By R.L. Bynum
There is a long tradition of Smith Center pickup games involving current and former Carolina players, but few have been as memorable and as intense as one day in 1996.
It was before Antawn Jamison’s sophomore season at UNC, and he couldn’t understand why it was taking so long for the games to start.
He soon found out why.
“We always have set times of when we’re gonna play pickup after school,” Jamison said on the “Tar Heel Tribune Podcast,” noting that Coach Dean Smith and Assistant Coach Bill Guthridge told them when it would start.
“We were like, ‘What’s the holdup?’ The guys get there at a certain time,” Jamison said. “We stretch, we’re ready to go, and they were like, ‘You guys need to wait; somebody else can come play.’ ”
Jamison had no idea who that somebody else was until all eyes turned to one of the tunnels.
“Coming from the tunnel, you see Coach Smith, and you see this aura just kind of light up, and you were like, ‘Hold up, now I know that’s not MJ right there,’ ” Jamison said. “And he got that little walk, and he’s coming in, and it’s just like, ‘Oh man!’ ”
What followed, Jamison said, bore little resemblance to a typical scrimmage. Michael Jordan was in the middle of his second three-peat title with the Chicago Bulls, at the peak of his powers.
He treated the scrimmage like it was the playoffs.
“When I say those pickup games were like Game Six of the Finals, I mean we’re calling off screens, we’re diving on the ball for loose balls, and he just demanded so much attention to detail,” Jamison said. “I played pickup with Mike, but I missed that rebound, or I didn’t set the proper pick. You know why he’s the greatest to ever do it, because I never played in a pickup game like that before.”
For a few hours, Jamison said, he got to live out something close to a fantasy, sharing the floor with the player he grew up idolizing.
“At certain times, I felt like I was Scottie Pippen,” Jamison said. “I was wearing 33, and we were teammates, and he was passing me the ball, and I’m laying it up. I wasn’t playing defense like Scotty, but it was one of those memories that you would definitely cherish for the rest of your lifetime.”
The episode is full of great stories, and here are a few of them:
The infamous Dean Smith-Rick Barnes confrontation
Jamison played for Smith for three seasons, and in all that time, he says he witnessed the legendary coach lose his composure exactly once. It happened at the Greensboro Coliseum, in a heated moment with Clemson coach Rick Barnes that has become part of Carolina basketball lore.
Jamison said Smith never raised his voice in practice, but he would “always find a way to make you feel small.”
During games, Jamison said he almost always kept his composure.
“I think Rick might have said something to one of our players, and Coach Smith was like, ‘Don’t you talk to my players like that,’ ” Jamison said. “I’m sitting there holding Coach Smith back, and I’m like, man, I never thought I’d be seeing Coach Smith about to rumble during a game.”
What stuck with Jamison wasn’t the confrontation itself, but what it revealed about a coach who rarely showed that side of himself.
“Coach Smith had your back on and off the court,” Jamison said. “It was kind of cool to see. I was like, ‘Coach, calm down, we got this.’ But man, we had some matchups. We always competed. And I have all the respect for Coach Barnes.”
Jamison remembered that this was during a time when Clemson had never won in Chapel Hill.
Smith’s demeanor, Jamison explained, was built around control, both his and his team’s, which made the outburst all the more startling to witness in real time.
“In practice, he would be intense. He demanded a lot, and he expected the players to give what he demanded during the games,” Jamison said. “It was out of character because Coach Smith never raised his voice.
“He never got emotional because his job was to make sure all of us were as even-keeled as possible,” Jamison said. “How can you have your players even-keel when the coach is not expressing the same thing? We never saw him yell.”
Even his sideline habits reflected that restraint, save for one well-worn exception.
“He’ll get on the referee in a heartbeat,” Jamison said. “He had that one ring, and he’ll sit there and clap, and that ring was just flopping.”
Jamison said the team still laughs about the Barnes incident decades later, crediting teammate Makhtar Ndiaye for finding the humor in it once the final buzzer sounded.
“Makhtar always found a way to make light of a situation,” Jamison said. “He’s sitting there like, ‘All right, Coach, I thought I was gonna have to call Muhammad Ali’s trainer to teach us some things.’ ”
Guthridge: The coach who deserved a championship
If Smith represented the public face of Carolina basketball for decades, Jamison said Guthridge was the steady hand working just as hard behind the scenes, largely without credit.
Guthridge served as Smith’s top assistant for 30 years before finally taking over as head coach in 1997, and Jamison said it is impossible to separate one man’s legacy from the other’s.
“Coach Guthridge is just an extension of Coach Smith,” Jamison said. “Any decision-making, for a majority of the time, Coach Guthridge did all the decision-making. Running practices, helping Coach Smith with substitutions, drawing up plays — anybody who’s been on that basketball staff knew the importance of Coach Guthridge, not only as assistant coach for Coach Smith, but to the Carolina basketball family.”
Jamison, who has often described Smith as a father figure during his time in Chapel Hill, said Guthridge occupied an equally personal role in his life as a player.
“The way I feel about Coach Smith, I tell people this all the time, he was like my white father,” Jamison said. “He was the guy that got me when I left my parents in high school and made that transition to college, and Coach Guthridge was right there with him. I confided in Coach Guthridge more than I did in Coach Smith, because, for us players, we view Coach Guthridge on the same level as far as respect and what he brought to the table as a coach.”
When Smith stunned the program by announcing his retirement heading into the 1997–98 season, Jamison said the players quickly turned their focus toward making sure Guthridge’s first year as head coach wasn’t wasted.
“We thought it was a joke,” Jamison said of when he first heard Smith was going to retire. “But by going through that process, we also felt confident that Coach Guthridge would be able to take over, and knowing all the stuff that he did behind the scenes and didn’t get the credit for, pretty much every player on that team, every manager, we wanted to win that championship for Coach Guthridge.”
Carolina fell to Utah in the national semifinal that season, ending the run two wins short of the title Jamison still wishes Coach Gut would have experienced.
“It’s certain things I don’t ever say I wish I could have done differently, or that I have any regrets,” Jamison said. “But the one thing I wish I could have done differently was allow Coach Guthridge to bring a championship to the University of North Carolina.”
Back-to-Back 51s, and the night Kobe joined him
Jamison’s first two NBA seasons with the Golden State Warriors did little to hint at what was coming. Drafted fourth overall in 1998, he missed the rookie showcase events after an injury before the All-Star break and couldn’t find a rhythm.
“My first two years were the first time that I ever doubted my skill set and ever doubted myself as a basketball player,” Jamison said. “So going into my third year, that’s when I said, all right, Antawn, you’ve got to put all this stuff together.”
The turning point arrived in a game against the Seattle SuperSonics, when Jamison scored 51 points on a remarkably efficient shot total in a 118–102 road loss.
“Everybody was talking about how that was an efficient 51 points,” said Jamison, who was 23 of 36 from the floor. “I finally just arrived.”
Three days later, the Los Angeles Lakers, fresh off a championship, came to Golden State with Shaquille O’Neal and a young Kobe Bryant. Jamison had no idea he was about to be part of basketball history a second time.
“It was like a 50-50 crowd, because you had a lot of Laker fans that traveled, and you had the Golden State fans,” Jamison said. “As we got into the teeth of the game, Kobe and I were just feeling it, and I really wanted to beat the Lakers. It’s the first time I felt like I was putting the team on my back, hitting some clutch shots down the stretch.”
Jamison finished with 51 points again, and the Warriors won 125–122 in overtime. What he didn’t realize in the moment was that Bryant, matching him possession for possession, was reaching a milestone of his own. It was the first of 25 games with at least 50 points for Bryant.
The Lakers made sure there wasn’t a third act. When the two teams met again days later, Jamison said the game plan had clearly changed.
“We played the Lakers again, and I think I got maybe five points, because it was a whole different ball game,” Jamison said. “We’re not going to let him get anything close to 10 points, and so forth.”
The Maryland game-winner that announced his arrival
Long before the NBA milestones, Jamison said his breakthrough moment as a college player came against Maryland during his freshman season that began with uncertain expectations.
“I didn’t even know if I was going to start that year,” Jamison said. “I just wanted to come in, and I didn’t want to be a part of a team that at Carolina kind of took a dip.”
Vince Carter and Jamison both started as freshmen that season, part of a class that helped keep the program’s standard intact. But a game-winning basket against Maryland in a 31-point game was the moment he knew he belonged.
He was sprawled on the court after a scramble around the basket as Dante Calabria put up a shot. Jamison jumped up and knocked in the put-back shot at the buzzer in an 88–86 win at Cole Field House.
“That was kind of like my first Carolina moment,” Jamison said. “That game really stood out to me because it let me know, ‘OK, you belong on this college level, and you’re having some great memories against one of the biggest rivalries of Carolina.’ ”
Grinding through an injury to blow out Duke
Of all the Duke games Jamison played in his career, one from the 1998 ACC Championship stands apart, not for the final score alone but for the condition he was in before it started.
Jamison finished with 22 points and 18 rebounds (numbers that still stand out from that tournament) in an 83–68 Carolina blowout of the Blue Devils in the Greensboro Coliseum, all while nursing an injury that had him questioning whether he could even suit up.
“I remember the ACC tournament game like it was yesterday,” Jamison said of the tournament when the Tar Heels advanced to the final with victories over N.C. State and Maryland. “I don’t know how I did it. It was something with my ribs, and I couldn’t stand up after the game. I was just like, ‘Man, I can’t let my teammates down. There’s no way I can miss this game.’ ”
It was a game-time decision on whether Jamison would play, and he credited longtime Carolina athletic trainer Marc Davis, known around the program as Skate, with getting him back on the floor.
“It was pretty much a game-time decision,” Jamison said. “Hats off to Skate. He did an unbelievable job. I was struggling the night before, and the next day I woke up feeling a lot better. I know I’m 50 now. If anything like that were to happen, it’d probably be a whole month before I could start walking again.”
Jamison said the stakes of a third meeting with Duke that season only added to his motivation to play through the pain.
“That was the third time we played Duke that year, and I just really wanted to be that teammate that was not going to let his teammates down,” Jamison said. “I didn’t know how much I was going to give, but I was fortunate enough to still go out there and be productive.”
That same run through the 1998 season included a stretch that still shows up in Carolina record books, when Jamison scored 35 points against a No. 1 Duke team, then followed it three days later with 31 points at Georgia Tech.
No North Carolina player has scored at least 30 points in consecutive games since then. Jamison said Georgia Tech, and forward Matt Harpring in particular, gave him as much trouble as anyone he faced during his college career.
Harpring’s daughter, Kate, is a freshman on UNC’s women’s basketball team.
“Matt Harpring, every time I see him, I say, ‘Man, you’re probably one of the toughest players I had to defend or play against in my college career,’ ” Jamison said. “It was always tough to go down to Georgia Tech and beat them. When they came to the Dean Dome, they always played hard and played us tough.”
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