• Williams has sped up the secondary break over the years in large part due to particular point guards like Jacque Vaughn and Kirk Hinrich at Kansas and Tar Heels Raymond Felton and Tywon Lawson. "Jacque was the first one who'd really push it and hide behind big guys who were just jogging back downcourt," Williams says. "Raymond got to where he would do it, and now Tywon's doing some of that. But Kirk Hinrich is still the best runner I've ever coached, and he could really finish plays."

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• Not all coaches in the Carolina and Williams family agree on how fast their teams should run. "Last year before the season coach Smith and Eddie Fogler said, 'Are you sure you want to play that fast?'" Williams says. "I said, 'Yeah, I really do.' A lot of it was the fear of whether we could score against a set defense. And some of my assistants who've gone on don't play nearly as fast. But Kevin Stallings at Vanderbilt this year is trying to play faster than he's ever played." That's especially interesting, considering I once had a half-hour conversation with Stallings about his fascination with the much slower Princeton-style offense.

• I don't get star-struck in this gig very often, but receiving a private secondary-break tutorial from a dry-erase-board-wielding Dean Smith was like getting a painting lesson from Picasso at his easel. "It's funny," explained Smith, an inveterate tinkerer, as he pulled out his magic marker. "In the summers I'd go to the beach with my family, but I'd always be doing diagrams and looking at tapes."

Ten years after Smith retired, it's remarkable how much of his "stuff" is still regarded as cutting-edge. Even the tempo-free statistics that Ken Pomeroy has taken to a new level originated in the fertile mind of Smith, who started measuring points-per-possession (i.e., efficiency) as an assistant at Air Force back in the mid-1950s.

Putting marker to clipboard, Smith proceeded to show how the secondary break had evolved over the years from the time his then-assistant Larry Brown brought the idea of "flattening the defense" in transition back from his experience playing for Henry Iba at the 1964 Olympics. He went on to show me wrinkles that were added, like a screen for a big man who'd just screened for the point guard ("Rasheed in '94 had so many dunks off that play.") and a lateral big-man screen that was first set accidentally by former Tar Heel Dave Popson in the mid-1980s ("Montross used that one against Webber in '93.")

What's also amazing is how coaches can see instantly through the clutter of bodies when an innovation has taken place. In the late-1990s Smith was watching Williams's Kansas team when he noticed a sweet new wrinkle in the secondary break involving Paul Pierce. "We tried it and Coach Smith saw it and called me that night," Williams recalls. "He said, 'When did you start doing that?' I said, 'Today. Yesterday I started thinking about it and we put it in and it worked for two lay-ups.'"

Many thanks to Williams, Dean Smith and everyone at North Carolina for taking the time to explain the secondary break. I know I have a much better idea now of what's going on.