Hard Work

by Roy Williams

  The only time I was happy was when I was on the court. I just focused on my team and tried to ignore everything else.

  When we lost to Syracuse in the 2003 NCAA championship game, it was a very emotional locker room. Drew Gooden was a rookie in the NBA, but he had flown in for the game, and he came in and hugged me and he was bawling like a little kid. He told me, “I wish I’d been here to help. Coach, I wanted you to win this so badly.”

  It was so hard knowing that Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich had given me everything they had but had lost their last college game. At times like that as a coach you feel inadequate, because you don’t know what to say to relieve some of that pain and you know it’s not going to go away, anyway.

  I did the postgame press conference, and I had just gotten back into the locker room with my team when our media relations director came in and said that Bonnie Bernstein from CBS wanted to interview me. I went out to see her and I asked her not to ask me about the North Carolina job. She didn’t say anything. She asked me one question about the game, which I answered, and then she said, “Many people out there would like to know your level of interest in the North Carolina job, Coach.”

  I said, “Bonnie, I could give a flip about what those people want. As a journalist you have to ask that question and I understand that, but as a human being, all those people who want that answer right now are not very sensitive.”

  “If they offer you the job, though, would you be willing to take it?”

  That’s when I lost my temper. “I haven’t thought about that for one second. I could give a shit about North Carolina right now. I’ve got 13 kids in that locker room that I love.” I turned around and walked off.

  I was steaming mad. I went up to my hotel room with my buddies and my family and I said, “Okay, you guys are not going to make the decision, but if you’ve got anything to say, say it right now, because I’m going to have to make the decision soon.”

  Nobody said anything. Everybody left and I told Wanda, “I don’t know what to do, but I just know I’m so unhappy. And I’ve been unhappy for two years, except when I’m on the court.”

  She said, “Did Chancellor Hemenway find you after the game?”

  “Yeah, he wants to meet with me at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, but honey, I don’t know what I’m going do. It’s different this time.”

  On Wednesday Dick Baddour called to offer me the North Carolina job. I asked him to tell me why he had fired Matt. He said, “I brought in all of the players and talked to them individually, and it was not working. I had to do what was best for the program.” He told me that many of the players had threatened to transfer if Matt stayed on as coach. Dick said he had no choice.

  I said, “Dick, I don’t agree with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Just please don’t have anybody else call me. Just give me some space and some time and I’ll make this decision. Give me a few days. I’ve been trying to win a national championship, and I would have cheated those kids if I had thought about this.”

  The previous day I had met with Chancellor Hemenway and he told me he was going to fire Al Bohl. He said it was because Al was not a good fit, that it was the best thing for the department. I thought part of it was because they wanted to keep me at Kansas and that in the chancellor’s mind Al’s departure would clear things up for me to stay.

  He was partially right. A huge obstacle had been removed and initially I thought that I’d be all right at Kansas. But then I thought about how unhappy I’d been for two years and how the administration had allowed me to be that unhappy. I was back to flip-flopping again. On the even hours I was going to UNC and on the odd hours I was staying at Kansas. This time, Wanda didn’t have any strong opinion about what to do. Kimmie had graduated from UNC and moved back to Kansas, and Scott was still working in North Carolina, so that wasn’t a factor. Wanda did, however, make one statement that I’ll never forget: “So many weird things had to happen for you to get another chance at this job. It’s beginning to look a lot like destiny.”

  Two days later, I flew to Los Angeles to accept the John Wooden Legends of Coaching Award, and I got some of my Kansas buddies to fly out there with me to play some golf. Mitch Kupchak came to play with us because he was afraid there were too many Kansas guys in my group and they might sway my decision.

  The first night, we all went to dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles. The chef was a Kansas graduate. We all had a good meal, and then the chef brought out a cake with a message swirled in the icing that said, Roy We Love You, Please Stay.

  I started to feel like there were Kansas people planted there, because folks I didn’t know kept coming over to the table saying, “I hope you’ll stay at Kansas.” Mitch and Cody Plott, the two North Carolina guys at the table, felt like they were overmatched.

  I received the Wooden Award, and one of the kids I had just signed to come to Kansas, Omar Wilkes, was also there to get his own award. He was the son of Jamaal Wilkes, who had played for Coach Wooden. So I was sitting there looking at Omar and I remembered back to the day I’d done his home visit, and I’d told him, “When you come on your visit to Kansas, ask the players about me.”

  Omar had said, “Coach, I don’t have to ask the players about you. We talked to Coach Wooden and he told us that if he had a son, he would love for him to play for Roy Williams more than anybody else.”

  That moment had given me cold chills. Omar was just that kind of kid. I told Wanda, “How can I tell Omar I’m leaving Kansas? I just recruited him to come and I’m one of the biggest reasons why he’s coming.”

  So at 11 o’clock that night we drove back to the airport to get on a plane to fly back to Kansas. Waiting for the plane, I was standing on the ramp with Dana Anderson, who was a close friend and huge Kansas booster. He told me about how he’d made a donation — which I later found out was $8 million — and that his hope was that if I stayed at Kansas for five more years that the school would change the name of Allen Fieldhouse to Allen-Williams Fieldhouse. “We want you to stay at Kansas,” he said, “but I’m your friend and whatever you do, I’m going to be with you.”

  I said, “Dana, I really appreciate that.”

  I got on the plane and I said to myself, “I’ve got to make the decision before this plane hits the ground.”

  After we took off, we talked about the economy and politics and the Yankees for five minutes and then everybody else in the cabin went to sleep. I laid my head back, too, and closed my eyes, but I was far from sleeping. I went through the whole process again. I reminded myself again that I’d only been happy when I was on the court with my team and that every time I walked off the court I felt like I was fighting a battle.

  And so before we landed in Lawrence, I made the decision. I waited to tell Wanda until we got back to our house. I said, “Honey, it’s going to be North Carolina.”

  She said, “If that’s what you want to do, I’m with you.”

  The next morning, I called Chancellor Hemenway and told him. He said, “I really hate that, but it sounds like you’ve completely made your decision.”

  Then I called Bob Frederick and he said, “I understand, but why don’t you wait one more day?”

  Bob was no longer the athletic director, but he knew that the department had written a deferred income clause into my contract and that April 15 was the deadline. It was April 14. He told me I’d make an extra $200,000 if I stayed one more day.

  I said, “If they decide not to give me that money, then I’ll know I have made the right decision.”

  Then I called Dick Baddour and Coach Smith and asked them to send a plane to get me.

  The next two weeks were a replay of what had happened three years before. Only in reverse. The people at Kansas just wiped me off the face of the earth. I had told Chancellor Hemenway that I would be coming back to Lawrence for the Kansas season-ending basketball banquet, but then word got back to me that the school’s administration was thinking about not letting me attend. A reporter que
stioned me about that, and I said, “I’m going to make them make that decision when I get there, because I’m going.”

  Two days later, I returned to Lawrence for the banquet. First, we had a team dinner at Allen Fieldhouse for the players and their parents, and then we went to the performing arts center for the banquet. We had a bus to take us 500 yards to the entrance so we could get in, because there were 1,500 fans there. We got off the bus, and over on the sidewalk I saw 30 of my former players, and that’s when Wanda started crying. Kevin Pritchard walked up to me and said, “Coach, I’m here for you.” Then the rest of the guys came up and hugged me and said they were going in there to support me and make sure that nobody would stop me from speaking.

  When it came time for me to speak, I got up and started talking and someone from the balcony stood up and yelled, “You traitor!” Dave Collison stood up, turned around, and yelled back, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  The majority of the people in the room started standing, and then my players stood up, and there was a small ovation. Somehow we got through the night.

  At the end of the evening, I went over to my buddy Scot Buxton’s house. Twenty of my close friends were there, and we all ate ice cream as we shared memories of our Kansas times. Then Scot’s son, Brett, asked if he could talk.

  Brett said, “You’re the only coach I’ve ever known at Kansas. I have looked up to you so much and I hate that you are leaving, but I know if you’re doing it, it’s because it’s the best thing for your family. And I want you to know that you are one of my heroes.”

  It was closure with my best friends who knew what I had gone through three years before and knew what I’d gone through again this time.

  I spent two days in Lawrence packing up. On our last night there, Wanda and I went to eat at El Mezcal, a Mexican restaurant. There was a lady and her daughter two tables over from us and they had sort of given me a dirty look when we sat down. They got up to leave and the mother turned around and stuck out her tongue at me. Then she walked out. That was pretty comical.

  I had a clear conscience this time because whenever a Kansas recruit had asked me about how long I would be the Jayhawks coach, I had made sure that I didn’t say the same thing I’d said to Nick Collison. Instead I had told them that 12 different NBA teams had called me about their jobs, so I wasn’t going to the NBA, and I’d already turned down North Carolina, which was the only school that I would ever leave Kansas for. And so when I took the North Carolina job this time, I didn’t feel like I had lied to anybody.

  But in the following days people said some things that really hurt to hear. Wayne Simien, a sweet, wonderful kid who had missed the second half of the 2003 season with a separated shoulder, said, “I gave my right arm for that man.” Chancellor Hemenway, who I’d worked with for seven years and had always introduced me as “the greatest basketball coach in America,” began telling people that I’d become really hard to deal with over the last few years.

  My friend Dana Anderson, who had stood on the airport ramp in Los Angeles and said, “Whatever you do I’m going to be with you,” didn’t speak to me for a year and a half. Then I heard that his mother passed away and I called him with my condolences. We both got very emotional and put aside our differences and to this day he is a great friend.

  Kansas started showing a video before every home game that was all about the great history of the program, but they left out 15 years. My 15 years. It even reached the point that in 2008 when we were getting ready to play Kansas in the Final Four, there was a newspaper story about a barbershop in Lawrence that had put my picture up over the commode.

  People would be surprised to know that I’m still a member of the Jayhawk Club. I’m still a season ticket holder at Kansas at the highest level because of the money that I contributed to the program during my time there. I’ve got six seats at midcourt on the second row. There are probably 20 people in that entire university and state that have given the Kansas program more money than I have.

  As for the guy who called me a traitor at the banquet, I can live with that. That’s just some fan expressing his opinion, but for the Kansas administration to think seriously about not letting me speak at the banquet? I’d given my heart and my body and my soul to Kansas for 15 years. It’s not like I coached there for a couple of years and then as soon as somebody offered me a job for an extra dollar I took it.

  It wasn’t just the discontent. It was the anger and bitterness from people who I really thought cared about Roy Williams regardless, not just about what Roy Williams was doing for them as a basketball coach. That’s what hurt me so badly.

  Both times.

  CHAPTER 9

  Winning the Whole Blessed Thing

  IF I HAD KNOWN how terrible I was going to feel telling my Kansas players I was leaving, I swear I would not have left. As a coach, it is the worst feeling I have ever had.

  I really put a lot of thought into what I was going to say to them. I kept trying to think of something magical. Nothing came. Nothing. When the players walked into the locker room, they knew. They could see the look on my face and how emotional I was. I could see the expressions on their faces. I could sense the pain they were feeling.

  I said, “Guys, this is the only time in my life I’ve ever felt like I feel right now, because I’m making a decision that I don’t absolutely know is the right decision. But I’ve made the decision that I’m going to leave Kansas. I am not trading you for North Carolina’s players because I would not trade you for anyone. I love you all. But the fact is, I haven’t been happy for the last two years. I believe this is best for me and my family. I don’t expect you to understand now, but hopefully at some point you’ll know that I love you and that this is something I just had to do.”

  I walked out into the hallway and I felt awful because I had hurt them. I felt like I had chosen myself over 13 kids I really cared about. I felt dirty. I felt like I was skipping out on something. I wanted so badly to run back in there and say, “I can’t do it. I’m staying here.” But I had made the decision. I felt like it was the right decision, but that didn’t change how bad I felt about myself right then. That moment was the lowest opinion I have ever had of Roy Williams.

  I went to the airport and I’ll never forget riding the plane back to Chapel Hill from Lawrence, with the pilot telling me that all the way across from middle America to North Carolina the air traffic controllers were saying, “Tell Coach, good luck. We’re happy that he’s coming home.”

  We landed at the Chapel Hill airport. Coach Smith was there. Coach Guthridge was there. Coach Guthridge said to me, “We’re so happy that you’re back.”

  That was a little uncomfortable for me; we hadn’t really talked for three years and I knew he had been very mad at me. I understood deep down he was hurt because he’d wanted me to take over for him at North Carolina in 2000 and I hadn’t done that, and that maybe he would have remained as the coach for another season if he’d known I would turn down the job. I gave him some leeway because I would always think of him as my coach.

  We rode to the Smith Center and there were people along the sides of the road over the few miles from the airport to campus, holding up signs and screaming. Dick Baddour met us at the Smith Center and gave me a Carolina blue tie to put on. I told him I would not put it on. The tie I was wearing had blue and red on it, but it was not a Kansas Jayhawk tie like some people in the media thought. I was not going to change and just put on a UNC tie and act like the Kansas period of my life was over with. I was coming to North Carolina to coach the basketball team and I was going to give it everything I had, just like I had at Kansas, but I was not going to be phony.

  At the press conference I spent about half my time thanking people at Kansas, and I heard later that some of the North Carolina people didn’t really care for that. But it was something that I needed to do. I said that I was a Tar Heel born and I was a Tar Heel and Jayhawk bred, but when I die I’d be a Tar Heel dead.

  The n
ext day I met with the team individually and as a group and I told them I was going to help them win. I said, “I expect you to play unbelievably hard. I expect you to sacrifice and in the end you will be rewarded for those sacrifices. You will never work harder than I work, and you will never care more than I care, but I will ask you to come awfully close. This is the plan. You do what I tell you to do and we will make the NCAA Tournament this year. Then I’ll get you a little help and next year we’ll have a chance to win the whole blessed thing.”

  Some of the kids looked at me like I was crazy, some were skeptical, and some bought into it a little bit more.

  My second day back at North Carolina, I wanted to watch the players work out for a few minutes, just to see what I had. I brought them in to do a little run-and-shoot workout. It lasted 28 minutes. That’s all it was. Two guys threw up. I mean they were pathetic. Damion Grant got a rebound and was supposed to make an outlet pass, but the first time he tried it, he threw it 10 feet over the guy’s head. The second time, he was standing 10 feet in front of the backboard. He was supposed to throw it off the board to rebound it and he missed the backboard.

  I walked through the locker room and I overheard Byron Sanders talking to a teammate. “I know one thing,” he said. “We’re going to be in shape because he tried to kill us.”

  It was 28 minutes. I was just dumbfounded that kids who wanted to be good college basketball players were that out of shape. I was thinking, “What in the world have I gotten myself into?”

  DURING MY THIRD YEAR as an assistant coach at North Carolina we were all in the locker room before a game when the players started out to the court and I yelled, “Play hard, play smart!”

  I began saying that every game. Coach Smith told me one time that the correct way to say it would be, “Play hard, play smartly,” because smart is not an adverb. I told him, “Coach, that just doesn’t sound as good to me.”