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Carolina's success is easy to explain
North Carolina is, familiarly if unexpectedly, atop the polls once more. Check out the NBA scoring leaders, and among the top eight you'll find three erstwhile Heels (or is that erstwheel Hiles?): Jerry Stackhouse, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison. The confluence of these two facts has me mulling over an old saw about ballplayers who come through Chapel Hill. The proverb takes a number of forms. One is that Dean Smith, and later Bill Guthridge, recruited bargeloads of talent and never let it run free -- and if many years passed between Carolina's national titles, it's the coach's own damn fault. Another chestnut -- and this hardly seems supported by the evidence, which shows that ex-North Carolina players prosper disproportionately in the play-for-pays -- holds that the UNC "system" so straitjackets players that their instincts are forever dulled. Finally, there's the zinger about El Deano being the only person to keep Michael Jordan under 20 a game. All props to the wag who got off that line. But I'm going to take the decidedly old-school position that you can trace the success of all four of these guys to some aspect of the Carolina way. Yes, Stackhouse and Carter are open-court colts, unfettered and alive, in the Joni Mitchell phrase. But there aren't many others in the NBA as adept at knowing where and when to bring their physical gifts to bear. Smith's teachings linger, like faint thought balloons, over the heads of each. Jamison? I've been to Tar Heels practices and watched the anesthetically repetitive way their post men catch, turn and shoot. Jamison wasn't simply born with the quickest turnaround in captivity. As for Jordan, remember how he roamed NBA courts on defense, preying on sloppy passes and heedless ballhandlers, getting his competitive engine revved up? He first began doing that in Smith's scramble defense. Most of all, at Carolina all these guys learned the habit of winning. They developed the mental conditioning to face, and usually subdue, a succession of opponents determined to make their own season by taking out the princelings of the Piedmont. Imposing your will, night after night, is one of the most grueling demands the NBA makes on its players. Word out of Chapel Hill is that new coach Matt Doherty, with a side glance eight miles up the road at Duke's lean speed, will look to remake future North Carolina teams in that image. But right now he's doing awfully well with the Montross- ian Brendan Haywood, and the clunky Jason Capel, and Ronald Curry and Julius Peppers, who are playing only their second-best sport. None of those four will ascend to the heights of the NBA scoring list. But fundamentals are the game's required reading, its compulsory figures. If he refuses to learn them, an ordinary ballplayer won't become good. If he does learn them, who knows where someone blessed with talent will soar? Year after year, North Carolina gives us examples of both. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Odyssey, which will be published in January 2002 by Warner Books. Send comments to thehooplife@aol.com.
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