CAROLINAS BASKETBALL
CAROLINAS BASKETBALL
History Of Basketball In The Carolinas
What’s so special about basketball in the Carolinas?
Former Duke coach Bill Foster once complained about
its suffocating effect, saying there was no offseason,
that he couldn’t walk into a convenience store in midsummer without fans stopping him to talk recruiting.
Dean Smith once returned to North Carolina’s
campus after a loss at Wake Forest to find he had been
hung in effigy by frustrated students.
The Carolina Cougars, North Carolina’s first pro
basketball team, played home games in three cities across
the state.
Their cult-like ABA fans were entertained, albeit with a
severe strain on their patience, when Pittsburgh’s
‘Helicopter’ Hentz twice ripped the rims off backboards with
slam dunks in Raleigh’s Dorton Arena. After replacements
were found and installed, the game was finally completed
just before 3:00 a.m.
When the Charlotte Hornets defeated the Los Angeles
Clippers for the city’s first-ever NBA victory, more than
18,000 boisterous fans remained in the arena, standing,
singing and screaming in celebration.
“Lord, forgive them,” said a California newspaper
columnist, “for they know not what they’ve beaten!”
So, what’s so special about basketball in the Carolinas?
“It’s a way of life,” said Billy Cunningham, a University
of North Carolina All-American in the 1960s. “People there
really care about the game. They were just born into it.”
Players such as Cunningham, a native New Yorker who
moved on to become first an NBA All-Star and later an NBA
championship coach with the Philadelphia 76ers, are in a
large measure responsible.
Basketball wasn’t created in the Carolinas but its roots David Thompson attended Crest High School in Shelby,
NC before leading North Carolina State to the 1974
began taking hold long ago and have expanded beneath NCAA Championship and starring in the ABA and NBA.
the region’s red-clay soil for most of the past century.
They began to grow again in the 2004-05 season as the Charlotte Bobcats brought the NBA back to Charlotte after a twoyear absence.
The hypnotic hold on fans has gradually intensified through the decades, created in high-caliber coaches, gifted
players, the close quarters of competition for major universities and small colleges, the stature of the ACC and the
exposure of a steadily-increasing number of games on national and regional television.
The first games televised live across North Carolina came during the Tar Heels’ run to a 32-0 record and an NCAA title in
1957, setting in motion the ACC-TV network that followed the next season.
Fans fervently debate games and the state of their teams, coaches and players in newspaper and internet forums and on
talk radio shows. Personal schedules are built around tipoff times. Game or team references sometimes come up in messages
from the pulpit at Sunday church services, and service times have been altered so fans could see a game from beginning to end.
Obviously, there is more than one way to worship.
Many of the game’s most successful people have had an influence on, or been affected by, the Carolinas.
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“I watched a lot of ACC basketball on TV when I was growing up in Virginia,” said former Hornets sharpshooter and NBA
veteran Dell Curry, now Director of Player Programs for the Bobcats. “You planned your time around whatever game was
coming on TV. And I had a poster of David Thompson in my room.”
There are connections seemingly at every turn.
On television: National college analyst Billy Packer played point guard at Wake Forest; his former TV sidekick,
the late Al McGuire, was head coach at Belmont Abbey long before he guided Marquette to an NCAA championship.
Of more recent vintage are Kenny Smith (North Carolina), TNT; Jay Bilas (Duke), ESPN; Mike Gminski (Duke), FOX Sports Net;
Terry Gannon (N.C. State), ABC, and Jim Spanarkel (Duke), NBA TV.
In the Basketball Hall of Fame: Twenty-five of the 266 enshrinees have ties to North or South Carolina, either as native
sons, players or coaches. Included is one of the most explosive players ever, David Thompson (Boiling Springs, Crest High, N.C.
State), who grew up in the Carolinas and played elsewhere, former All-NBA pick Walt Bellamy (New Bern) and former longtime Harlem Globetrotters “Clown Prince of Basketball” Meadowlark Lemon (Wilmington); two coaches who were bitter ACC
rivals in the 1950s, Everett Case (N.C. State) and Frank McGuire
(North Carolina), and two whose rivalry came more recently, Dean
Smith (North Carolina) and Mike Krzyzewski (Duke). Others: the
late Clarence “Big House” Gaines, an 828-game winner at WinstonSalem State, and veteran women’s coach Kay Yow of N.C. State.
In the NBA Draft: Since 1980, North Carolina has had more
players (24) chosen in the first round than any other university. Arch
rival Duke (16) is second. Since 1957, nine players in the Carolinas
loop have been taken with the first pick (Davidson’s Fred Hetzel,
Duke’s Art Heyman and Elton Brand, former Greensboro prep star
Danny Manning, former Durham prep standout John Lucas, North
Carolina’s James Worthy and Brad Daugherty, Thompson and Wake
Forest’s Tim Duncan).
Only two schools - Duke in 1999 (Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon,
Corey Maggette, William Avery) and North Carolina in 2005 (Marvin
Williams, Raymond Felton, Sean May, Rashard McCants) - have had
four players picked in the first 14 picks of the NBA Draft in the
same year.
In the NCAA: Thirty of the past 44 Final Fours, dating to
1962, have included one or more North Carolina schools.
Since 1975, 10 Naismith winners, given to the college
Player of the Year, have played at North Carolina schools David Thompson (NC State, 1975); Michael Jordan (NC, 1984);
Johnny Dawkins (Duke, 1986); Danny Ferry (Duke, 1989);
Christian Laettner (Duke, 1992); Tim Duncan (Wake Forest,
1997); Antawn Jamison (NC, 1998); Elton Brand (Duke, 1999);
Shane Battier (Duke, 2001); and Jay Williams (Duke, 2002).
James Worthy attended Ashbrook High
School in Gastonia, NC and the University of
North Carolina before winning three NBA
titles with the Lakers.
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On the bench: Larry Brown, the only coach to win NCAA (Kansas, 1988) and NBA (Detroit, 2004) championships,
is one of North Carolina’s most accomplished basketball alums. Brown had instant success as a rookie head coach with the
Cougars, and his top assistant was fellow Tar Heel and former ABA teammate Doug Moe, who later emerged as a head coach
with the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Philadelphia 76ers.
On the bench with Brown when the Pistons surprised the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals were former Tar Heels
John Kuester and Dave Hanners. On the bench with the Knicks this season: Brown, Hanners and former Dean Smith player and
assistant coach Phil Ford.
Two other prominent NBA coaches – Chuck Daly, who won back-to-back titles with the Detroit Pistons, and 2005 Basketball
Hall of Fame enshrinee Hubie Brown – are former Duke assistants.
Among the most significant of all was John “Coach Mac” McLendon, who learned the game from its creator, Dr. James
Naismith, at Kansas in the 1930s.
He never played for the Jayhawks since African-Americans were not accepted on varsity or intramural teams at the time, but
his impact would be felt far beyond the basketball court.
McLendon spent 12 years as head coach at North Carolina College, now N.C. Central, in Durham, one of five college
coaching stops as he compiled an overall 523-165 record and won three consecutive NAIA titles.
He co-founded the CIAA basketball tournament. And he later authored two books, became a two-time United States Olympic
team assistant and a member of the U.S. Olympic Basketball
Committee.
McLendon twice broke the color barrier. He became the first
African-American coach at a predominantly white college
(Cleveland State) and in the ABA (Denver Rockets).
On the NBA awards list: Four players from Carolinas
schools account for 11 NBA Finals MVP
awards. Jordan was a six-time winner with the
Chicago Bulls, Tim Duncan (Wake Forest) a
three-time winner with the San Antonio
Spurs. Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, star of
the Charlotte 49ers’ 1977 Final Four team
and later the Boston Celtics, won it once, as did
the Lakers’ Worthy, also the most outstanding player of
the NCAA tournament when North Carolina won its 1982
championship.
Charlotte native Bobby Jones played at UNC, then excelled
in the pros. He had a run of 10 consecutive seasons on the
All-Defense First Team – two in the ABA with the Denver
Nuggets and eight in the NBA with Denver and Philadelphia.
Four have been named NBA Coach of the Year (Hubie
Brown twice, Larry Brown, Moe and former South Carolina
guard Mike Dunleavy).
When the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History were chosen
during the league’s Golden Anniversary season of 1996-97,
the list included seven who either played or later coached in the
Jim Valvano (left) coached North Carolina State to
the 1983 NCAA Championship, while Tim Duncan
(right) starred at Wake Forest before winning two
NBA titles in San Antonio.
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Carolinas (former Hornets coach Dave Cowens, Cunningham,
Laurinburg native and prep star Sam Jones, Jordan, former
Clemson Daniel High and Raleigh Broughton High whiz Pete
Maravich, former Boston All-Star and later Hornets player
Robert Parish and Worthy).
Worthy, inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year
(2003) as Parish, had seen Parish before ever getting to the
NBA.
“My first memory of Robert Parish was from around
eighth or ninth grade when Centenary came to Charlotte
to play UNC Charlotte,” Worthy, a Gastonia native, said
last year. “The center for the 49ers was Cedric
‘Cornbread’ Maxwell. It was one of the biggest
games the area ever saw.”
So many others have passed through the
region, leaving their marks on the game.
Duke’s Bob Verga was a prolific backcourt scorer
for the Cougars.
Bones McKinney, who actually played at N.C. State and North
Carolina in separate seasons in the 1940s and later coached at Wake
Forest, was a quality coach better known for his physique (tall and
skinny) and his gyrating antics from the bench (he once kicked his
foot high in the air, lost a shoe, ran out onto the court to retrieve it and
threw up his hands to play defense as the teams thundered back down
the floor).
McKinney later coached the Cougars and had his first-ever Wake
Forest recruit, Jerry Steele, as an assistant. Steele followed
McKinney as the Cougars’ head coach but spent most of his
four-decade career as a successful small college coach at High Point
and Guilford.
Pineville’s Walter Davis became an All-ACC player at North
Carolina and a six-time NBA All-Star during a 15-year pro career, most of it with the Phoenix Suns. His nephew, Hubert Davis,
followed his uncle at UNC and was an 11-year NBA veteran.
Furman’s Frank Selvy scored an NCAA record 100 points against Newberry in 1954 and later played with the Los Angeles
Lakers, with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.
A number of former Clemson big men, including Tree Rollins, Elden Campbell, Larry Nance, Horace Grant and Dale Davis,
became longtime professional players.
“Look at the contributions that people from the Carolinas have made,” said Larry Brown. “To me, the NBA has really
benefited by having Carolina kids, not only kids who went to college there but kids who grew up there.”
The impact was felt almost immediately when the Hornets introduced the NBA game in 1988-89. The Hornets led the league
in attendance eight times and had a 364-game regular season sellout streak spanning 10 seasons.
Now the boys are back in town for a second season in a brand new arena in Uptown Charlotte. And the roots grow
a little more.
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Carolinas Connection
On any given night in an NBA arena, you’ll find ties to the Carolinas. Twenty-five of the 30 NBA teams had a player from the
Carolinas on their roster in 2004-05. Below is a list of NBA players who attended college or grew up in the Carolinas, plus head
coaches and front office executives with area ties.
PLAYER
CAROLINAS TIES
CURRENT NBA TEAM
Courtney Alexander
Ray Allen
Darrell Armstrong
Shane Battier
Durham, NC
Dallzell, SC
Gastonia, NC & Fayetteville State
Duke
Free agent
Seattle
Dallas
Memphis
Eddie Basden
Carlos Boozer
Elton Brand
Greg Buckner
UNC Charlotte
Duke
Duke
Clemson
Chicago
Utah
L.A. Clippers
Denver
Elden Campbell
Vince Carter
Dale Davis
Luol Deng
Clemson
UNC
Clemson
Duke
Detroit
New Jersey
Detroit
Chicago
Chris Duhon
Tim Duncan
Mike Dunleavy, Jr.
Daniel Ewing
Duke
Wake Forest
Duke
Duke
Chicago
San Antonio
Golden State
L.A. Clippers
Raymond Felton
Kevin Garnett
Tom Gugliotta
Brendan Haywood
Latta, SC & UNC
Mauldin, SC
North Carolina State
Greensboro, NC & UNC
Charlotte
Minnesota
Free Agent
Washington
Grant Hill
Julius Hodge
Josh Howard
Bobby Jackson
Duke
NC State
Winston-Salem, NC & Wake Forest
Salisbury, NC
Orlando
Denver
Dallas
Memphis
Antawn Jamison
Anthony Johnson
Dahntay Jones
Christian Laettner
Providence HS & UNC
Charleston, SC & College of Charleston
Duke
Duke
Washington
Indiana
Memphis
Free Agent
Ray Allen, Sonics
Vince Carter, Nets
Tim Duncan, Spurs
Dallzell, SC
University of North Carolina
Wake Forest University
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PLAYER
CAROLINAS TIES
CURRENT NBA TEAM
George Lynch
Corey Maggette
Kevin Martin
Sean May
UNC
Duke
Western Carolina
UNC
New Orleans/Oklahoma City
L.A. Clippers
Sacramento
Charlotte
Rashad McCants
Jeff McInnis
Mikki Moore
Ronald Murray
Asheville, NC & UNC
West Charlotte HS & UNC
Gaffney, SC
Shaw University
Minnesota
New Jersey
Seattle
Seattle
Jermaine O’Neal
Chris Paul
Josh Powell
Shavlik Randolph
Columbia, SC
Winston-Salem, NC & Wake Forest
NC State
Duke
Indiana
New Orleans/Oklahoma City
Dallas
Philadelphia
Rodney Rogers
Darius Songaila
Jerry Stackhouse
Rasheed Wallace
Durham, NC & Wake Forest
Wake Forest
UNC
UNC
Free agent
Chicago
Dallas
Detroit
David West
Rodney White
Chris Wilcox
Jay Williams
Marvin Williams
Garner, NC
UNC Charlotte
Whiteville, NC
Duke
UNC
New Orleans/Oklahoma City
Free agent
L.A. Clippers
Free agent
Atlanta
HEAD COACHES
CAROLINAS TIES
NBA TEAM
Larry Brown
Mike Dunleavy, Sr.
George Karl
Nate McMillan
UNC & Carolina Cougars
USC
UNC
Raleigh, NC, Chowan & NC State
New York
L.A. Clippers
Denver
Portland
NBA EXECUTIVES
CAROLINAS TIES
NBA TEAM
Al Attles
Billy King
Mitch Kupchak
Donnie Walsh
Danny Ferry
Greensboro, NC & NC A&T
Duke
UNC
UNC
Duke
Golden State
Philadelphia
L.A. Lakers
Indiana
Cleveland
Kevin Garnett, Wolves
Antawn Jamison, Wizards
Jermaine O’Neal, Pacers
Mauldin, SC
Providence HS, UNC
Columbia, SC
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