Long Ago, He Won The Big One

With 32 seconds left against Georgetown, Dean Smith, who couldn't win the big one, called time. Except at the end of a game, such as now, Smith will signal time-outs only in the most desperate straits. Professionally, he's flexible, even aggressively innovative, but there are certain tenets he clings to, and that's one of them. Now, Georgetown: The Hoyas had only one time-out remaining, but they were a point ahead, 62-61.

Smith gathered his players about him and, kneeling, told them to take the first good shot. Most everybody watching assumed that the ball would go to James Worthy or Sam Perkins, but Smith, thinking a move ahead, figured that Georgetown would operate on that same premise and try to deny the two stars the ball. So somebody else would be clear. Smith guessed that it would be Michael Jordan. The last thing the coach did as the huddle broke up was to take a step after the freshman and say to him, "Knock it in, Michael."

A few seconds later, sure enough, Jimmy Black swung the ball left, overhead to Jordan, just in front of the Carolina bench. Another instant, and it was apparent that Jordan had the first good shot.

Larry Miller was watching from the third-row seat he had obtained at the last minute. He hadn't even come down to New Orleans from Virginia Beach, where he runs a construction firm, until after Carolina had won its NCAA tournament semi. But now Miller had an excellent view of Jordan as he got set to shoot. Miller was always a savvy kid, and bold. When he arrived in Chapel Hill in 1964, he told Smith he didn't think he should have to go to church, as required by a team rule, because he wouldn't be going to church if he were home, so why do it in college? Smith thought it over and agreed, the first time he'd ever given in to a player like that.

Miller was "the key, the one player who turned it around for Dean," says Billy Cunningham, a former Smith player who now coaches the Philadelphia 76ers. In 1963-64, Miller's senior year in high school, he was, after Lew Alcindor, the most desired recruit in all the land, but he was headed for Duke, glamorous Duke, the dominant team in the ACC and the East. Once Miller changed his mind, Smith had another outstanding player to go with his first prize recruit, Bobby Lewis. Duke was thwarted; Carolina was ascendant, in the Final Four by Miller's junior year. The rest was a glide. Fact is, except for a few minor setbacks, there wasn't all that much drama (let alone trauma) for Smith and Carolina over the next 15 years, except, of course, for the one thing—that he couldn't win the big one.

On television, Mike O'Koren watched Jordan go up from 17 feet out, shooting over the weak side of the Georgetown zone. O'Koren now plays for the New Jersey Nets, but once before when he watched the crucial moment in a Carolina NCAA final, he had been considerably closer, kneeling at the scorer's table, trying to get back in the game. He had had the hot hand that night. Eddie Fogler, one of Smith's assistants, suggested to his boss that he call time and get O'Koren right in, but Smith shook his head. Carolina had gone up a point, and Smith had put his team into the Four Corners. In any place where it matters, the above piece of business is known only as The Marquette Game. Carolina lost it by being outscored 22-14 in the last 12:45 of the contest. It's said that the two things in his life Smith doesn't care to get into are his divorce in 1973 and The Marquette Game in 1977.

On TV, O'Koren watched Jordan's shot fly. "But you know," O'Koren says, "the really more fascinating thing is to look at the picture of Jordan's shot. That tells it all." The picture shows the whole grandstand behind Jordan up on its feet. Down the way, the Georgetown bench stands, too, the coaches having wandered, in the tension, down the sideline. But the Carolina bench: It is so calm, even detached, that it appears otherworldly. Smith's top assistant, Bill Guthridge, holds his chin in his hands, idly; Fogler contemplatively touches his fingertips together; Smith's own hands are peacefully locked, palm to palm. There is no fear on his face. "Go look at it," O'Koren says. "It's like they're all just hanging out." There were 17 seconds left when Smith watched Jordan's shot drop through the net.

All along Smith has said that he wasn't monomaniacal about his failure to win the big one. The NCAA final, he asserted, was no different to him from "Duke at Duke," and it was the party line in Chapel Hill, N.C. to point out that it was far more difficult to go lose in the Final Four six times than to win it once. Statistics were trotted out to prove this. The coaches, though, never once so much as mentioned the subject to the players, even though the topic was otherwise so ubiquitous that Point Guard Black had felt obliged to call a team meeting in his room weeks before to discuss how they must gain victory for the coach, so that everyone would lay off Smith and stop saying that he couldn't win the big one. And now, at last: 63-62, :00.

Then there was a great deal of hugging. Smith hugged his players, and when some fool microphone person jammed the apparatus right in Smith's face, he roughly pushed it away. "Wait, wait!" he cried. "First, I've got to find my coaches." And he hugged them, one by one. And then he hugged John Thompson, the Georgetown coach and his friend.

Like a good assistant, Fogler noticed something extra in the films of that scene, too. Fogler saw that after Thompson and Smith hug, they break, and everybody figures, well, that's that. Thompson turns, and the photographers scurry off, but Smith lingers. His eyes follow Thompson, studying him. You can see it clear as day on the films, Fogler says. He has stopped the movie at that spot, frozen it, just as if it had revealed a good pick, and watched Smith's face. "He's been in Coach Thompson's position so many times, and he had to check to make sure he was O.K.," Fogler says.