Charlotte, N.C. ? North Carolina has hired a great coach. Roy Williams is one of college basketball’s best, and it’s fascinating to daydream about him working next season against Wake Forest’s Skip Prosser, Maryland’s Gary Williams and, in front of all those screaming students at Cameron Indoor Arena, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
As astute as the hire is, however, North Carolina is a lesser athletic department for having made it. The school has forfeited the right, at least until the statute of limitations expires, to continue to claim it does things the right way.
Actually, Tar Heels being Tar Heels, they’ll continue to say it. What they have forfeited is the right to believe it.
They ran off their last coach, Matt Doherty, two weeks ago in a manner so public they could have sold tickets, T-shirts and television rights. Tonight: Episode III, The Dismantling of Doherty.
If the coach had to go, he had to go. But fire him with style and grace, not with loud gossip. School representatives all but drove around the state with their heads out the window yelling, “We’re meeting with players and their parents, after which we’ll reluctantly conclude we must fire Doherty. Don’t tell anybody, though!”
Although I don’t know why the school forced him out in the manner it did, I know why it fired him.
He screamed at players, undermining his relationship with them and with their parents.
He accumulated more enemies than victories.
He failed to make Phil Ford, a legend in the state and the department, an assistant coach.
He fired influential secretaries he had no idea were influential.
He reduced the number of tickets allotted to friends of the program, one of whom was so angry he wanted to initiate a dump Doherty petition.
He failed to make the NCAA Tournament twice in three seasons.
He did not do things the way Dean Smith did.
Williams will. Like Smith, he’ll win, and to ensure it he’ll recruit the best high school players in the country, players the caliber of North Carolina freshmen Raymond Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants.
But he won’t do it Dean’s way. Nobody can attain success without leaving his own imprint on his work, as the tenure of Bill Guthridge, who preceded Doherty, attests.
A loyal and longtime Smith assistant, Guthridge won a lot of games in his three seasons as the head man. But he tried to do things the way Dean had, and this made him less a coach than a caretaker. Although he is now remembered fondly, did anybody try to talk him out of leaving?
Williams is more emotional than Smith, more likely to cry and more likely to yell at his players.
Smith used to say that while sports are far from a university’s most important facet, they are the most visible. Athletics are a university’s front porch, Smith said.
I like front porches, and I’m looking in the direction of North Carolina’s now. But I can’t see it. There are too many weeds.
