UNC's Williams Reminisces About Hall of Fame Career

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Two of the three most influential people in North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams’ life will join him in Springfield, Mass., Friday for his induction in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

On Wednesday, he got to sit next to one and reminisce about the other two while he reflected on everything it took to get him to such an award.

Williams was joined by coaching mentor Dean Smith, and the two shared stories and coaching philosophies for reporters while Williams talked extensively about the impact of Smith, high school basketball coach Buddy Baldwin, and his mother, Lallage Williams, who died in 1992.

“It means I’ve had great, great help along the way from the guy sitting on my right,” he said of Smith, who mentored Williams for 10 years on the UNC sidelines.

And Smith, now 10 years into retirement but still dropping by Tar Heel practices every so often, shares the same type of reverence for Williams.

“He really has the total package of a college basketball coach,” Smith said. Smith recalled a story where the Tar Heel coaching staff invited Williams to work at their camp and they sent him off with a group of about 60 campers, with low expectations for the novice coach.

“It’s amazing how on the second day, all these 60 campers, he would know their first name,” Smith said.

But long before Williams and Smith built a coaching relationship, it was Baldwin, Williams’ high school basketball coach in Asheville,  who laid the path for Williams to become a coach.

“Coach Baldwin gave me confidence that I could be somebody and that I could accomplish some things that probably no one in my family ever thought I would,” said Williams, who was the first member of his family to attend college.

“I grew up wanting to be like Buddy Baldwin,” Williams said. “I don’t mind telling anyone that. I just wanted to be like my high school coach.”

Williams said that the impact Baldwin had, through teaching and coaching young kids, made Williams want to follow that lead.

“He made me feel so good, and I thought, ‘I’m not the only player he’s done that for,’” he said.

Both Smith and Baldwin will be on hand for this weekend’s celebration and induction ceremony, for which Williams expects a contingent of 85 to 100 people with him, including 23 former players.

Williams said he has already written out his speech, one of only three times in his life he’s written the entire thing beforehand – the other two were when he gave a graduation speech at alma mater T.C. Roberson High school in Asheville – but that it would mostly be a list of gratitude.

“My 'speech'  is going to be three pages of thanking people,” he said. “There’s not going to be any bold statements or anything, it’s going to be thanking my players, thanking my coaches and thanking my family.”

Still, he wasn’t planning on giving an acceptance speech. While he awaited the phone call that would let him know whether he had been selected for the Hall of Fame, Williams had already prepared a conciliatory “I didn’t make it” speech.

“I do remember it,” Williams said of the phone call congratulating him on the selection. “I had already decided what I was going to tell them when they told me I didn’t make it.”

“My last statement was going to be, ‘I know these phone calls are really difficult to you,’” he said. Of course, he never had to make that statement.