The gorgeous morning of Sunday, February 8th in Chapel Hill, North Carolina was full of promise and brightness, but the idyllic beauty of the warm winter morning was was rocked when word emerged from the University of Chapel Hill that coaching legend Dean Smith had passed away at the age of 83.
Smith had been battling a degenerative condition that was made public in 2010. Though there had been speculation that it was Alzheimer’s, this was never confirmed by his family or the university. He died peacefully, according to a statement released by the school this morning.
An icon in the college basketball coaching fraternity, Smith was an all-state basketball player at Emporia High School in Kansas, where he was also the starting quarterback for the football team and the catcher for the baseball team. Electing to stick with basketball, he moved on to the University of Kansas for his college years, where he learned under Phog Allen, the storied Kansas coach who learned his trade from the inventor of the sport himself, James Naismith.
In 1952, Smith was part of the Kansas team that finished the season as national champions, and upon graduation, he served as an assistant to Allen.
After serving as a lieutenant in the US Air Force in Germany, after which he resumed his coaching career as an assistant at the Air Force Academy, Smith was hired by Frank McGuire as an assistant at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1958. When McGuire left for the NBA in 1961 under the shadow of a point-shaving scandal, Smith’s ascendancy to a head coaching position was complete, and he was named as the head coach for UNC, a position he held for the next 36 years.
Smith’s time at the helm of the UNC program was an illustrious one. For that entire span of almost 4 decades, there was but one losing season – the season following the McGuire scandal. Within the ACC, Smith’s teams never finished lower than tied for third while winning 13 ACC Championships, reaching the Final Four 11 times and winning the national championship twice.
As a coach, Smith will be remembered for introducing or improving on several innovations in technique that have been emulated by many coaches over the years. Perhaps the most famous example of that is the “Four Corners” offense, a method of spreading the court to maintain possession while milking the clock late in games. In fact, Smith’s teams became such efficient practitioners of this strategy that first the ACC and then finally the NCAA implemented a shot clock in 1985. Other innovations included introducing team traditions such as pointing at teammates who provided assists and Senior Days.
If his achievements on the basketball court seemed larger than life, Smith’s life off the court only further reinforces that notion. After seeking counsel from his pastor, Smith became a driving force for desegregation not just at UNC, but in the town of Chapel Hill as well. Charlie Scott became the university’s first black scholarship athlete in 1967, just a year after Don Haskins’ groundbreaking NCAA Tournament victory over Adolph Rupp‘s Kentucky. A prominent Democratic Party supporter, Smith’s other passions included speaking out against the Vietnam War, the death penalty, and nuclear weapons.
For his life’s work, Smith was recognized with induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003 and was one of the inaugural inductees to the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
On top of those honors, he was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, where President Barack Obama made the following statement about Smith:
“While coach Smith couldn’t join us today due to an illness that he’s facing with extraordinary courage, we also honor his courage in helping to change our country. He recruited the first black scholarship athlete to North Carolina. And helped integrate a restaurant and a neighborhood in Chapel Hill.
“That’s the kind of character he represented on and off the court.”
A surprise announcement of his retirement in 1997 saw him leave the helm of the UNC program as the then-winningest coach in men’s NCAA basketball history with 897 wins. Even now, 18 years later, he still ranks among the top 4.
Dean Edwards Smith is survived by his wife of 38 years Linnae and his four daughters and son.
(Feature image: goheels.com)
