CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Roy Williams won his 879th game on Monday night, tying his mentor Dean Smith for fourth-place on the all-time Division I wins list. He reached that win total in 15 fewer games than the man that served as a father figure for him and so many others, although if you’re caught up in the numbers, you’re missing the point of what Dean created and what Roy has cultivated.

Smith died on Feb. 7, 2015 and his final decade of life was plagued by a progressive neurological disorder that affected his memory. As his death drifts further into the past, so to does an understanding of what he meant to this community and the basketball world as a whole. Yes, Smith won 879 games, including two national championships, 13 ACC Tournament titles and 17 ACC regular season titles, although basketball was merely his vehicle of choice (or destiny) in teaching his players – and by extension fans of the game – what it meant to be a good and decent man.

Smith was the link between basketball’s dark past and its promising future. The Kansan was a toddler when his father, Alfred, put Paul Terry, a black 10th grader, on his all-white Emporia High School basketball team in 1934. Smith would later say in “A Coach’s Life” that his father taught him to value each human being, not as a matter of standing up to injustice, but rather as a fundamental understanding that each and every person is deserving of dignity.

The coaching legend began his basketball career as a guard for Phog Allen, who had played for James Naismith at Kansas. It’s only fitting for a man of such high moral character to represent such an integral branch of basketball’s grand coaching tree and to pair those beliefs with incredible coaching acumen. Charlie Scott would become his father’s Paul Terry, a man who endured harsh discrimination in an effort to break through an imaginary wall so that others just like him could follow.

Along the way, Smith popularized the Four Corners offense as well as having his players point at the passer as a way to praise a teammate for helping another. Basketball provided Smith with a platform to build a basketball family, which exponentially expanded over his 36 years at UNC. Upon his death, Smith willed his trust to send $200 to every letterman who had played for him. Each player was instructed to enjoy a dinner out on his behalf. It was a seemingly small token that epitomized what meant most to him.

What mattered most certainly was not the numbers on the scoreboard after 40 minutes of sport on the hardwood, which is why Williams left the birthplace of basketball 17 years ago to come home and it’s why he has consistently dismissed the significance of the all-time wins list. It’s also why he begrudgingly remained courtside after Monday’s 70-67 win over Yale to be honored on the court bearing his name in Smith’s building.

“It's a number,” Williams said in his postgame press conference. “It means I've stayed around a long time, probably longer than some people wanted me to stay at places, but that's what it is. Scott Smith came out and said one thing, and I think he's right, and he said, 'Dad would be really happy,' and I think he would be, but I've never even known this was even close…

“I'm very appreciative of 32 years of happy times in the locker room acting silly and doing anything that we wanted to do. It's a number. I'm very fortunate that the teams I've had have been so good because I didn't become a head coach until I was 38 and I would've been very satisfied to have stayed and been Coach Smith's assistant until he left, and then Coach (Bill) Guthridge's assistant until he left, and then Eddie Fogler's assistant until he left, and then I would've gone with Eddie, except I would've gone to the golf course. He would've gone to the track. So, you know, it's a number and I'm pleased for my players.”

His players, of course, understood the significance of this achievement and were delighted to be a part of this victory, because they knew it was an opportunity to honor a man whose preference was to deflect praise back to them.

“Coach Williams doesn’t know it, but after I’m done playing and I’m back in Alabama someday, he’s always going to be invited," junior forward Garrison Brooks said. "He’ll be invited. He’s good anywhere I’m good. He can come anywhere I’m at. He’s always going to be a part of my family. He will always have a huge impact on my life as a father figure and helping me to become a better young man and helping me to become a better person.”

Justin Pierce was well aware of Williams’s coaching acumen before transferring from William & Mary for his senior season in Chapel Hill and he had heard stories of the Carolina family and what it meant, but actually experiencing it firsthand has provided an enlightened perspective.

“Today was the greatest example of Coach Williams’s character,” Pierce said. “He cares about each individual and each one of us like family. There’s not many coaches out there who really do mean that. He had 879 wins tonight and he couldn’t care less about that. All of his worry was on our team – that was our eighth win – and on Anthony Harris and his health and well-being. I just think that speaks volumes to Coach Williams.”

Tar Heel basketball players have been making those types of comments about their head coaches for nearly six decades, although those head coaches have never seemed to fully appreciate their role in building or maintaining the Carolina basketball family. Even so, it’s the one thing in which they all seem to take immense pride.

“The Carolina basketball family is the strongest there has every been, there ever will be, and anybody else can do what they want to do,” Williams said, “but I know that ours is the best and the strongest ever.”

At Smith’s memorial service in February 2015, Williams recalled recognizing a gentleman watching pregame warmups from the stands and asked senior associate athletic director Clint Gwaltney to go tell him that he looked like he might still be able to play. That man was Terrence Burroughs, who played on the first JV team that Williams had coached at UNC some 37 years earlier.

Those are the bonds that “879” represent. It’s not about ego or accolades; it’s about relationships. For this brief moment in time, Smith and Williams are united in the only way most of us can truly appreciate, despite it being just a number.