By KEN DAVIS
The text message on my phone Thursday morning took my breath away.
“North Carolina’s Roy Williams retiring after 33 seasons in coaching,”
It seemed to be a cruel April Fool’s joke at first. That’s how surprising it was. Quickly, the posts followed up on Twitter and Instagram. There was a statement on the North Carolina athletic web site and the school announced a press conference for Thursday afternoon to make it official.
That was it.
Ol’ Roy, who started his Hall of Fame career at Kansas as “Roy Who?” and then went back to alma mater at the request of Coach Dean Smith, stepped away from coaching Thursday.
College basketball has lost an outstanding coach, but an even better man. People say that kind of thing whenever a legend retires or passes away. In Williams’ case, it’s the dadgum truth. You won’t find many – if any – better men who paced the sideline.
Williams was a people person. And the most important people were his players. He made that clear over and over again. When he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, the whole world knew it was true when players from both KU and UNC flocked to Springfield, Mass., to share his special moment.
While Thursday was surprising, it wasn’t exactly shocking. The past couple of years, he showed the strain. Even when he reached the 900-win milestone earlier this season, the gray hair and the struggle with the changes in today’s game were reflected in his expressions.
Smith was his mentor, the man he always called “Coach Smith.” When he returned to North Carolina, he promised Smith he wouldn’t stop at age 66. Smith had done that and later felt he had more in him.
Williams, now 70, kept his promise.
Why now?
“People always asked me how long I would continue to do this and I always said as long as my health allows me to do it,” Williams said. “Deep down inside I knew that the only thing that could speed that up is if I felt deep down inside I’m not the right man for the job. I no longer feel I am the right man for the job.”
He no longer felt he was the right man for the job.
That is vintage Roy Williams. He won three national championships and never took credit. He suffered some crushing loses, especially at Kansas, where his remarkable success never translated into a national title. He walked away from Lawrence after a crushing loss to Syracuse in the 2003 national championship game. There were rampant rumors that he was heading to North Carolina.
He had said no to Smith and Chapel Hill once before. Williams couldn’t do it a second time, After that loss to Syracuse in New Orleans I was walking back to my hotel when the KU team busses pulled up at the Jayhawks’ hotel. There was silence. Williams had a somber look on his face.
I knew right then that he was done at Kansas.
Williams wore his heart on his sleeve. A loss at the end of the season tore him up. Every time he had to say goodbye to a team, or a group of seniors, it seemed as if every member of his family had just passed away. He became known for the tears he shed at Final Four press conferences after the Jayhawks had let another opportunity slip away.
Some reporters mocked him for that. Eventually, everyone just figured it out. That was Roy being Roy.
“It has been a thrill,” Williams said at his press conference Thursday. “It has been unbelievable. I’ve loved it. It’s coaching. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since the summer after my ninth grade year of high school. No one has ever enjoyed coaching like I have for 48 years.”
Where did those years go?
Williams always admitted he “wasn’t much of a player.” But Smith, perhaps the most brilliant coach in the history of college basketball, saw something in the young Williams and brought him onto his staff. He made $2,700 and drove around North Carolina selling team calendars.
That was how it started. He was an assistant on the bench when Smith won the national title in 1983. Smith seemed to have a hand in attracting many of the great players to Carolina. That included Michael Jordan.
“Roy Williams is and always will be a Carolina basketball legend,” Jordan said in a statement through his business manager. “His great success is truly matched by the impact he had on the lives of the players he coached – including me. I’m proud of the way he carried on the tradition of Coach Smith’s program, always putting his players first.”
When Larry Brown left after leading Danny Manning and the Jayhawks to the 1988 national championship, the search for a new Kansas coach came to a surprising conclusion. Smith, a native of Kansas who played for Phog Allen at KU, was asked for his input.
Smith recommended Williams. Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick hired him. In the land of Naismith, Allen, Ted Owens and Brown, that act was viewed as blasphemy. A no-name, unknown assistant coach taking over at Kansas, at Allen Fieldhouse, on Naismith Drive?
Thursday, Williams called the late Frederick “the finest gentleman I ever knew in my life.”
Again, that isn’t blowng smoke. Roy Williams simply doesn’t do that. Frederick was a great man, perhaps the finest AD in Kansas history, a great professor and a friend to both students and athletes at KU. They had a great relationship that continued when Williams returned to Carolina.
Full disclosure here, I’m a Kansas alum. I’ve written two books on the Kansas program and I spent countless hours with Williams and Frederick discussing that hiring process and just about everything else Roy will be remembered for during his time in Lawrence.
Allow me a few reflections. I graduated from Kansas in 1980. In my long career as a college basketball writer, I have known, covered and interviewed Mike Krzyzewski (1,170 wins), Jim Boeheim (982), Jim Calhoun (918 counting 42 at Div. III St. Joseph in CT), Bob Knight (902) and Bob Huggins (900).
All legendary in their own way. All great coaches. Each had their own characteristics, good and bad.
But I can honestly say that Roy Williams, who walks away with 903 wins, had the most class and treated me with the most respect.
I was already at The Hartford Courant, where I spent 20 years, when Williams was hired at Kansas. I watched the love affair grow between him and the Kansas fans from a distance at first. But I met him in New York City when coaches from the Big 8 and Southwest Conference made a preseason publicity trip to the Big Apple.
I’m not sure of the year. Perhaps it was just before the 1989-90 season. Or maybe the next year. I introduced myself to Roy, told him my background, and it felt like an instant bond. And that continued all the way through to 2017, when he won won his third national championship at North Carolina.
In 1994, UConn and Kansas scheduled a two-game series. One game at Kemper Arena. One gave at the Hartford Civic Center. I was delighted. My alma mater and the team I covered at The Courant were going to meet. Williams and Calhoun. So many great players on both sides.
I dropped a note to Williams through the mail. No e-mail or texts in those days. I told him how excited I was about the series.
Imagine my surprise that August when a note from the Kansas basketball office arrived at my home address.
“Dear Ken,
Thanks so much for your note and I’m very happy about the U-Conn series.
I will not be coming to New York on the Big 8 trip this Fall, but I’m sure I’ll see you sometime.
I’d also be glad to work out a time to see you if you come in early for the game. Thanks again.
Most Sincerely,
Roy Williams
Head Basketball Coach
I’m pretty sure that’s the day I felt I had become a national college basketball writer, something I had wanted for a very long time. Williams not only gave me time on that trip but Kansas also set up an interview with point guard Jacque Vaughn, one of the smartest and most gracious players I ever conversed with during my career.
Williams and I crossed paths so many times, at Final Fours, regionals, at Kansas, at North Carolina, at his Hall of Fame induction, a celebration of Allen Fieldhouse, and even a tournament at Mohegan Sun casino – where he took time after a big North Carolina win to pose for a picture with a copy of my second Kansas book.
There was even a coaching clinic one time at Mohegan Sun. Coach Smith and Coach Williams were both speakers. Roy promised me some time with Coach Smith and he produced. Williams was very protective of Smith and his time. It was a short interview and we were walking down a hallway, but I got my story. That was a moment I will never forget, a moment when I was truly surrounded by greatness.
Every Kansas alum hurt when Williams left to go home. Many fans were angry at him. Three years earlier they thought he had promised he would stay. Perhaps it was my objectivity as a reporter or just the fact that I understood how much Carolina meant to him, but I never felt angry. When Smith told him North Carolina “needed him,” it was all over but loading the moving vans.
Williams was 418-101 with nine conference championships and four Final Fours at Kansas. He was 485-163 with nine conference titles, five Final Fours and three national championships at North Carolina.
We will never see numbers like that again.
When he won that first ring in 2005, I was so happy for him and I told him so. I will never forget going to the morning-after press conference at the Carolina team hotel. Ol’ Roy finally had his trophy and he was swelling with pride – in his players, not himself.
That brings us back to Thursday when he said he no longer felt like the right man for the job. That’s something only Roy could say about himself.
The losses always dogged Williams until he could get on a golf course and put them in the rear view mirror. Then he would look ahead.
One loss he could never forget came to Arizona in 1997 Sweet 16. Williams had Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz, Scot Pollard and Vaughn. They seemed destined to the national championship but lost 85-82 to Arizona.
It left a scar. We discussed that loss several times and he admitted it was the most painful thing he experienced as a coach.
Ten years later, in his Hall of Fame induction speech, he bared his soul and let his deepest emotions show.
“Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz, and Jacque Vaughn, the leaders of great teams that I feel I failed because I didn’t get you to the Final Four,” Williams told them.
His tone was the same on Thursday. He said the last two seasons convinced him to step aside. He felt he made coaching mistakes that led to North Carolina’s struggle.
“I just never got the team this year where I wanted them to go,” Williams said. “I just didn’t get it done.”
Williams got the Tar Heels to the NCAA Tournament but their loss to Wisconsin magnified those feelings, he said.
Roy Williams is old school. He admitted that, just in case you didn’t know. The game has changed over the decades. He said the transfer portal and NIL (Name Image Likeness) movement didn’t force him out, but all those trends and others “confirmed” the way he was thinking.
Rest assured, the departures from old school basketball and coaching played a part in his timing. That is sad because college basketball needs more coaches like Roy Williams. Any of his players would tell you that.
“I love coaching, working the kids on the court, the locker room, the ‘Jump Around’ [pregame] music, the trying to build a team,” Williams said. “I will always love that. And I’m scared to death of the next phase. But I no longer feel that I’m the right man.”
For so many years, at two great basketball schools, Williams always was the right man. Don’t ever forget that.
I want to thank Williams for his time and for teaching me so much about basketball – and life.
You will be missed, Roy.
Time to write another note and send it to Chapel Hill.
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