RIP Dean Smith

[SirFozzie]

Dean Smith, we hardly knew ye...

 

Dean Smith, former North Carolina Tar Heels coach, dies at age of 83 - ESPN

 

The greatest college coach of all time?

 

In my mind, at least on the Mount Rushmore of men's college basketball coaches (Smith, Knight, Coach K, Wooden).

 

He will be missed.

[odessasteps]

Passes away at age 83.

posnanski on Smith joeposnanski.com/joevault/?p=79

Tommy tomlinson on Smith espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10545949/precious-memories-dean-smith-story

NYT on Smith's opposition to the death penalty www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/sports/sports-of-the-times-a-stand-on-death-and-life.html

[Andrew POE!]

Not to take a Christopher Hitchens-like approach, but I will just say I wish his family well on their loss.

[Greggulator]

Dean Smith seemed like a very honorable man in a lot of respects. There have always been murmurs about how much of that was actually genuine, but that's the nature of his profession, which is nearly as carny as rasslin'. Everyone is a complicated person with strengths and flaws. Managing to find a way to have those flaws not put in a very public spotlight isn't a bad thing on his end. It's a bad thing for those with the spotlight (the sports media).

I'd put him third on my list, but he's definitely a Mount Rushmore guy. 

My number one is Wooden. He had every recruiting advantage possible and managed to get the best. But at the same time, he always adjusted his strategy and tactics. He invented an entire new type of offense -- the UCLA High Post -- to use Bill Walton's insane gifts of passing and vision to go along with his scoring. Anytime you see Marc Gasol make a high-low pass from the elbow, you can nod at him.

For all of his personal problems, Bobby Knight really innovated basketball to an insane degree. I've interviewed/talked to a whole bunch a really respected college and high school coach here in Philly. He said Knight's the best coach of all-time. So much of what the NBA game has become the past few years -- which has been incredible -- is just the basic Indiana motion offense but with so many more misdirections and the like. It's predicated around a lot of passing and off-ball screens and hard cuts and everything fun. San Antonio and the Hawks are the latest evolutionary steps from the motion offense (but of course take from like 500 other types of offense, too).

Smith ran a lot of motion -- different than Knight's system -- but also was really flexible in adding in things around his talent. (Bobby Knight never did that.) Smith would run a shuffle offense a lot of times, which is a motion-type offense used when you don't have any real post players (and why you saw a team like Vince Carter and Antawn Jameson get a bunch of post sets). Smith is also somewhat responsible for the shot clock in college basketball because of his stall ball four corner boredom play when he had leads.

Coach K is a Knight disciple and runs a very simple offense he can use to incorporate his talent, which moves in and out of the program really fast.

But, yeah, I think that's the Rushmore.

[odessasteps]

Charley Pierce on Dean

grantland.com/the-triangle/dean-smith-1931-2015-obituary-north-carolina/

[Josh Mann]

If UNC doesn't spend at least 25 seconds of their first possession of their next game in the Four Corners, I will be disappointed.

Hell, let them take the clock violation and then give it right back to them, like in soccer.

[brandonr4s]

Time to be "that guy"...

 

Adolph Rupp is on Rushmore ahead of Dean Smith.

[Andrew POE!]

If UNC doesn't spend at least 25 seconds of their first possession of their next game in the Four Corners, I will be disappointed.

Hell, let them take the clock violation and then give it right back to them, like in soccer.

 

The problem is Roy Williams is too much of an asshole to actually do this.