To understand Dean Smith, who he is and where he comes from, consider the wardrobes the four NCAA tournament East region semifinal coaches wore to practice the other day.
- Jeff Jones of Virginia: Warmup sweats.- Bob Huggins of Cincinnati: Warmup sweats.
- Nolan Richardson of Arkansas: Warmup sweats.
- Dean Smith of North Carolina: Suit and tie.
Phog Allen would be proud.
The maestro of Carolina basketball is a link to the game's prim and proper past, before trash talk and in-your-face became the language of the court. Smith played for Allen, one of the game's legendary coaches, at Kansas. And he has become one of the game's legendary coaches at North Carolina.
In his 32nd season, his teams have won more games than any active Division I coach. More than Bob Knight. More than Mike Krzyzewski. He is closing in on 800, a plateau that will be within reach next season.
In the tournament, his teams have won more games than any coach, period. More than John Wooden. More than Adolph Rupp. More than anybody.
The Tar Heels have gone to the NCAA tournament 19 straight times, the longest streak in tournament history, and they reached the final 16 this season for the 13th consecutive time.
Smith has been to the Final Four eight times, second only to Wooden, and is the only coach in history to do it in four different decades.
A suit and tie seems only appropriate. After all, those other guys never had a building named for them.
Carolina plays its home games in the Dean E. Smith Center, affectionately known as the Deandome. The building cost $33.8 million, all of it raised in private donations. It is a little thank-you from Carolina fans to the coach.
"He is a legend, a master of the game," Richardson said. "He has forgotten more basketball than most of us have learned. He is a cowboy, one of the top cowboys of the game."
"A cowboy?" Smith said, wondering about Richardson's description. "I have no idea what he means. I'm a city guy from Wichita. I never rode a horse. When Frank McGuire came to get me in Kansas, he wondered where the horses were."
McGuire recruited Smith to be a Carolina assistant in 1958. Three years later, when McGuire left for the NBA, Smith became the head coach.
That's a long time in one job and in Richardson's eyes, it makes Smith "a cowboy."
"He probably means I'm old," said Smith, who turned 62 on Feb. 28. His teams keep him young.
"I'm lucky in my job," Smith said. "I have a new team every year. Each year, there are a couple of new players and we start over again. It's exciting each time you do well. This team winning is important to me. In the end, though, everybody finishes with a loss except one. That makes it fun. One game and out. That's exciting."
If there is a chink in Smith's armor, it is that only once have all his NCAA tournament teams not finished their season with a loss. That was 1982 when the James Worthy-Sam Perkins-Michael Jordan Tar Heels won the national championship.
"They were good inventions," Richardson noted. "Dean is a great recruiter."
"Our goal is to win the national championship every year," Smith said. "It's a one-game deal. Maybe we should have kept Jordan, Worthy, (Bob) McAdoo and (J.R.) Reid a year more."
When each of those giant talents left for the NBA, it forced Smith to find replacement parts. But winning begets winning and each year, Smith seems to come up with quality players. He says a prospect doesn't have to be all-everything to play for him, just fit into the Tar Heels' team concept. And the Carolina roots run deep, long after his players leave.
When Hubert Davis, an NBA rookie, was one of the players fined in the New York Knicks-Phoenix Suns brawl, he called his old coach the next day.
"He wanted me to know it wasn't him," Smith said, chuckling. "He got fined $500. He must have left the bench."
Smith views his job in the gym as nothing more than what goes on in the classrooms at Chapel Hill.
"Coaching is teaching and it's fun," he said. "I hope each guy gets better and if the individual improves, then the team should be better."
Then it was time to conduct practice for his team. Smith's single concession to the activity was to take off his jacket. He did not, however, loosen his tie.
Earlier, Huggins announced that if Cincinnati got to the Final Four, he would shave his head. When the pledge was relayed to Smith, the Carolina coach squinted and smiled.
"Are you suggesting something?" he said, feeling his own hair.
Dean Smith with a shaved head? Don't hold your breath. Of course, nobody's named an arena after Huggins yet, either.