CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Roy Williams warns up front that the story is "corny as all get-out," but he tells it still because it's a good story and, let's be honest, corny as all get-out has never stopped the North Carolina coach before.
Either way, I'm excited. Because I like good stories and love good recruiting stories, even corny ones. So I'm sitting here inside the Dean Smith Center on a January afternoon just listening to the story, and it's a story about Marvin Williams from an AAU game in which he played against that legendary Atlantic Celtics summer team featuring Dwight Howard, Josh Smith and Randolph Morris.
"Marvin got 36 (points) and fouls out with a couple of minutes to play, and people gave him almost like a standing ovation because he had been going against all three of them by himself," Williams remembered. "So then Marvin goes down there to the end of the bench, and there's a timeout, and then he gets five cups of water and takes those five cups of water and gives them to the five players who are in the game.
"To me, that matters," Williams added. "I like that."
The amazing thing about this story is not that Marvin Williams got the water or that Roy Williams liked it, but that Roy Williams even saw Marvin Williams get the water, and now allow me to explain.
You see, summer AAU tournaments are all madness, just players and coaches bouncing from one game to the next as focus takes a backseat to everything. I've been in enough gyms in July to understand the scene, and the scene typically consists of coaches sitting with their buddies -- Bill Self hanging with Billy Gillispie, Mike Krzyzewski right beside Jeff Capel -- and chatting, texting, telling stories or making dinner plans because most guys are there just to be seen, the evaluation part of the process having long been completed.
But Roy Williams is different.
I noticed this a long time ago, back when I was working at a newspaper, and though I don't remember the exact year I remember the moment vividly, the moment when I first met the current North Carolina coach. There were a bunch of us standing around him at an AAU tournament asking questions about this and that, sort of like an informal press conference. But then a game started, and one of his potential prospects was about to play. Williams stopped almost midsentence and said, "OK guys, I've got to go do my job." And then he walked away, into the bleachers, up to the top row, alone. He subsequently watched every little thing that happened on the court, and that's when I realized that Williams has a unique passion for not only recruiting, but for the process of recruiting, and so now I'm sitting here in the Dean Smith Center and I'm asking him why.
Why does he watch so attentively when others do not?
How does he maintain the passion given that his level of success tends to make others relax?
|
|
| Roy Williams doesn't slow down when it comes to the recruiting game. (Getty Images) |
Williams goes on to tell a story about John Wooden, one in which the iconic former UCLA coach once offered some advice. "He told me nobody can coach bad players," Williams remembers, and then he explains that he doesn't consider himself a "great coach" because great coaches are people who win with bad players, and he's not sure he could do that.
Some of this is typical Williams self-deprecation, of course. But it's hard not to recognize that the man "gets it" as well as anybody gets it, that he understands the main reason he has never had a losing season, never won fewer than 19 games, never missed the NCAA tournament over the past 19 seasons. It is not because of his secondary break as much as it's because of the players he has recruited to run his secondary break.
Obviously, this isn't a new revelation.
Coaches have long insisted players win games.
But there aren't many coaches who never forget that premise over a span of decades, who never let up, who consistently put in the time and effort to recruit at the highest level, particularly when they have already achieved a national title and are now working at a school (like UNC) where it's possible to relax and still lure McDonald's All-Americans. Williams is one of the few coaches who fits that description, proof being how he pushed up practice two days before the Wake Forest game so he could recruit on that Friday night, or how he'll use a rare break from games this weekend to travel to Memphis to see Briarcrest Christian School standout Leslie McDonald, who signed with the Tar Heels last November.
This is business as usual for Roy Williams.
Because he knows the foundation of his success.
"I don't think I'm a great coach, but I think I'm OK," Williams said with a smile. "And as long as I get really good players, I guess I'll always be OK."
Bucs XXXVII 
