Four days after the Fourth of July nearly four years ago, somebody named Roy Williams was introduced as the new head basketball coach at Kansas.
Roy who?
From Elkhart to Atchison, from Baxter Springs to St. Francis, Kansas basketball fans shook their heads. Most of them thought Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick had pulled a monumental rock by hiring a man whose only previous experience was on the high school level.
Hey , this is Kansas. This is hallowed ground in college basketball. How could the Jayhawks’ basketball job be entrusted to a nobody?
Well, last week that nobody was the only college coach in America contacted about the Los Angeles’ Lakers’ head coaching vacancy. And if that doesn’t show you how fast Roy Williams’ star has skyrocketed through the basketball firmament, nothing does.
The Lakers. Except for perhaps the Boston Celtics, there is no more prestigious coaching job in the NBA. Not the Bulls, not the Pistons, not the Knicks. The Lakers and the Celtics are the North Carolina and Indiana of the NBA.
Lakers’ general manager Jerry West contacted Williams during his search for a successor to Mike Dunleavy. However, West fell short of saying he offered Williams the job.
How did Williams name come up in the first place?
Obviously, Williams is no longer a no-name…not after coaching Kansas into the 1991 NCAA championship game and earning this year’s national coach of the year award from the Associated Press. But his 10-year stint as a North Carolina aide was no doubt a factor, too.
Two former Tar Heels, Sam Perkins and James Worthy, are on the Lakers’ roster, and Mitch Kupchak, another former North Carolina basketball player, is the Lakers’ assistant GM.
Of Williams, Perkins once said: “He’s determined to get the best out of anybody. He was a disciplinarian-type coach, whereas you had to do it his way. Once you did that, he was not only a coach but a friend.”
Would that approach work on men who cash six-figure paychecks every month? I wonder.
At the same time, I can’t envision Roy Williams as part of the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles. I can’t see him hob-nobbing with movie stars, lunching with the glitterati or dining with politicians.
Besides, isn’t it mandatory that the Lakers’ head coach slick his hair back? We’ll see an NBA franchise in Topeka before we see Roy Williams using hair gel.
Roy Williams would be as out of place in Los Angeles as a penguin in Havana, an emergency room in a K mart store or a statue of Stalin in Moscow. Williams isn’t a good ol’ boy, but he’s a down-home guy with homespun values implanted while he was growing up in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.
Stranger things have happened, of course, but how mind-boggling would it be if Williams and his predecessor were coaching both of L.A.’s NBA franchises?
Larry Brown fits Los Angeles like a glove. He’s a big-city born, big-city raised and back in a big city where he belongs … although for the record, if he lasts longer than four years were with the Clippers.
Brown is an NBA coach who just happened to win an NCAA title. Williams is an NCAA coach who might just happen to win an NBA title some day.
Anything is possible, I guess, but if Williams ever does cocah in the NBA, I’d put my money on Charlotte or Minneapolis or Indianapolis or Milwaukee or even Chicago. Not Los Angeles, though.
