saw a sign outside the intramural office about a meeting for officials. It was a clinic to teach people how to umpire softball games. I had umpired Little League baseball games in Asheville, so I had some experience. I went in and told the guy who interviewed me that I could really use that money, so he hired me and let me work all four nights of intramurals, Monday through Thursday. From that moment on, I worked 24 hours a week for the rest of my college career. There was a 4–7 p.m. shift and a 7–10 p.m. shift, but I worked both. I made $1.05 an hour. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I had.

  During the summer before my sophomore year, I worked several jobs to pay for a used Mustang and to have enough money to keep me in school. When I came back to Chapel Hill, I went straight to the intramural office and started refereeing football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, horseshoes, and anything else they could find for me. I got to be known as the best referee on campus. By my senior year they’d made me the supervisor of intramural officials, and I had 108 students working under me. My graduate school year I was the assistant director of the intramural program. I was making $200 every two weeks, which at that time was more money than I could have ever imagined.

  I was really proud that my five years of college cost my mother only $35. She sent me a $20 check my freshman year and a $15 check my sophomore year, and after that I said, “Mom, I’m okay. Don’t send anything else.”

  WATCHING BASEBALL GAMES on television for many years, I really got interested in following the players’ statistics. It got to the point where I knew that if Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4 in a particular game, his batting average had dropped from .340 to .338.

  When my dad worked at Chakales Hosiery, he had a friend there who was a big Dodgers fan. When I was in first grade, I visited him at the mill and Daddy started talking to the guy about Mickey Mantle’s and Yogi Berra’s batting averages. Then he pointed to me and said, “I’ll bet you a beer that Roy can tell you exactly what their averages are.” They made the bet and the guy went and found a newspaper, and then I said, “Mickey Mantle is hitting .337 and Yogi Berra is hitting .321.” My dad won that bet.

  I had always enjoyed math and working with numbers. During my senior year at North Carolina, I was still watching as many of Coach Smith’s basketball practices as I could squeeze in around working for intramurals. One day one of the varsity team managers came up to me in the bleachers and said, “Coach Smith would like to ask you a question.”

  I was scared to death, but I walked down to meet Coach Smith.

  He said, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to be a statistician for us and keep a points-per-possession chart. I really need somebody to do that who’s going to concentrate and do a good job and know what’s going on in the basketball game.”

  I said, “Coach, I would love to.”

  I was trying my best to act normal, but I couldn’t really believe what was happening. It was the first conversation we’d ever had. I think it was Coach Smith’s way of challenging me and I took it very seriously. That season I was asked to keep the stats at some preseason scrimmages, and Coach Smith liked what I did. I was precise and he could read my writing. When the season started, I did that for every home game and any of the road games in the state that I could drive to.

  My points-per-possession chart was the only thing Coach Smith wanted to see at halftime. He didn’t care about getting the regular stat sheet. So I had about 60 seconds after the end of the first half to get that to him. I would go knock on the locker-room door and hand the chart directly to him, and he’d usually say, “Not very good, huh?” or “Pretty good, huh?” I’d always agree with him.

  After one of those preseason scrimmage games, the head manager came over and got the chart from me, and I started to leave. Suddenly I heard Coach Smith say, “Roy, hold on a second. How did you list that last play?”

  “I thought that we had possession,” I said, “so I left it with the white team and not blue.”

  “That’s good.”

  He started to walk away but then turned back and said, “You really do a nice job.”

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  We had two or three little conversations like that, but that was about it.

  In the summer of 1973, after my graduate school year, a top high school prospect named Phil Ford decided he was coming to UNC’s basketball camp. Apparently at lunch one day, Coach Smith said to Coach Guthridge, “Let’s get the best referee we can find and put him in Phil’s gym.”

  Coach Guthridge asked him, “Do you want me to try to get Roy?”

  Coach Guthridge knew that I officiated all of the biggest intramural games, so he called me and asked if I’d stop by the basketball office. I hadn’t worked at UNC’s basketball camp before, but when Coach Smith asked me if I would referee Phil’s games, I said I would. He told me that UNC really, really wanted Phil Ford.

  Phil Ford enjoyed himself at basketball camp that summer because every time Phil drove to the basket, Phil got fouled. On the defensive end, Phil got the charge call in his favor every time. Phil played great.

  Phil came to UNC.

  I AM ONE of the few students who ever attended the University of North Carolina and never drank a beer. When I was a kid I saw what alcohol did to my family, and I made a conscious decision that I was not going to drink. I never smoked either. I remember having a sip of beer when I was in high school and I just didn’t like the taste. I think I never acquired the taste because I never wanted to acquire the taste. The idea that drinking too much could be hereditary scared me away. I used to tell my college buddies, “You have to get drunk to act a fool. I can act a fool without drinking a drop.”

  I was always so busy that I didn’t have much time to go to campus parties. It was nothing for me to work out two or three times a day and then I worked lots of nights with intramurals. I didn’t go to the library a lot. I wasn’t an exceptional student. I made a 2.235 grade point average in each of my first two semesters, but after that I made the dean’s list five of the next six semesters. I found enough time to study and I found time to play.

  Intramurals was my athletic outlet. I played every sport you could possibly play and I was voted one of the best intramural athletes on campus. During grad school, we had 16 guys in my Masters of Arts in Teaching Health and Physical Education program. I decided to organize us as a team and try to win a campus championship. We called ourselves the Peacocks because Dr. Bill Peacock ran our program. Just participating in a sport earned you points, so I played everything. I threw horseshoes, played volleyball, basketball, football. In wrestling, I walked onto the mat the first night and the other guy was just like me, another country bumpkin. So I wrestled him and I won because he wasn’t in great shape and the minutes go by really slowly in that sport. The second and third nights I got forfeits, and so all of a sudden I was in the final. This guy came walking in wearing earmuffs and knee pads, and he turned me every which way but loose. He beat me up. He nearly killed me. But that’s what I did for points.

  I was organizing every team and making sure we had people playing every sport. I recruited Fred Mueller and Pat Earey, two guys on the faculty who were good handball players, to play on our intramural handball team. That ticked off the law school team, but since we were competing in the Graduate and Independent division, anybody could play. David Stroupe, who was getting his doctorate at North Carolina and had played basketball at Wake Forest, was on our volleyball team. Larry Cooper, a chemistry professor, who
I knew had played college baseball, was on our fast-pitch softball team. Our pitcher on that team was Steve Partenheimer, and he could windmill it so fast that nobody wanted to catch him, so I was our catcher. Softball was the final event that decided the overall championship and the Peacocks won the softball title and the campus title. I took great satisfaction in that, not just as one of the players on that team but also as the general manager.

  My college experience was so different from most of the other students’ at that time. I could have done anything I wanted, but I chose to go to the gym, and that’s basically where I stayed. It was such a period of unrest. The Black Student Movement protested wages for the food service workers. We had a great football player, Judge Mattocks, who just quit the team one day because he didn’t like the establishment. The Kent State shootings happened while I was a sophomore, and we had some protests on campus. Also in my sophomore year they had a Vietnam draft lottery and everybody went to the student union to see what our draft numbers would be, based on our birthdates. Mine came up 111. I remember Dickie Ramsey, a freshman basketball teammate of mine, got 15. He quit school the next day and enlisted in the military. The word at that time was that everybody from around 100 on down was going to be drafted and that even student exemptions might not keep us from getting drafted. I never thought about running off to Canada, and yet I never really thought about fighting in Vietnam, either. I just thought that if those were the cards I was dealt, that’s what I would do.