Legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith dies at 83

Jack Carey | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Dean Smith, college coaching legend, dies at 83 Former University of North Carolina men's basketball head coach Dean Smith turned the Tar Heels into a perennial powerhouse and will be remembered as one of the greatest college coaches of all time.

When Dean Smith set what at the time was the record for career coaching victories on a mid-March day during the 1997 NCAA basketball tournament, the celebration was on for the far-flung "family" of ex-North Carolina players he had coached and nurtured in more than three decades at the school.

Many former Tar Heels and long-time associates of the coach were either on hand for the game against Colorado in Winston-Salem, N.C., or called Smith shortly after its conclusion to offer congratulations.

Today, that family is in mourning. Dean Smith died Saturday evening in Chapel Hill. He was 83.

The University of North Carolina announced the news.

"Coach Dean Smith passed away peacefully the evening of February 7 at his home in Chapel Hill, and surrounded by his wife and five children," the Smith family said in a statement. "We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as arrangements are made available to the public. Thank you."

Iconic Smith, a Hall of Famer, won two national championships and coached the Tar Heels to 11 Final Fours and 13 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament titles in 36 seasons. With 879 career coaching victories, Smith ranks fourth all time behind longtime rival Mike Krzyzewski (1,003), Jim Boeheim (963) and Bob Knight (902).

Tributes came in from across the country, from inside and outside the game.

"Last night, America lost not just a coaching legend but a gentleman and a citizen," President Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "When he retired, Dean Smith had won more games than any other college basketball coach in history. He went to 11 Final Fours, won two national titles, and reared a generation of players who went on to even better things elsewhere, including a young man named Michael Jordan—and all of us from Chicago are thankful for that.

"But more importantly, Coach Smith showed us something that I've seen again and again on the court — that basketball can tell us a lot more about who you are than a jump shot alone ever could. He graduated more than 96% of his players and taught his teams to point to the teammate who passed them the ball after a basket. He pushed forward the Civil Rights movement, recruiting the first black scholarship athlete to North Carolina and helping to integrate a restaurant and a neighborhood in Chapel Hill. And in his final years, Coach Smith showed us how to fight an illness with courage and dignity. For all of that, I couldn't have been prouder to honor Coach Smith with Medal of Freedom in 2013.

"Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to his wife Linnea, to his family, and to his fans all across North Carolina and the country."

Smith, as was long his custom, tried to deflect attention from himself in the aftermath of the record-setting win that day in 1997 and preferred to talk about his team, which had just qualified for the Sweet 16. His Tar Heels would win two more games the next week to advance to another Final Four, where they would lose in the semifinals to Arizona.

Then Smith did something completely unexpected but totally in character.

He retired shortly before the following season started. At 66, Smith was getting worn down from the demands of the job — on the court and off. If he couldn't give his all anymore, it was best not to make a less-than-100% attempt.

Smith chose to leave in October 1997, setting up a smooth transition to longtime assistant Bill Guthridge, who had sat by his side on the bench for three decades. The passing of the job to a loyal associate was typical of the man who always preached unselfishness and a team-first attitude and instructed his players, after scoring, to point to the teammate who had made the great pass that led to the basket.

A four-time national coach of the year, Smith had basketball bloodlines as deep and as blue as the Carolina sky. He was a reserve guard on the Kansas team that won the 1952 NCAA title and was runner-up the following year under legendary coach Phog Allen, who learned the game from its inventor, James Naismith. Smith scored a total of one point -- in 1953 -- in the two championship games.

He began as an assistant coach at Kansas and went on to become one of only three men to win the coaching triple crown — championships in the NCAA tournament, the NIT and the Olympics. (The gold medal came in Montreal in 1976, four years after the controversial finish at the Munich Games gave the Soviet Union a stunning victory.)

His use of the "four-corner" offense, which salted away many a close game in the era before the shot clock, the run-and-jump defense and the foul-line huddle helped build the legend.

Smith also was productive away from basketball court. He made sure his players took academics seriously — more than 96% of his lettermen graduated — as a son of parents who were public school teachers.

In 1966 Smith recruited Charlie Scott, who became the first African-American to be given an athletic scholarship at UNC. In presenting Smith at 2011 ceremonies honoring the former coach with the James A. Naismith Sportsmanship Award, Scott said Smith never talked to him about being the first black athlete at the school. It was all about being a human being.

"He taught us about life," Scott told the audience.

But that recruitment only scratched the surface of Smith's political activism. A staunch Democrat and one of the state's best-known liberals, Smith often spoke out on political issues and joined with a local pastor to help integrate a Chapel Hill restaurant at the height of the civil rights movement.

Smith got all his wins at North Carolina, the place that would shape his life and career — and honor him by naming the team's playing facility after him while he was still coaching, the Dean E. Smith Student Activities Center, popularly referred to as the Dean Dome.

'Play hard, play together, play smart'

Smith was an assistant coach at North Carolina when head coach Frank McGuire resigned in 1961 to become coach of the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors. UNC tapped Smith to be the new head coach. He was 30.

The Heels had been placed on NCAA probation for recruiting violations at the end of McGuire's tenure, and Smith's head coaching career didn't get off to a great start.

He went 8-9 in his first year (his only losing record) and would win no more than 16 games in any of his first five seasons.

But when Smith broke through, he did so in a big way.

In 1966-67, the Tar Heels went 26-6 and reached Smith's first Final Four. Paced by Scott, the Heels went back to the Final Four the next two years, finishing second to UCLA in 1968.

Within a few years, players who would become legends at Chapel Hill began donning the Carolina blue. Among them were Brad Hoffman, Bobby Jones, George Karl, Mitch Kupchak, Walter Davis, Phil Ford and Mike O'Koren.

"My basketball philosophy boils down to six words: play hard, play together, play smart," Smith wrote in The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching, with Gerald Bell and John Kilgo in 2004.

"('Playing) hard' meant with effort, determination and courage. 'Together' meant unselfishly, trusting your teammates. ... 'Smart' meant with good execution and poise, treating each possession as if it were the only one in the game."

UNC again went to the Final Four in 1972, finishing third, then was runner-up to Marquette in 1977.

But by the time UNC lost the championship game in 1981 to Indiana, Smith's critics were crowing that he would never win the big one.

It wouldn't take long to prove them wrong, with the great help of a freshman.

Developed players into stars and coaches

The 1982 UNC team was the one that finally put the legendary coach in the winner's circle and heralded the start of a Hall of Fame playing career for Michael Jordan.

With a lineup that included future NBA stars Jordan, James Worthy and Sam Perkins, the Tar Heels edged Georgetown 63-62 for Smith's first national title in one of the most memorable NCAA finals. Jordan hit the winning jumper and Worthy then intercepted an errant Georgetown pass to seal the crown.

Another championship would come in 1993 when the Heels edged Michigan in the game made famous when Chris Webber called a late timeout that the Wolverines didn't have.

Apart from the on-court success, though, was that feeling of family Smith engendered.

The ties that Smith's players had to him and to Carolina long after their playing days ended have been well-chronicled. He was a supportive father figure to many, even years after graduation, and often worked to help team managers get placed in the job market or graduate school.

His sprawling coaching tree of former players or UNC assistants includes three Hall of Famers — Roy Williams, Larry Brown and Billy Cunningham, all winners of NCAA and/or NBA titles — along with Karl, Matt Doherty, Eddie Fogler, Jeff Lebo and Buzz Peterson.

Kupchak became general manager of NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers teams, and Jordan became president of the Washington Wizards and now owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.

More than 50 of Smith's players competed in the NBA or ABA, and others played overseas.

In 2010, Smith's family sent out a letter to former players and coaches saying the legendary coach was having trouble remembering things. His condition was described as a "progressive neurocognitive disorder that affects his memory."

"It's a stark contrast because he is widely known for remembering a name, a place, a game, a story — it's what made other people feel like they were special, because our dad remembered everything," the letter said.

The family also noted that Smith had undergone a knee replacement and a repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

"He may not immediately recall the name of every former player from his many years of coaching," the letter said, "but that does not diminish what those players meant to him or how much he cares about them."

Perhaps longtime UNC radio announcer Woody Durham said it best at the time Smith set that coaching victory record.

"He's a remarkable individual," Durham said, "and we're fortunate that he decided to be a basketball coach."

Dean Edwards Smith

Born: Feb. 28, 1931, in Emporia, Kan.

Education: University of Kansas on academic scholarship, degrees in mathematics and physical education

Military service: U.S. Air Force, lieutenant stationed in Germany

Hall of Fame: Inducted in 1983 into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

Coaching career: Three-year stint as an assistant basketball coach at the Air Force Academy, where he also was head coach for baseball and golf; NIT Championship with North Carolina, 1971; NCAA championship, 1982, 1993; ACC coach of the year eight times, national coach of the year for 1977, 1979, 1982 and 1986; winning coach of the U.S. Basketball team gold medal at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal;Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year, 1997; overall head coaching record of 879-254 (.776)

Among players coached: Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, Kenny Smith, Phil Ford, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, George Karl

Author:The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (with Gerald D. Bell, John Kilgo), 2004; A Coach's Life: My Forty Years in College Basketball (with Kilgo, Sally Jenkins), 1999; Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense, 1981

Trivia: Smith initially considered studying medicine

Quote: "On one occasion, as we walked off the court following a game at South Carolina, one of their fans called me a 'big, black baboon.' Two assistants had to hold Coach Smith back from going after the guy. It was the first time I had ever seen Coach Smith visibly upset." -- Former UNC guard Charlie Scott, the first African-American to get an athletic scholarship at the school, given by Smith, as told to Sports Ilustrated