Room For Roy At The Legends' Table

GLENDALE, AZ – Much to the chagrin of his many naysayers, Roy Williams deserves his due.

And strangely, Williams has many, and probably still will even after his team dispatched Gonzaga, 71-65, on Monday night at University of Phoenix Stadium to win the national championship.

This was Williams’ third NCAA title. His third. THIRD!

Yet, too many narrative drivers from around the nation have shown in recent days no interest in giving the coach any credit whatsoever.

Many have written columns calling Williams a phony, dishonest and a cheater. A couple even made fun of his southern accent. Some haven’t liked him for years, saying he’s nothing more than a Dean Smith copycat, and that’s when they’re being kind.

Williams has essentially called himself a Smith copycat, but he’s really a lot more, and he knows it. And thinking people know it.

Because of the man’s admirable reverence for Smith, he won’t ever boast he’s better than Smith. It came up Monday night, and Williams did what Williams always does, he deflected it and moved on to something else.

This space isn’t to make that argument, but the truth is Ol’ Roy firmly planted himself right alongside his legendary mentor Monday night, and it’s okay to sit in the seat next to Smith again. But now it’s at college basketball’s table of the greatest coaches of all time, and not UNC’s bench in Carmichael or the Dean Dome.

You won’t hear it from Williams, though, so allow this lathering of Roy Williams, who is now a legend.

From a purely basketball sense, Williams has now won titles with a team he molded together following their tumultuous experience with the previous coach, a gifted group that righted a 40-12 wrong, and now this one, which just may have morphed into UNC’s toughest and grittiest team ever. Battling through injuries, inconsistency from top players, and clawing out a national title justifies such a proclamation.

And all along Williams has been the architect and curator of these diverse rosters that each took home titles. That’s coaching.

The other element of Williams that has served an important role in this process is the coach simply being himself.

Is he corny? Of course, and he’s okay with that. Is he perfect? Of course not, he’s made moves in the past that justified questions and even criticism.

In other words, Williams is human, just like the rest of us.

But why he’s so successful isn’t much like the rest of us.

The man is a tireless worker. Nobody out-works Roy Williams. He’s amazing at relating to kids, as his honesty is usually one of the first things out of their mouths when asked to describe their coach.

From the moment he begins recruiting a prospect, Williams doesn’t promise them anything other than an opportunity. Nothing is handed to them, everything is earned.

So, it makes sense that his players develop on and off the court. Forget most of what you’ve been told about the NCAA “junk,” as Williams has called it, it’s not a men’s basketball issue and never has been.

But this is more about the men he develops.

A year ago, Brice Johnson became the man Williams saw in him when he arrived as s skinny kid from South Carolina. That personal growth was directly related to Johnson blossoming as a basketball player and leading the Tar Heels to the national championship game last April, only to fall in most heartbreaking fashion.

After the game, I asked Johnson about his personal growth, and when I mentioned Williams, tears poured down his face.

A year later, perhaps the other player at UNC that Williams has ridden the most, Kennedy Meeks, put the finishing touches on a senior season worthy of bottling up and saving for future generations so they will understand UNC basketball, the family, the culture and Williams, his legendary coach.

Sixteen months ago, a noticeably upset Meeks mentioned after a game that Williams called he and Johnson “one-armed swingers,” (garbage men) saying that’s what they’d be if they didn’t once and for all implement all of his teachings. Johnson did then, and Meeks did this season. It clicked for both young men.

Meeks spoke a few times this season about what he learned from Johnson and also Williams. And there Meeks was, back on that stage we last saw Johnson in a UNC uniform, but this time it worked out well for the Tar Heels.

Meeks, who arrived at UNC from Charlotte as an overweight prospect may have been more of a challenge than Williams anticipated. But in the end it worked.

It worked for Johnson, despite the loss to Villanova, and it worked for Meeks. It has also worked for so many other players that went to Roy Williams as boys and left as men.

And it’s that, plus three national titles, nine Final Fours, 17 regular season titles and 816 wins why Williams is worthy of his own spot at Smith’s table. Adolph Rupp is there, so is John Wooden, Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski.

And on Monday night they made room for Roy Williams, not just because his team won another basketball game, but they won THE game and did it with men whom Williams took under his wing as boys.

And isn’t that what’s it supposed to be about?