Dean Smith, a legendary coach whose contributions went beyond basketball, dies at age 83

Dean Smith made college basketball a better game and he made North Carolina a better place to live.

Perhaps no coach accomplished more.

Smith, born in Emporia, Kan., and a member of Kansas’ 1952 NCAA championship team, died Saturday night at 83. He had battled a progressive neurocognitive disorder that had robbed him of his memory and he was rarely seen in public in recent years.

“It’s such a great loss for North Carolina, our state, the University, of course the Tar Heel basketball program, but really the entire basketball world,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said Sunday. “We lost one of our greatest ambassadors for college basketball, for the way in which a program should be run.

“We lost a man of the highest integrity who did so many things off the court to help make the world a better place to live in.

“He set the standard for loyalty and concern for every one of his players, not just the games won or lost. He was the greatest there ever was on the court but (he was) far, far better off the court with people.”

As North Carolina’s coach for 36 years, Smith retired in 1997 with 879 victories in men’s college basketball, a mark that has since been surpassed.

His Tar Heels teams won national championships in 1982 and 1993 and appeared in 11 Final Fours.

Michael Jordan was a member of the Tar Heels’ 1982 title team and hit the eventual game-winning shot.

“Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith,” he said. “He was more than a coach — he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father.

“Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life.”

Smith also was a force behind shaping KU’s coaching future by helping Larry Brown and Williams get their jobs at Kansas.

Brown won a national championship in 1988, and Williams took the Jayhawks to four Final Fours before returning to Chapel Hill, where he had served as an assistant under Smith, after the 2003 season.

Coaching was in Smith’s blood from his youth.

His father, Alfred, was a coach and teacher at Emporia High. The family moved to Topeka in 1947, and Smith graduated from Topeka High as an all-state guard and three-sport athlete.

He enrolled at Kansas and played for the Jayhawks but seemed just as interested in how plays developed and players motivated that in his own game.

“He was so smart,” said former teammate Al Kelley in a 2012 interview. “When he was a junior and a senior, he would conduct the scrub team, the guys who didn’t start. We’d run their offensive plays against the starters and he coached the team.”

When he was Kansas’ coach, Williams often said 95 percent of what he does as a coach was patterned from Smith, and Brown said nobody in the game’s history took a greater interest in the lives of the players, coaches and team personnel that Smith.

“I never called Coach Smith and asked him for help,” Brown said. “But he would always call me and ask if I needed anything. It was always about the school and the kids.”

Before he won an NCAA Tournament game, Smith recruited Charlie Scott, the first black player at North Carolina. Scott went on to become Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year and helped the Tar Heels to two Final Fours.

Smith had strong convictions and wasn’t afraid to take public stands. On Scott’s recruiting visit, Smith took him to a predominantly white church on Sunday.

He once openly supported a call for a nuclear freeze and signed a petition against the death penalty.

Smith was a little-known assistant from Air Force when he was hired by North Carolina coach Frank McGuire in 1958.

When McGuire left in 1961 amid an NCAA storm, the school elevated Smith, and one of the greatest coaching careers was launched.

This story was originally published February 8, 2015 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Dean Smith, a legendary coach whose contributions went beyond basketball, dies at age 83."