Legendary basketball coach Dean Smith died late Saturday at the age of 83 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He grew up in Emporia, Kan. and went to high school in Topeka. Though his only head coaching job was with the North Carolina Tar Heels, Smith maintained his connections in Kansas.
Knowing Dean Smith’s roots in Kansas, former Kansas athletics director Monte Johnson tried to hire Smith away from North Carolina in 1983. They met in Albuquerque, New Mexico, site of the ’83 Final Four.
“Monte asked me to come in ’83,” Smith said during a news conference at Allen Fieldhouse in 1998. “In Albuquerque he talked to me, and I recommended Larry Brown at the time.”
Larry Brown did end up with the job. Someone else, instead, was lured from North Carolina: Ed Manning, who was hired as Brown’s assistant while his son, Danny Manning, finished high school in Lawrence. In 1988, the Kansas Jayhawks won the national Championship, then Brown returned to the professional ranks.
A different coach goes to KU from North Carolina
By then Bob Frederick was the athletics director at KU, and Dean Smith said he was approached again.
“My parents lived in Topeka. I was going to visit them when Bob Frederick and I had our clandestine meeting at Hardee’s near the exit at Topeka to talk about Roy (Williams) on July Fourth. I think they hired him on July 8th or something.”
Roy Williams was an assistant under Dean Smith before KU provided Williams with his first head coaching opportunity. Smith said he made several trips to Kansas when Roy Williams was around and played golf with him.
Williams experienced his first national championship as an assistant under Smith in 1982.
“I know as an assistant I really wanted it for maybe the wrong reason,” said Williams. “I wanted it just so all you guys (the media)—some of you weren’t even born then—would stop saying that Coach could never win the big one. It was his seventh Final Four. I thought he had to win a lot of big ones to get there. That wasn’t going to determine to me whether he’s a great coach.”
Smith eventually coached the Tar Heels to two national championships.
Learning to coach from the bench
Before his coaching career, Smith was a member of the 1952 Jayhawks who won a national championship. Smith came off the bench with Clyde Lovellette leading the nation in scoring.
“Dean Smith didn’t play very much for Kansas, but Dean Smith was one that sat there on the bench and learned from the greatest, Phog Allen,” said Lovellette.
But Dean Smith also acknowledged Phog Allen’s top assistant and eventual succesor, Dick Harp.
“I think Dr. Allen was just a marvelous motivator. I really do,” said Smith. “Dick Harp was a brilliant strategist. And I mean brilliant.”
Integrating on the court
When Smith became an assistant at North Carolina in the early 1960s, he was instrumental in integrating the team during the civil rights movement. But he was modest about his accomplishments. It took a great effort by ESPN to have Smith accept an ESPY award.
“I told them no,” said Smith. “The Arthur Ashe Award for courage. I haven’t done anything courageous. I mean really.”
In the fall of 2013, President Barack Obama presented members of the Dean Smith family with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dean Smith, who suffered from dementia in recent years, was absent.
Even if he were healthy enough to be at White House that day, family members would have preferred to make the trip the same way he did when he returned to Kansas--without all the fanfare.
