By Paul Gotham
There has to be a better way.
A hall-of-fame coach whose teams demonstrated superior athleticism in amassing a record of 879 wins to 254 losses over 36 seasons, won two NCAA Tournaments and reached the Sweet Sixteen 13 consecutive times deserves better than to be remembered by one of the all-time least athletic and competitive maneuvers.
To show respect for the passing of his mentor and legend, Dean Smith, North Carolina’s current coach, Roy Williams called on his Tar Heels to run the 4-Corners yesterday.
Some refer to this as the 4-Corner offense. Smacks of oxymoron doesn’t it? Four-corners? offense?
It’s been called great strategy. Manipulation is more like it. The 4-Corners. Pull the ball out, hold it and watch the time run off the clock. That’s like taking a 60-minute game and spending 45 minutes, or so, watching adult males stand around, tell each other the play and call it a sport. Oh wait, that already happens. Scratch that one.
Once was a time when the shot clock did not exist in NCAA basketball, and the 4-Corners could “level the competition.” That’s putting it gently. Wringing the life out of the game is more appropriate.
Take for instance the 1979 regular season finale between Duke and UNC – a battle for first place. The score at the end of the first half? 7-0, Duke. That’s right, 7-0. Coach Smith put four fingers in the air (he might as well have gone with the middle finger and done his finest Ed Norton), and the Heels held the ball. The Blue Devils stayed in a zone defense, and that’s the way the first half went. Worth noting, Duke won the game 47-40. Carolina fans take great pleasure recalling that the Heels turned the tables and beat the Blue Devils a week later in the ACC finals.
As the story goes, Coach Smith was a proponent of the shot clock, and this was his way to cause change.
Okay, sounds possible.
Consider this. The Tar Heels used the 4-Corners for the last 7:33 of the 1982 ACC finals when UNC, then ranked No. 1 in the country, faced Ralph Sampson and the Virginia Cavaliers. Think about that for a minute. 1982? UNC? That’s right. UNC froze the ball for more than seven minutes with Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Sam Perkins in the lineup.
Try and imagine the discussion when the rules committee got together after that one. Brings up the old joke: the only guy who could hold Michael Jordan under 20 points per game was…
Look at it this way. Wilt Chamberlain and George Mikan changed the rules of basketball. Before Mikan there was no such thing as defensive goal tending. Along comes this 6-10 guy swatting shots like they were pests hovering over corn on the cob, and the rules need changing. Before Wilt a player taking a free throw could land on the other side of the free throw line. Then comes this freak of nature who can jump from 15 feet or so and lay the ball in. Yup, a change was needed.
Chamberlain and Mikan changed the game because of superior ability and athleticism. Coach Smith changed the game, in this instance, by taking the athleticism out of it.
Dean Smith took teams to 11 Final Fours. His teams won 20 or more games for 27 straight years and 30 of his final 31 seasons (they started that run in the 70s when teams played in the range of 30 games – give or take one or two- a season). UNC finished top 10 in the final AP Poll of every year for the entire decade of the 80s.
Commemorating that with the 4-Corners?
Please Roy, reconvene the staff over coffee, even adult beverages if you want and, for the love of Dr. James Naismith, devise a different way to remember Dean Smith’s contributions to the game. He deserves better.
Leave a Reply