Hard Work

by Roy Williams

  That meeting saved the season and, who knows, maybe saved Roy Williams as well. After that, we won nine games in a row. It restored my faith that I could get everybody to accept their roles and work together for a common goal.

  In the next-to-last game of that season we were up by one point with eight seconds to go against Mountain Heritage High, and Rusty Norton was on the free-throw line for us, shooting two. If I could have picked anybody on our team to be shooting those free throws with the game on the line, I’d have picked Rusty. He was also the best player on my golf team, and I felt he was the guy whose nerve I could trust the most. Rusty missed both foul shots, and Mountain Heritage sank a 35-footer at the buzzer to beat us. It cost us the conference championship, but I would still trust Rusty with those two free throws today.

  I felt like the program had turned a corner. We were at a level where we could compete with anybody. We weren’t a freebie win for even the best teams anymore.

  The next two years we finished 13–10 and 10–15. It was a really good time for me to learn. I was evolving as a coach and as a man. In April after my fourth season, my son, Scott, was born and a month later we moved out of the garage apartment and into a house we’d had built. It felt like a natural progression to becoming an adult. I would take Scott to the gym at Owen, and he would sit in his stroller and watch my team practice while the rhythm of the game lulled him to sleep. He took his first step on the basketball court at Owen.

  Those days were so crucial to me in realizing how important each of my individual players was and how to build relationships, instead of only being concerned about points and rebounds.

  There’s no question that even then, as we were raising our first child, I saw coaching basketball as a way to give some kids who needed it the kind of father figure that I never had. Players would come by my office and we would talk more about life than basketball. Bobby Stafford consulted me about every decision that he made. The baseball players and the girls’ basketball players would stop by and talk to me about what they wanted to do after graduation. It wasn’t unusual for me to have 15 kids in my office before or after school. I was essentially a guidance counselor who just happened to be the basketball coach.

  I tried to mentor my players the way Buddy Baldwin had guided me at Roberson. I mandated coats and ties on the road. I joined the players after practice to sweep the floors and wipe down the basketballs, and then I drove many of them home. Wanda made bologna sandwiches to feed the players on the bus back from road trips. We invited them over for cookouts and fed them milk and doughnuts after off-season shootarounds. I wrote personal notes of encouragement to individual players. Before every game I passed out index cards to our top five or six players with what I expected out of them. Sometimes it was just how many points I needed them to score, but other times it was more than that. We had a talented sixth man named Byron Bailey who never started a game for us. One night I wrote him a note: Don’t ever lose faith, because one of these days you’re going to be huge for us in a big-time win. That very night one of our starters got into foul trouble and Byron made 10 free throws in the fourth quarter to clinch a win for us.

  On the court, I felt like we played better each season, even if our records didn’t always reflect that. We just couldn’t quite get over the hump. We didn’t have any big guys, or we didn’t have any guards, or we had some key player get hurt, or one year, our best player just decided he didn’t want to play. We never had the depth of talent that could help us withstand these problems.

  During at least half of our practices I’d get out there myself and play somebody one-on-one, first to score three wins, during a water break. I never lost a game. We had great kids, but that says a lot about their skill level. Some of them were really very competitive, and I loved that they kept on trying to beat me — because when I first arrived it didn’t make any difference to them. So we established that competitive spirit.

  Our team’s improvement was never more obvious than in our results against Roberson High, my alma mater. The first time I coached against Buddy Baldwin we lost by 55 points. It was 81–26. Roberson was bigger. They were faster. They were stronger. They could shoot better. Defensively, they were like piranhas. We couldn’t get the ball across halfcourt. At Roberson’s summer basketball camp I’d taught many of their players the defensive trap that I learned at North Carolina, and it seemed like they stole the ball from us 100 times, so I was wishing I hadn’t done that. Then they killed us again, 77–39, playing at Owen. Buddy would tell me after those games that I was doing the right things but that it would take time to see results and that really reassured me.

  In my second season we beat Roberson. Bobby Stafford hit a jump shot with just under two minutes left to give us the lead and we won 35–33. I remember it didn’t give me any extra satisfaction to beat Buddy. It was just a win. Maybe it was because I knew that a guy who was very important to me wasn’t feeling very good. But after the game, I did call Mr. Estes. “I thought you were going to be at the game tonight to sing the alma mater at center court,” I said.

  “You tell Charlie Lytle that I’ll be down there first thing tomorrow morning,” Mr. Estes said, “and we’ll go down to that gym and I’ll sing it just for him.”

  WHEN I FIRST took the job at Owen High School, I could see myself staying there forever. It gave me a chance to live my dream of being like Buddy Baldwin. After five seasons, I had a 45–68 record, but the program had improved a lot. It had turned around from a program that generated virtually no interest to where little kids walked around saying, “I can’t wait until I’m an Owen Warhorse basketball player.”

  But I had started thinking it might be really good to have just a basketball program to coach, so I wouldn’t feel like I was cheating kids in the classroom. Teaching my class in health and physical education was not my interest. Teaching kids about the food groups was not my interest. Certifying kids in a first-aid course was not my interest. Coaching the basketball team was my only interest. There were times when I’d organize my students to play a volleyball game, and while the game was going on, I’d be working on my basketball practice plan. I knew that was not right. So that’s when I started thinking about coaching at the college level. It had nothing to do with money or fame. I just wanted to be able to devote my whole day to what I really loved.

  Every summer while I was coaching at Owen, I was invited to work at the UNC basketball camp. I used to play a game with the campers. When I first met them on Monday morning, I’d bet all 64 kids that by Tuesday night I would know all of their first and last names, and if I got somebody’s name wrong, I would buy them an ice cream cone. I never bought an ice cream cone. Coach Smith liked my energy, my enthusiasm, my organization, and how I had a personal relationship with each kid. I always thought, “This is somebody’s son. How would I want him to be treated if he were my son?” After a few summers, they started placing me out in the gym farthest away from campus because they felt they didn’t have to check up on me very much.

  At the end of every summer, I’d get a handwritten note from Coach Smith saying that I’d moved into the highest echelon of camp coaches and how comfortable he was when he walked into the gym and saw me there. At the closing-night staff party in the summer of 1978, Coach Smith said he wanted to talk to me. We went and sat in a booth by ourselves. He asked me if I was interested in coming back to North Carolina to be his part-time assistant coach.

  I was so excited and flattered. I couldn’t really believe it. But there was a catch, and I asked Coach Smith if I could think about it and talk to my wife. I went back home and told Wanda that Coach Smith had offered me the job. I said, “Honey, it only pays $2,700 a year.”

  Wanda thought I was nuts. She said, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. We’ve just built a house, our son is 15 months old, our friends and family all live here. We’re making $30,000 between the two of us and you’re asking me to go back to North Carolina for $2,700 a year?”

  “Honey, it
’ll work out.”

  She looked into my eyes, exhaled, and said, “When do we leave?”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Best Dadgum Calendar Salesman There Ever Was

  IN MY FIRST SEASON as an assistant coach at North Carolina, I didn’t say 10 words. I was scared to death. The only sound that came out of my mouth was a whistle. I would referee in practice because I felt that was a way I could contribute.

  During games, I kept a chart on the bench of what offenses and defenses we called, the quality of shots taken, and the results of each possession. At halftime I’d give Coach Smith that statistical analysis. I could tell him, for example, that every time our offense ran “Fist,” we wound up with a layup, or that we got four turnovers in the six times we called our “Scramble” defense, so our double-teaming was effective. It was the first time Coach Smith had ever had that kind of information and he really liked it. I did it to keep myself busy because I’d get upset at some of the foul calls, but I didn’t want to say anything to the referees. I would have had a heart attack if an official had ever called a technical foul on me.

  In my third year we were playing at N.C. State and for some reason I turned to Coach Smith on our bench and said, “Coach, what do you think about running ‘Biggie’?”

  He stood up right away and yelled, “Jimmy, run Biggie!”

  My heart jumped into my throat. We ran the play and scored.

  The next time we got the ball, Coach Smith asked me, “You want to try Biggie again?”

  “Yeah, maybe to the other side,” I said.

  So we ran it to the other side and we scored again.

  After the game, while we were waiting in the parking lot to ride the bus home, I said, “Coach, you really made me nervous. I just threw out that play as a suggestion.”

  He said, “Let me tell you something. The other coaches throw plays out to me all the time. If you throw one out at me, I know you have thought it through so much that I don’t have any worries about going ahead and calling it. I want you to stay that way. If you suggest something, I’m going to do it.”

  That made me feel really good. In three years, that was the first suggestion of any play I had ever made. I was starting to feel like a real coach.

  I USED TO JOKE that in Coach Smith’s terminology, my job as part-time assistant coach meant full-time job, part-time pay. It was extremely difficult to survive financially during my first couple of years back in Chapel Hill. I was doing every odd job I could possibly find to feed my family. My day was dominated by two things, coaching and trying to figure out more ways to make some money.

  I had five jobs my first year. I ran a little basketball camp for children of the university faculty and staff, and I charged each kid $15 for a week. At the end of each week I made $80 after expenses. I worked for a transport company taking staples out of eight-inch-thick stacks of bills, putting them in numerical order, and then stapling them back together again. I thought, “I’ve got a dadgum master’s degree and now I’ve got to learn how to count again?”

  Every Sunday during the football and basketball seasons, I woke up at 5 o’clock in the morning to drive videotapes of the UNC football and basketball coaches’ shows to the local television stations in Greensboro and Asheville. Those drives became so monotonous. I remember timing myself each Sunday, always trying to find a quicker route. In Asheville, I’d have a late breakfast with my mother and then I’d drive right back to Chapel Hill. I drove 504 miles and made $113 per trip, minus the money I spent on gas. That was what I did on my day off. For me, Sunday was not a day of rest. I spent nine hours in the car. I did that for five years.

  The hardest job I had was selling calendars. The calendars had pictures of the UNC players on them with room for a company’s advertisement at the bottom. The job began with cold calls to businesses that had advertised in the football program, and those calls weren’t very successful. One guy said, “Why should I buy calendars? I spent $250 to have an ad in the program and the team only won five stinking games!” During that first year there were days when I would go see 15 people and not sell a single calendar. I hated being told no. It wasn’t just the rejection, it was the disdain. It was awful. That summer I drove 9,000 miles, sold 10,500 calendars in nine weeks, and made $2,400.

  In the meantime, Coach Smith had helped find Wanda a teaching job at Chapel Hill High School that paid $9,000. She did that for a year, but the second year we decided to go ahead with our plans for a second child because we thought if we waited until we could afford it, it might never happen. So Wanda taught part-time until October when Kimberly was born. I still have our income tax returns from 1980, and our combined income, two 30-year-olds with two kids, was $8,910. It was hard sometimes, but we managed.

  I don’t know many people who paid a higher price to get started, but I did those kinds of jobs for many years to be able to stay in coaching. There were times when I despised it. It was demeaning. I felt like I was begging. I nearly got to the point of thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.” But then I remembered that I liked to eat.

  BUT THERE WERE definite paybacks to being where I was. I was the first college coach ever to get really excited about Michael Jordan. I always thought that the primary reason Coach Smith hired me at North Carolina was to recruit. The summer before Jordan’s senior year of high school in 1980, I was calling high school coaches trying to get them to send their players to our basketball camp. We got Buzz Peterson and we got Lynwood Robinson. And then a guy named Mike Brown, who was the athletic director of the New Hanover County Schools, called us about a kid named Mike Jordan. Coach Guthridge went down to Wilmington to see Jordan play, but when he came back he said, “I don’t know how good he is. He’s very athletic, but all he did was shoot a lot of long jump shots and he didn’t make many of them.”

  I called the Laney High School coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring, and he told me that he thought Jordan was going to be a star. I convinced him to send Mike to North Carolina’s summer camp.

  On the afternoon when we were doing camp registration we rounded up the campers to play pickup games in Carmichael Auditorium. The counselors would bring in 30 kids at a time and they would play for 30 minutes and then the next group would come. A group came in and I stood there and watched this one player for a few minutes. I thought, “God almighty, he is really good.” We had some solid players at camp, but he was clearly the best of all of them.

  After the game I walked up to him and I said, “What’s your name?”

  He said, “Mike Jordan.”

  I asked him if he wanted to play another session and he did. I watched him the whole 30 minutes and he was great. He walked 15 minutes back to his room and then walked all the way back, because he wanted to play a third session. I was sold.

  When we finished up there, I left to go have dinner with another assistant coach, Eddie Fogler.

  “Well, did you see anybody you liked?” he said.

  I said, “Eddie, I think I just saw the best 6'4" high school basketball player I’ve ever seen.”

  “Who the heck is that?”

  “Mike Jordan.”

  “Really?”

  “Eddie,” I said, “he is phenomenal.”

  By Tuesday of that week Coach Smith had eaten breakfast with him one day and lunch with him the next, and he offered him a scholarship.

  I talked to Pop Herring, and it was decided that Jordan should go to the Five-Star basketball camp that summer, where he’d get some national exposure and top competition. At Five-Star, when Jordan went to one court, I followed him. When he moved to another court, I followed him. It was like there was nobody else there. I watched every step he took. He won the MVP award at the camp all-star game and all five individual awards. Street & Smith’s preseason magazine had already come out, and Mike Jordan was not listed among the top 500 players in America. The next year, he was a McDonald’s All-American and a North Carolina Tar Heel.

  The first player I ever helped recruit at North Carolina was
James Worthy in 1978. James was so superior to his competition in savvy and athleticism. I would drive down to Gastonia to watch him play in high school. I saw him play seven times, and each time I came back firmly believing that he was a man among boys. The last three schools James was considering were North Carolina, Kentucky, and Michigan State. James had this deep voice and he thought he could mimic people really well, so he put a handkerchief over the phone and called his father during his recruiting visit to Kentucky and pretended he was Coach Smith. He tried to get his dad to say some things to “Coach Smith” about how well James’s recruiting was going with North Carolina. When James’s dad told me that story, I knew his son was coming to UNC.

  One afternoon I was the only coach in the basketball office when the phone rang. It was a UNC fan who ran a gas station near Albany, New York, and he told me about a kid named Sam Perkins, who was a junior in high school up near there. I took down all the information and gave it to Eddie Fogler. We followed up every lead, so Eddie called the high school coach that afternoon. When we started talking about Sam in the office, Coach Smith realized he had seen him play at a USA Basketball event and he asked me to fly up to see Sam play at his high school in Latham, New York. I saw a player who was unbelievably smooth and effortless about his game, the kind of player who at the end of the game you thought he’d done all right, when in fact, he had 30 points and 15 rebounds. He was 6'9" and rail thin with an extraordinary wingspan and the ability to block shots and score on a jump hook. He made doing hard things look easy, and that matched his personality. Sam’s nickname was “Big Smooth.” But Sam’s recruitment was far from smooth. UCLA, San Francisco, and Syracuse were also after him, so I went up to see him a lot. I’d go out with Sam’s coaches after every game. We’d stay out until 3 a.m. and then I’d be on a 7 a.m. flight home that same morning.

  After the high school season in his senior year, Sam played in the Dapper Dan game in Pittsburgh. Eddie and I stood in the hallway outside the locker room, waiting for him after his game, but Sam never came out. Finally, I asked a guy to go in and check and he said there was nobody in there. I went back to the hotel and I must have walked around the lobby 50 times. I saw every other player, but I could not find Sam. Finally, I spotted Tom Yeager who was part of the NCAA enforcement staff and I said, “Tom, something is going on. Sam Perkins did not come out of the locker room and he is not here. All of the other coaches are here except San Francisco.”