Exclusive: UNC’s Roy Williams opens up on Jordan, Dean, Duke and why he really retired

Roy Williams, the star of this week’s “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” is probably a well-known name to you and to most sports fans.

What you won’t know, however, is all of the stories Williams tells in this wide-ranging 90-minute interview — tales about Michael Jordan, Dean Smith, Duke, what Williams considers to be the greatest shot in UNC history (it wasn’t Jordan’s), why he once grew a mustache, the two best teams he coached that didn’t win a national title and many more.

For those who need a brief refresher course, Williams is the Hall of Fame basketball coach who won three national championships in 18 years as the head coach of the University of North Carolina from 2003-2021. Williams grew up in western North Carolina, graduated from UNC in the early 1970s, spent 10 years as an assistant coach for the legendary Smith in Chapel Hill and then left to become Kansas’ head basketball coach from 1988-2003.

Williams then won 418 games at Kansas before returning to UNC in 2003, where he united Tar Heel fans and won 485 more games and those three national titles before suddenly retiring on April 1, 2021. Williams, 72, remains the only coach in college basketball history to win at least 400 games at two different schools.

About 20% of what Williams said in our interview is excerpted in the following Q&A. You’ll find the other 80% on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Scott Fowler: Before we started this interview, you told me: “People still don’t believe it, but this is the reason why I really retired.” So tell people that reason.

Roy Williams: In coaching, you’re always evaluating. You’re evaluating your team, your recruiting, your staff, everything. But you’re also evaluating yourself. And I got to the point that I didn’t feel like I was doing it as well as I had done before. And I really couldn’t handle that.

I knew I wasn’t going to cheat my school and I knew I wasn’t going to cheat the kids. The first 31 years as a head coach, there were two times that I would go home and sit there and say: “If I had done this, or if I hadn’t done that, we would have won the game.” And that was only two times in 31 years. So I was confident.

But in my last two years, there were three times that I questioned myself so badly that I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything.

And so you go from two times in the first 31 years to three times in the last two. I just didn’t feel like I was doing it as well. And that was it.

Q: What were those games?

A: The Duke game at home (Feb. 8, 2020), the Clemson game at home (Jan. 11, 2020) and the Texas game up in Asheville in the finals of the Maui//Asheville invitational tournament (Dec. 2, 2020). Those are the three. There were some things that I did or didn’t do that I felt like were really, really big in the fact that we lost those three games.

Q: You said in your farewell press conference on April 1, 2021, that “I’m scared to death of the next phase.” What has the next phase been like? Do you miss coaching?

A: Some of it has been scary, but it’s also been great. For me, the best thing is I’ve been able to spend more time with my children and particularly the grandkids. We’ve taken some trips with the grandkids and made it an educational thing. (Wife) Wanda and I were both public school teachers at one time. So that part has really been good.

It’s been really hard, too, because I do miss the coaching tremendously. I watch every game and you know, I die with every possession.

I do miss the interactions with the players. The locker room. The bus rides. The practices every day. I miss that tremendously. But I made decisions for what I thought was the best reason. I just didn’t think I was doing it as well anymore, and I couldn’t handle that.

‘If anybody’s ever gonna bleed Carolina blue’

Q: You were able to get your preferred successor, Hubert Davis, into your former chair as head coach. Was that easy? Did UNC take that recommendation automatically?

A: Well, I made the recommendation and pushed really hard. I think I made it uncomfortable for some people at times.

There’s three or four things why I did it. Number one, the last recruit I had as an assistant coach to come to North Carolina was Hubert Davis. So we go back a long way. And everything he’s done in his life, he’s overachieved.

People didn’t think he could play at North Carolina. Well, he did. People didn’t think he could start at North Carolina. Well, he did. And he became a big-time player at North Carolina. People didn’t think he’d be in the NBA but he was drafted in the first round and played 12 years. So everything he’s ever done, he exceeded what people thought and I love those guys that are overachievers.

He’s the nicest individual I’ve ever known in my life, who is also fiercely competitive. And God Almighty, I love that part of it too. I just thought he was by far the best candidate.

I think if anybody’s ever gonna bleed Carolina blue, I think it’s going to be me. I think Hubert’s right there in the same league.

And I just couldn’t be prouder of the job that he and the kids did in the way they made that big run at the end (of the 2022 season, to the national final before losing to Kansas). I never thought I would enjoy being a spectator, yet there was some of finest, most fun and one of the finest moments of my life down in New Orleans to see them win and to get to the national championship game.

Q: This 2022-23 college basketball season, as with some of your teams, it will be considered a disappointment if UNC doesn’t win the national championship. Do you think they will?

A: I think they’ve got the best chance. Two or three, maybe four times, I was in that same position. I loved it. You know, I’d rather people be saying good things about me than bad.

I don’t think that you can pick one team and say they’re definitely going to win it. But you know I love having a few bets on the golf course and on the craps table.

I’m not a guy that bets on college athletics. But if I were, that’s who I’d bet on.

Best shot in UNC history? Roy weighs in

Q: In my mind, the three greatest shots in UNC men’s basketball history are Michael Jordan’s shot to win the national championship in 1982, Marcus Paige’s double-clutch shot to tie the national title game against Villanova in 2016 and Luke Maye’s jumper to beat Kentucky and put UNC in the Final Four in 2017. Rank those shots for me.

A: Well, I would put Marcus at No. 1.

The reason is the shot that Michael made, I can make. The shot that Luke Maye made, I can make. ... The shot that Marcus made, I couldn’t make. So that was part of it. We were 10 down with like four minutes to go in that game and he had willed us back to get us into that spot. And the contortion of his body was just unbelievable.

Now Michael Jordan’s (shot) was winning a national championship. And that elevates it up there as well. But just for the shot, I would go Marcus 1, and Michael 2. I even told Michael, “If we’d gotten it into overtime and won, that would have gone down as the most famous shot. Your shot would have been number two.”

Q: What did he say?

A: He just laughed. He said that’d be OK.

UNC, Duke and college sports’ best rivalry

Q: How would you characterize the UNC-Duke rivalry in terms of all the great rivalries in sports?

A: In college sports, I don’t even think it’s even close.

I mean, what the two programs have achieved individually — and 10 miles apart has a lot to do with it. We recruit a guy, bring him in on Saturday to the Raleigh-Durham airport, he goes home on Sunday. The next weekend he comes into the same airport, visits Duke and goes home.

When I was an assistant, the Duke guys used to come over and play pickup at Carmichael with our guys.

The only thing that comes close in college sports to me is Ohio State-Michigan. All the similarities — the distance apart, the same league. I’ve felt really very flattered to be involved in it. And I absolutely loved it.

Q: Did you take more satisfaction beating Duke than anyone else?

A: Not really (Laughs, then pauses).

You know when (Duke’s) Austin Rivers made a three to beat us at the end of the game? They still use that (as a highlight). That was 2012. But three weeks later, we played them in their building. We had them 48-24 at halftime, but for those three weeks before it was H-E-Double-L.

I’ll never forget Tyler Hansbrough’s freshman year (in 2006), going in and beating J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams on senior night. After the game, somebody took a picture of two Duke students sitting in the stands. No one else is still there. Everybody’s gone. They were colored, painted, the whole thing. It showed up in The Daily Tar Heel. Mike (Krzyzewski) has got some of those games, too. He remembers that Austin Rivers shot for other reasons.

Dadgum rascals and tough little nuts

Q: You spelled the word “hell” instead of saying it. You try hard not to curse, using substitute words like “Dadgum.” Or “frickin’.” Or “give a flip.” Where does that come from?

A: Coach Smith never cursed. I sat beside him on the bench for 10 years and I played golf with him 100 times. And if you can put up with referees in basketball and play golf and three-putt or four-putt or whatever it is and you don’t curse, you don’t curse.

One of Virginia’s former players said Coach Smith cursed him, which was a lie. I’d fight the guy if he had a chainsaw in his hand right now, because that was a lie.

So I had tremendous respect for Coach Smith and didn’t feel like I needed to talk like that. But yes, I slip up. ... I’ve gotten way worse.

Q: You also have some interesting terms of endearment. Rascal. Sucker.

A: And the best one is, “He’s a tough little nut.” That’s about a point guard, you know the Marcus Paiges and Joel Berrys of the world.

Roy Williams’ long-lost mustache

Q: I want to show you a picture. This is from one of my friends in Chapel Hill and is a rare shot of coach Roy Williams — who was not a coach then yet — sporting a mustache.

A: Oh, the softball team. That’s my graduate school year (at UNC in 1973). There were only 16 of us in the health and physical education program.

I said, “We’re not good enough in any sport to win the thing, but let’s try to win the overall campus championship and the intramural points race. Which means you had to do everything. I mean, I wrestled! ... I made it to the wrestling final and then my roommate walked over to me and said, “This is not going to be good. The other guy has ear muffs and knee pads.”

Come to find out the guy had wrestled at Virginia. He was in law school (at UNC) and so he turned me every which way but loose.

But we got to the softball championship. And if we won that, we were going to win the off-campus points championship. I played shortstop, second base and was a catcher on that team. For some reason somebody challenged me to grow a mustache. I shaved it the day after we won the softball championship.

Q: You were part of four national championship teams at UNC, including one as an assistant in 1982. But what is the most gifted team you coached as an assistant or as a head coach that did not win a national championship?

A: The ‘84 team at North Carolina did not win a national championship, and that was the most gifted team I was ever around.

As a head coach, our 1997 team at Kansas — we lost two games. We had four guys that were No. 1 draft choices. So that team was really good. And then in 2012 at North Carolina, when Kendall (Marshall, UNC’s point guard) got hurt, that team was really, really good too. But the biggest one would be 1984 (a team that included Jordan, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith and Brad Daugherty).

Roy Williams on Dean Smith

Q: Describe your relationship with Dean Smith.

A: Coach Smith, to me, was the epitome of the perfect basketball coach. He was fiercely competitive, but he did things the right way. He never cheated to do anything to get any player. Nothing. Period, the end.

He was perfect. Yeah, he smoked. But as a basketball coach, I thought he was perfect. And every day that I coached, I wanted to do some things that he would approve of. I wanted his approval and after I did it, I wanted him to feel good about it.

I would always think, “What would Coach Smith want me to do right now?”

And I think that he would have been proud of the fact that I stopped. Because he would have felt like if you don’t think you’re doing it as well, I understand.

Before he passed (Smith died in 2015 and dealt with memory loss in his final years), he would come in and out of talking to you.

On his birthday, I always had cake and ice cream for him in the office, from the first year I got there until the end. On the last one, Linnea (Smith’s wife) brought him up and he sat there and didn’t say much.

But he ate some cake and ate some ice cream. And all of a sudden he got this look on his face and looked at me. He said, “You know, you’re doing a great job.” (Williams briefly tears up while recounting this story).

And it hit me so hard. But if you’re going to remember something about somebody, if they say something positive, that’s pretty doggone good.

Q: Thanks for doing this, Roy.

A: Scott, thank you very much. I hope it doesn’t kill your ratings.

For much more from this Q and A with Roy Williams, including the story about when he first met Michael Jordan, check out the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast. Subscribe to hear previous episodes, include 1-on-1 conversations with Charlie Scott, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Phil Ford, Jay Bilas and Dawn Staley. The conversations are available anywhere you get your podcasts, but bonus content is available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.