Dean Smith, the great college basketball coach, is suffering from memory loss. Those of us who admire him find it hard to grasp.
North Carolina coach Dean Smith had a razor-sharp mind and loved to keep sportswriters off balance by bringing up stories they had written. Dean Smith loved to tip an interviewer off balance with his encyclopedic recall of something the reporter had written long ago. He kept dossiers on sportswriters for just that purpose.
When Smith was publicizing a new book several years ago, I called the North Carolina men's basketball coach on the dot, at the precise moment we were to start talking. Smith hates tardiness. He thinks it means the late-comer values his own time more than that of everyone else.
Punctual though I was, I immediately lost control of the interview. He played me like a puppeteer with a marionette. "I've read your stuff," he said. "You've generally been complimentary about Carolina."
It was always "Carolina" with him. Never "me." I was quite pleased by what "coach Smith" said. I always think of him as "coach Smith." Almost everyone does.
"But I think you've been a little rough on Bob Knight," Smith said, pulling one of the puppet's strings.
Smith ran the rest of the interview as he saw fit, while I spluttered to find a suitable comeback. I had been put on the defensive by a master. I had been "Deaned."
It shows how, in a more gentlemanly way than the often-crude Knight, Smith tried to control the message and do what was right by people he respected. He expected you to be able to think on your feet. He tried to point you toward thinking correctly.
That is why so many of us are saddened by the news that the great coach, now 79, is suffering from memory loss. It is hard to think about no more playful sparring with him. It is hard to think that this fixture of college basketball might eventually live like a guest in a strange house.
Memory loss is really loss of self. Dean Smith is an original -- a great innovator, a fine, compassionate man, a man whose ideals sports cannot afford to lose a moment too soon.
The old line is that Smith was the only man who could hold Michael Jordan under 20 points. (Smith always was quick to point out that Jordan averaged less than 20 for Knight on the gold medal-winning 1984 Olympic team, too.) But that was because Smith always put the system first, above any player, no matter how good he was. Carolina always came first, ahead of everyone.
Smith also did exemplary things off the court, desegregating his conference with the ACC's first black player in Charlie Scott; desegregating a North Carolina lunch counter by eating there with a black theology student in 1964; turning all of his sneaker money over to the athletic department, for use in all the Tar Heels' sports.
Dean Smith was loyal to and protective of his former players, including Larry Brown, right, here accepting the NBA's coach of the year award in 2001 for his work with the 76ers.Fiercely protective of his players, Smith turned a 1985 phone call I made to him into 15 minutes of impassioned defense of former Tar Heel George Karl, who was at the time 2-19 as the Cavaliers' coach. The Cavs made the playoffs under Karl, now the Denver Nuggets' coach, and nearly beat the Celtics.
In their darkest hours, Smith stood by players he knew had a better side, even if they were not his own. In 2004, Smith showed up to critique Larry Brown's U.S. Olympic team at their training camp in Jacksonville, Fla.
He greeted me with his thoughts about Carlos Boozer, the former Cavaliers forward from Carolina's archrival, Duke. I had been excoriating Boozer for leaving Cleveland for more money as a free agent, after leading the Cavs to believe he would not. "I realize that newspapers always have the last word," Smith said. "But Boozer's a good guy."
I am still not sure I buy Smith's assessment of Boozer. But his surprise defense of a player from hated Duke so flustered me that I did not think of a snappy retort until minutes later. "Yeah, coach. And with Boozer, the word is 'more,' " I would have said.
By then, however, coach Smith had left the building. I had been "Deaned" again. I just didn't know it was the last time.