Roy Williams: Coaching Challenges and Relationship with Michael Jordan

30:13But so it was something that meant a great deal to me. What about it touches you so much? Just that she didn't want me to be any different from everybody else. and even when I was a ninth grader, the JV basketball team had a little dinner at the end of the season and it's pretty neat. It's the first time I really remember ever having a steak and I thought it tasted pretty good. I still like them but I saw the parents sort of standing over exchanging money and all of a sudden it dawned on me that the guy to read you know everything in life cost something and so I just realized that the owner of the restaurant wasn't giving those to us and so I went up to one of the parents and I said to Mr.

31:01Crandall I said Mr. Crandall let me know how much every how much this meal cost and he said Roy we've taken care of yours and I said no my mom will want to know so she can give you the money back. And so that was, but I had a wonderful, I was a, I was a happy kid. There were things that I didn't enjoy. There were things that I didn't like. There were things that I thought were hard on my mom. But I was never embarrassed by anything that happened. It was just that I knew my situation and that some way, somehow we'd make it work. How often did you move growing up? Oh, it's quite a bit. You know, I went to the first grade at Hall Creek Elementary and then we moved into a house and in Biltmore, not close to the Biltmore house.

31:57It wasn't that house. It was on the opposite side of Highway 25. But and my mom and dad were having problems and they'd split and get back together and split and get back together. So during those times, we would stay where she could find a place for us to stay. One of my aunts and her husband were managing a hotel, so we lived in a hotel. My mother had a job, and then she would clean rooms at night to help pay for the room that my aunt and uncle were giving us. So we moved quite a bit and we lived in a couple of trailer parks. But then when I turned 12, we moved to Reed Street and we lived there from that time on.

32:46So I'd be from 62 and I moved my mother out of there in 84. So we lived at 365 Reed Street. And then after I went to college, she moved to 369. It was two doors down. But so we moved quite a bit. Tell about the day your family home was foreclosed on. You're in some tough spots. Yeah, I was probably... And also the reason I asked some of these too is because, you know, everybody has highs and lows in life and different moments that kind of shape them and make them a success. And some of these are just, you know, kind of pivotal, defining moments of your life. There's no question there were some moments in my, from the time I'm up until 15 or 16, I still would do things today that the reason I'd do them is because what happened those first 15 or 16 years.

33:43Yeah, so we're living at Sixth Warren Avenue. My mom and dad had bought the house, the only house they'd ever owned. We'd always rented.

33:53And we leave. We come back. They get back together. We leave again. Dad calls. my dad calls and says, why don't you guys come and take the house and I'll move out. And so we did. And we were there about three weeks and knock on a door and it was in the summer. There's no air condition. So we had a screen door and we had it locked. And I go there and there's two guys in suits, black, dark suits, white shirts and real thin little tie. That's the reason to this day, I still won't wear one of those really thin little ties. I won't wear those. And they asked if my mother or father were there and I said yes just a minute and I went and got my mom and she came And they gave us ten days to get out of the house Because while we had been gone dad had not made any of the house payments and so they gave us ten days to get out and

34:46So for a long time that's what I thought of when I saw anybody in a dark suit and a tie was Somebody that worked at a bank that we're going to foreclose on somebody else's house and You know, I wore a coat and tie until COVID hit. I wore a coat and tie to every game I ever coached. But because Coach Smith thought if you want to be respected like a businessman, you got to look like one. But I didn't respect or think those guys were very good businessmen at that time. But, no, that was tougher on me because I thought this is our home. But it was really tough on my mom. Two more moments involving your mom that I wanted to ask you about.

35:25Then I'll move on. The first one being, take me through the moment where you had just gotten back from the golf course and walk in after getting your mom a house and see her for the first time. Yeah, that was a neat thing. So in 1984, because my mom was still living in a rented house that we'd lived in as I was growing up, and I decided to build her a house. And so we did. And a friend of mine, Jerry Green, who later became one of my assistants, we made three trips and took all of my mom's furniture and everything out of the little house and put it in the new house. And so I asked my sister, I said, what time are you going to bring mom over?

36:14Because she had never been to the house. And she knew it was going on, and we talked about it and everything. And she told me what she wanted, but she didn't want to go there until it was finished. And so she said, well, two or three o 'clock, what's good for you? And I said, oh, I'm not going to be there. I'm going to go play golf. And she said, you don't want to be there when mom walks in? I said, no. I said, why do I want to see her cry? And so I did. Jerry and I and some other guys, we went and played golf. And I said to my sister before we left, I said, tell her I'll be there 6.30 or 7. I don't know what time it was now, and I'll be there in time to eat.

36:51And so I remember walking in the house and opened the door and walked in, and she was standing at the stove stirring the gravy. My favorite meal was fried chicken biscuits and gravy, and she was sitting there stirring the gravy, and she turned and saw me and jerked her head away. And so I just went up behind her and hugged her a little bit and then went on back into the bedroom and washed my hands and everything like that, and then we came back and ate. The folded$100 bill that you've kept, why? It helped me a great deal. And this is corny, but I'm corny, Jesus Christ. So my mom is diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

37:33And things were not great, but she didn't lose her hair. That was the only thing she wanted. She didn't want to lose her hair. With the chemo, she didn't lose her hair. and so I'm in California recruiting I'm coaching at Kansas and I called her she she told me they were going to do a procedure my sister had told me about so I called my mom to ask her and she said yeah they're doing it tomorrow afternoon and I my sister told me they were putting a catheter now that I think they call it a port but they were putting a catheter in her chest to put the next rounds of chemo or whatever it was and so I said I think I might just fly back and be there she said don't do that she always she kept saying you keep doing your job at one time when she first got sick she says don't come back I don't want you to lose your job I said mom I think I'm okay you know we've won a few games but so she told me about it and my sister already had And I said, well, I'm thinking about coming back.

38:37And she said, don't do that. She said, they're not calling it an operation. They're just calling it a procedure. It shouldn't take but about 20 minutes is all it's going to take. She said, but the only thing that makes me mad is why I had to be in here by 2 o 'clock today. And they're not going to do it until 2 o 'clock tomorrow. I could have gone to bingo tonight. And that was the thrill for me. I just started laughing. I said, okay, you're okay. and it was the godsend later on because my whole thing when she got it I just didn't want her to suffer and so they put the wire in through her throat and it punctures the pericardium which I think is the correct term for the sac that the heart sits in and it punctured that it filled up with blood and she had cardiac arrest on the table and died.

39:28And so for me, the last thing my mom and I talked about was the fact that they messed her up and wouldn't let her go to bingo the night before. So those were good feelings. And so Wanda calls Jerry Green and Jerry came in the hotel room. We had flown from West Coast to Indianapolis and we were going to be there that day. And then I was going to come back and check on mom and uh she jerry came in told me she had passed away and so i go back home and get wand into kids and so we go to ashville and we pull up in front of the house that we had built for and this is 1992 so she had been able to live there for eight years and her friend leonard who would take her to play bingo and he was really a nice guy an older retired guy and Like my mom, and he walks up and he said, your mama gave me this to keep until she got out of the hospital.

40:29And it was two$100 bills because she had won the$200 at the bingo the last time they had gone. And I guess it was the day before, maybe two days before she went in the hospital. So she just didn't want to leave it in her pocketbook. And so Leonard handed me the two$100 bills. and again that made me think back to the bingo comment and so my wish and my goal was for her not to suffer had been taken care of and so I gave my sister one of the$100 bills and I kept the other one and it's still in my back pocket in my wallet right now and it's never left you said your dad was a good man but alcohol changed him how so you know he was married five times my mom was his first he was an alcoholic and when he was drinking it was more anger and there's some people laugh some people go to sleep and some people are anger have anger and so that's what it was with him and when he was not drinking he was a fun guy he's say some of the funniest things and and I think he was a tough guy it was a very physical world as far as he was concerned and he had a lot of pride and there were a lot of bouts there was a lot of physical things that went on between the two of them an argument would escalate into some physical things and the last time that he ever came into our house it was a confrontation and I told him don't ever step in my house again.

42:13I was 14, 13 or 14 years old and the strange thing is even later on when I'm married and have children is my dad never stepped foot in any home I ever owned the rest of my life and I think that was the reason why. And that back then was because a warrant had been served for his arrest for back child support payments? I don't know that he was ever served a warrant, but he was, I don't think that, I know that he was threatened with, if you don't start paying child support. But finally my mom just gave up and we did our own thing. But my dad, he was a loving uncle to all of my cousins, and they saw him as the fun-loving uncle.

43:01It didn't see him as what I saw. And I have a half-brother who was the second, his mother was the second wife, and he went through the same things. But he was a good-hearted man. Alcohol changed him. When he was not drinking, he was fantastic. And it's just that there weren't many of those times. When you were in it back then, And how would you and your sister, Frances, try and break it up? You know, just try to get them to stop, get it mediated, and then just do what you can do. How would you cope with it at the time? Anger, myself. I would yell and scream and try to get it stopped. But it just wasn't working.

43:49And my mom did the right thing, and then we just moved on. Do you ever, looking back now, wonder how those experiences impacted you later on? Well, you know, the first thing is I really realized every time I would see a really nice home situation, that made me want to make sure that I had that. And my son's made statements about how important eating dinner, supper together was really important because we never did that. He said it started to drive him crazy later in life. He's like, I couldn't schedule stuff with my high school buddies because at a set time every day we were going to eat. It's just that it made me appreciate the good family moments.

44:35And my wife, Wanda, and her family were just a completely different role model for what I wanted it to be for me later on. And still some of our greatest moments now. I mean, on my birthday, August 1st, gosh, 15 years ago, maybe even more, I decided that I didn't want any birthday presents. I didn't want any cars, didn't want anything, and I would come to see them, but I wanted us to have my birthday dinner, and it's fried chicken biscuits and gravy corn and green beans and potatoes, and so I did. I said, I will come to you, and that way they don't have to, because they have their own families now.

45:12And so on August 1st, that's what we do. We get together and it's my favorite meal of the year. Did it ever scare you that given those were your experiences in your formative years that, you know, between your mom, dad, splitting up, getting back together, the abuse that that would end up what your life would be later on? No, because I've I'm probably this is a comical thing. I'm probably the only person that's ever graduated from University of North Carolina. I stayed here five years and got a master's degree and I never drank a beer. I don't drink, so... You think because of that? Oh, yeah. Oh, there's no question.

45:48I was afraid of what it did that my dad might do to me, so I'm big on Sprite Zero now. Coca-Cola Classic was a long time ago. What did your dad say to you at your mom's visitation? Oh, it was a funny thing, because we would have contact. I would call him Christmas Day and then maybe call him once a year other than that. Try to go see him once a year. But that was it. And so when mom passes, we have a visitation. It's a small little funeral home area. And I'm across the room and I see him come in the door. And my sister went up to him. She was better. She was better with him than I was. And so she would go up and hug him.

46:34and the whole time after he talked to her for a minute and other people were saying anything and I'm across the room and I see him his head's on a swivel he's trying to find me and then he saw me and then he came walking across and I'm talking you know 30 feet he comes walking across through the people and he came up and it was a it was a comical thing as I said now for sure but it was appropriate it was that's who he was he came out I said what you up to He said, not much. He said, you okay? I said, yeah, I'm okay. He said, I only came for one reason. He said, I've only regretted one thing in my entire life, and that's the way I treated your mom, and I just wanted you to know that.

47:22And then he cussed and turned around and walked out the door and that was it and but I appreciated that I really did that meant something to me why was it important to you to eulogize him one of my cousins said your dad asked me if I thought that you would speak at his funeral like you did at your mom's and that was my dad's way of asking me to do it because he would never ask me to do it he had he would have had too much pride to do that the the Doltmore gym, the policeman that caught you, and what happened from there? Well, it was a funny thing because it all started. I just loved to get inside and play basketball.

48:09But in the wintertime in the mountains, it was a lot of cold weather. But it started on one of those Sunday nights when my mom had some clothes that she was ironing, and I just wanted to get out of there. And so I went to Biltmore Gym, and we would do some crazy things. You know, at the end of the day, they'd run everybody off the playground. The buses would come back, and they'd close everything down. And every now and then, this I never did, but there would be somebody, we'd tell him to go hide in the bathroom. And so then when all the buses and the teachers left, he would come out and yell, and we'd all go in and play.

48:45And there's times that somebody would go in through a window because we found out that, or I found out for sure, on the outside, you could climb up to the second floor and you could get in through one of the windows that were not locked. It's just that there were a couple of bricks missing or whatever it was, but it was easy. And so that's what I would do when I was by myself. And so on that one Sunday night, I went up and so I started doing that a little more often, but I was always, I never quote broke in for a group. It was just, if I'm going to do that, you know, serious thing, I'm going to just do it for myself.

49:21And I would go in and just, I never would turn the lights on. They had the red exit signs on both ends and that was enough light for me. And so I'd play. And so I'm in there one time and a policeman came in and got me and asked me what I was doing and told me I shouldn't be doing that. But it was good because he caught me when I was sweeping the floor and he thought I was just trying to take care of it. I was trying to erase my tracks is what I was doing. And so then he caught me again later and that's when he took me to the principal's home, put me in the back of the car. You think you're... Oh, I thought I was going to jail.

50:04I was scared to death. And he takes me to the principal's house and leaves me in the car, locks the car, goes to the door and the principal comes out and Mr. Norton and they talk And then he comes and gets me and they scold me a little bit. And then they hand me a key and said, don't go in that way, but don't bring anybody else. If you bring anybody else in, you're responsible for them too. So for over a year, I had a key to the gym, but I never took anybody else in with me. It would just be by myself. And the crazy thing is I had a key and we had at least, well, more than once probably, had somebody stay in there and then we'd go back in and play or get in some other way.

50:47But I never used a key for anybody except just myself kind of thing. And then, but then that was when I was in the eighth grade. So after that, I never used it because I would keep playing somewhere else. What about your high school coach Baldwin made you feel like you could accomplish things that even your family didn't think you could do? Well, it was when I was in the third grade, fourth grade, Miss Cheek, she put up the top 10 students in the class. There's only 25 of us. And the first time she put up top 10 students, my name wasn't on the list. And that really irritated me. And so the next grading period, my name was the first on the list.

51:27And so there was some competitiveness there that people laugh and joke about because I think I am fairly competitive. And some people think to a negative. But so my freshman year at Robertson, I played on the JV team. Do you think it's a negative? No. Okay. I think it's the best positive I have. Yeah. But my freshman year at Robertson, I played on the JV team. It was for 9th and 10th graders. The varsity was for 11th and 12th graders. And after the season, Coach Baldwin taught U.S. history, and so the people would talk to him, try to get him off the subject of teaching probably. And he would talk about next year's basketball team.

52:08and he told that it was juniors, but I had some of my close friends were in the junior class. And they came home and told me what he said, that he really thought that I had a chance to play on the varsity as a sophomore, that I'd really made some improvement during my freshman year, and he thought I could really be a good player. That was the first time that anybody had ever been openly very positive about me. It's the first time somebody had ever remembered saying really good things. With regards to anything? Anything, except my mom would brag about my grades as I was growing up. Because you didn't really have any goals or ambitions at that point?

52:48No, there was no example, because again, nobody in my family had ever gone to school. And so that made me feel really good. And I loved baseball had always been the most important until my ninth grade year, and then basketball became the most important. and so all of a sudden I realized if he makes me feel that good I can't be the only person he's done that for and so that's who I wanted to be and so the summer after my ninth grade years when I decided I wanted to be a coach and I worked nowhere near as hard as I could have I just didn't know but I worked really hard and then I became I started on the varsity as a sophomore and We got beat up a lot, and I wasn't very good.

53:33Then I was better as a junior and then as a senior. Coach Baldwin's the one, and he's the one that taught me into going to college because I never even thought about it. But it was as simple as that, recognizing the positive impact that he had on you and realizing you wanted to have the same impact on other people. He's 81 years old, and I still talk to him every week, sometimes three or four times a week. He's just been incredible to me my whole life. And it's something I really appreciated. So you go to college. You're playing on the JV team. And then you start staying after practice to watch Coach Smith and the varsity team's practices.

54:14Why? So I played as a freshman. And as I told you about having to get a job. And so my sophomore and junior years, I was a regular official in everything that we did in intramurals. But they didn't start until 4 o 'clock. and so my sophomore year I went in one day and had a little legal pad and went and set up in the upper section of Carmichael and I had seen coach Guthridge and I asked him if he thought it would be okay for me to come in and sit and watch practice and I said I only have you know 20 to 25 minutes because I've got to be on the field at four o 'clock to start working or in the basketball Jim and so I went in there and coach Guthridge saw me and went and said something to coach Smith and coach Smith sent a manager up and the manager told the security guard because the security guard was standing there talking to me said coach Smith said he's okay and let Roy come in anytime he wants to come so mr.

55:11counsel was one of the security guards was in there a lot and so if I had 20 minutes or something before I started working every day I'd go in there and watch them and sometimes I'd watch Coach Guthrie's freshman team practice and sometimes I'd watch the varsity. And then one day the varsity manager comes to you and says Coach Smith wants to talk to you. There were two different times one that he wanted to know if I would keep a points per possession chart and the other one he'd know if I could come on Saturday morning to referee a scrimmage and so I did both of those my senior year for basketball, the games that I could drive to, State and Wake and Duke and all the home games.

55:56And then on Saturday mornings, I would come in and referee some of the scrimmages. And he ends up inviting you to work at the UNC basketball camp. And fast forward to end the summer of 78, he asks to talk to you again. Tell about the offer. Well, it was funny because Coach Guthridge, I ran into him, just said hello. I was in summer school. It was my last five weeks of my college education. I was going to have a master's after that summer. And he said, would you be interested in coming and refereeing our camp at night? He said, you can work in a day's field. And I said, I can't do that, Coach, because I have class.

56:34But, yeah, I said, I'll come in the referee. And it was Coach Guthridge. And so he said, well, we have Phil Ford coming in. and Coach Smith wants him to have a positive camp experience, so he wants you to referee. And Coach Smith said, let's get the best referee we can find to come in. And so the first night I was in there, and Coach Smith walked by and patted me on the back and said, thanks for doing this. Phil's really important to us. And I said, Coach, I'll give him a call every now and then, and just laughed. And so I did. Every time Phil drove, the foul was called on the other guy, and every time Phil tried to take a charge, I called in a charge, and Phil had a great experience.

57:10and then I'd already gotten the head coaching job at Owen High School. And so then after camp was over that summer, I get a letter at Owen from Coach Smith thanking me and inviting me to come back and work camp the next summer full time and that he would send me a note in the spring. And then you end up getting a job offer. Yeah, five years at Coast High School and five years worked at camp and Coach Smith said he was so comfortable. I had the gym that was the farthest out of town. It was old Lowe's Grove Elementary School over on this side of Durham and he said I'll come by to see your gym once a week the rest of the time you're on your own and but I'd really worked hard and tried to do a good job in camp and they wanted a quote part-time assistant.

57:59It was full-time job part-time pay and so they offered me that and you were making you and your wife were collectively making thirty thousand dollars between the two of you at that coming year so this is in June end of June when he offered me the job and I went home and told Wanda and Scott was already a year old and he'd been born April 15th so this is June after he turned one so she's responsibility yes so she said okay so I'm gonna make$14 ,000 at Tuscola and you're going to make about$16 ,000 with your coaching deal at Owen. So that's$30 ,000 and Coach Smith offered you$2 ,700 for the year.

58:40And I said, yep, that's about it. And she said, famous statement, she said, okay, when do we leave? Why did you think that was a good move for you at the time? Number one, I felt like I was cheating the students at Owen high school because my whole day in basketball season I was thinking in my mind about planning practice for that night or the game that night and I didn't think I was doing as good a job as I should be doing in the classroom for them and so that made me wonder if I should try to get into college coaching and I just simply asked coach Guthridge that question that week that coach Smith offered me the job.

59:21I'd said, if something ever comes up that you hear of anybody that needs, I said, because coach, I think I need to try to get into college coaching because I'm not happy with the work I'm putting in as a teacher and I don't feel like I'm, I feel like I'm cheating the high school kids. And three days later, he and coach Smith had been talking and Eddie Fogler, they had been talking about that anyway that I didn't know. and then they offered me the job. How did you survive financially? Very intelligently. We were lucky because the day we got down here, I drove a U-Haul and all of our belongings, Coach Guthridge came over at Glenn Lennox's apartments and said that if Wanda could get to the personnel office by 4.30, they'd had an English teacher resign that morning.

1:00:14and it was the day before school started. And so Wanda went over there. I remember crawling over everything to get her address to put on to go to the interview and she went over there that afternoon and they offered a job so she started teaching the next day. And so I was driving copies of Coach Smith and Coach Crum, our football coach at that time, of their TV show. They didn't do it digitally and send it out across what they do now. It was a big old case of a film and I would drop a tape. I would drop one in Greensboro and one in Asheville and turn around and come back and it was 504 miles every Sunday.

1:00:48But I made$113. And so when I'm making$2 ,700, every Sunday I make another$113. And Wanda was teaching. And then the next year, she only taught a couple of months because she was pregnant with Kimberly. And that's when I started selling calendars. You became the world's best calendar salesman. That's the best calendar salesman you'd ever seen. And we did okay.

1:01:14The, yeah, and I mean, you look at the, from what I understand on the calendar sales front, struggled initially, but by the end of it, you were able to basically buy, upgrade the house for yourself. Yeah, I mean, first year I sold 10 ,500 calendars, made$2 ,400 and drove 9 ,000 miles in nine weeks. The last year I did it, eight years later, I sold 50 ,000 calendars. Instead of making$2 ,400, I made over 30 ,000. I did it in five weeks and in 5 ,000 miles. How do you remember this? At that time, it was really important. But I also, my wife says I have more useless information in my brain than anybody.

1:01:56How much did you work in college, and what were the different jobs? It was lucky. I played on the freshman team, and we were really good. I wasn't good enough to keep playing, but we had 78 guys, 77 guys, try out for the freshman team, and seven guys were either on full scholarship or had been promised a chance to be on the varsity. So there were 70 of us trying out for those other eight spots. And so I was fortunate enough to make that team. and I had some financial aid programs, financial aid money, but it was starting to run out. So we win the big four freshman tournament and we were ranked basketball times.

1:02:40I still have the picture somewhere of us being ranked the number one freshman team in the country. We played Duke and Carmichael Autorium and sold the place out and the varsity didn't play until Saturday. So freshman basketball was pretty big. But after we won the tournament, I came back, and I knew I was about to run out of money. And so I see this sign that says, umpires needed and intramurals. And so I went to the meeting that Monday night, and I started umpiring softball games and did it the rest of my freshman year. And it was like six, eight weeks left, all it was. And then the next year, I started working in intramural office and I officiated basketball, umpired softball, refereed football.

1:03:26I did everything that needed any kind of scorekeeper or referee. And so basically... And you were quickly viewed as like the best referee on campus. Yeah, I think by the end of it, because I was doing all the championship games, and they were some very physical, vicious championship games. But I did that. I worked 24 hours a week the rest of my college career. Before you found success, how did you find smart ways to save money? I knew what I needed and there were some things I wanted, but that never made a difference to me. When I was a kid, there were some things I wanted, couldn't afford. And later in life, people gave them to me free and I could have paid for them then.

1:04:09But it was so, to me, that's the biggest difference. We did what we needed. We got what we needed. We survived as a child with just my mom And then for those two or three years before I, quote, got the calendar business going, we made do with what we needed and not concerned about what we wanted. Best and worst financial decision you ever made? Worst was I got involved in a golf course project at Kansas that didn't work out. To the point where it was a painful amount? It was to me. You know, it's several thousand dollars and you get two dozen golf balls at the end and sell it for$5. And the best was I told Wanda, you handle the finances.

1:04:52I'll make sure there's money there, but you handle it. I've written five checks and 48 years of marriage. When I need some money, I ask her, can I have some money? I don't do any of the bank statements. I don't go to the bank. I don't do any of those things. I've never used an ATM. Don't have any idea what I would do there. So the best decision is putting her in charge of the finances. And the second one was a friend of Coach Smith's named Bill Miller. that started doing our taxes in 1982 and did a great job of guiding us properly when I became coach at Kansas. And then after he passed away, a guy in his office named Tim Breedlove has continued to do the same thing.

1:05:35So Wanda and Tim Breedlove have done real well. I don't know. They just give me money when I need it. All right. And the best financial advice you ever received? Oh, boy. It was probably Bill Miller. It wasn't really financial advice, but it was. He said, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And so today I'm going to walk. Today I'm going to exercise. Today I'm going to, I don't eat properly, but I love desserts. Don't eat many vegetables. But most of the time I try to take care of my health as much as I possibly can. The academic impropriety stuff at UNC, how did it affect you?

1:06:23Mentally more than anything. The way I felt like people were looking at me and the way they were looking at my basketball program and the way I thought they were looking at my school. And I didn't think it was fair because I didn't do anything wrong. How did you think they were looking at you? That it was negative because negative news gets the headlines and the Raleigh News Observer put it in headlines every day. I mean you you thought the perception was what? I thought the perception was that we were cheating, that we were giving our players extra help, that we were giving our players grades and that was not true and that I was involved.

1:06:59When the first notice of allegations came out my name was in there one time and it said we interviewed Coach Roy Williams. The second notice of allegation that wasn't even in there and yet they interviewed me and they talked to me and they found nothing and there were coaches who were involved in things that would have their names in there 50 times and mine was in there one statement the first time and not in there at all the second time and I felt like we had really done some good things to make sure we were not doing anything wrong and so that was that was a difficult time we had recruited 24 McDonald's All-Americans in the first 10 years.

1:07:40The next three years we recruited one. And it was hard when you walk up to do a speaking engagement to help somebody and there's a TV camera there and a guy sticks a microphone underneath your face and says, do you think you're going to keep your job? Do you think you're going to be fired? And so it was not the most pleasant time. Your son said it was the lowest sustained period of your career. Yeah, it was two or three years. You know, I mean, It wasn't happening like that. Every time you turn around and people would yell things. I go to a golf tournament and people are saying, hang in there, coach, hang in there, coach.

1:08:17And one guy yelled a cheater. And I'm face to face with him in about three seconds. I told him he had no idea what he was talking about and don't open his mouth unless he knows what the crap he's talking about. And then the light bulb flicked on and said, be a little smarter than that. So I turned around and walked off. I understand there's some close to you who feel like there are others that could have done more to defend you when all this was going on. What do you think? Oh, at the time, I wish there was, I had wanted some things to be said. To say, Roy Williams did nothing wrong. Roy Williams is doing this the right way.

1:08:56By the university? Or anybody. You know, anybody that could get some attention. But it made me a little mad, but it wasn't a big deal. It really wasn't. Looking back on that now, do you feel like there was anything you should have known that you didn't? No. When we got here, we told them we were going to do things the right way, and we had guys that had sort of gone over to this major that they thought was the easiest, and I didn't think that was right. And I said, hey, we're not going to tell you. Tell me what you want to do. You want to be a dentist? You want to be a businessman? You want to do this?

1:09:39You know, do your job in the classroom. Because to me, that was just a given. That you come to school here, by God, you're going to get your grades. You're going to do the job in the classroom. And if I'm the basketball coach, you're going to do it or you're not going to play. And that was just a very simple thing for me. So it wasn't any campaign or anything that I did. I just told them this is the way it's going to be and I couldn't control what had gone on before and As I looked into it and the university looked into it What had gone in before was not what was portrayed in the newspapers at all?

1:10:12And so I was comfortable with what had gone on before and I was darn sure comfortable with what everything I'd done. What about lesson or takeaway from that experience that in times when you have tough times you do need that core group that you can pull together and that's what I tried to do with my team I tried to make my team even stronger and at times like that your core group of friends they they're going to stay with you and the whole thing like that because I they had to defend me also they had to defend our school the families had to defend so in in times adversity you've got to have a group to get together even stronger.

1:10:56And that was the reason we had the success we had during those times. I mean, we lost a national championship game on the last second shot and won a national championship game during those time periods. But it was because we tried to be even stronger together. Stress. Yeah. How constant of presence is it in your life? Right now, not very much. How about up until retirement? Yeah, every day. I mean, and I've always put more on myself than anybody ever has. I tell a player, when you're in that gym working, maybe somebody else is not. But if you're not in there, maybe somebody else is. And that could be the guy that you're competing with for the last spot on the team or for the number one draft choice in the NBA.

1:11:40And so that's the way I've tried to run my life. I'm trying every day to make sure that nobody's going to outwork me. How visible is it to family and colleagues, the stress you put on yourself? You know, I think you'd probably have to ask them that. They know and they appreciate how much I try to do. And I do think that I've always been really organized so that I can do those kind of things and not stare against the wall all day. I was going to say organization might be an understatement from what I understand as it pertains to you. But how would the stress affect you? Just not sleep. You know, but I've always thought I could get by on less sleep than anybody in the world.

1:12:24And that goes back to when you were an Owens High School coach. I think the first time you didn't get sleep. But how little sleep would you get? Oh, during the season. Depends on how good we were, I guess, too. But a lot of times, three hours, something like that, three or four. If I got five hours a night or something, I didn't know how to act, you know, that kind of thing. How would that affect you or your health? You know, I'm still kicking is all I can tell you. But there would be sometimes after a loss, I may not, a difficult loss, maybe I wouldn't sleep at all. And so I'd be more tired. And so I'd have to, but I could not only exist, I could get my work done on that little sleep.

1:13:09I'm sleeping a little better now, not a lot better now. Are you getting a lot more sleep now? Well, compared to what I was then, you know, gosh, I've even found out what it was like. I slept one day after a couple of really hard days of work and travel. I slept seven and a half hours one time. I thought, Jesus Christ, I didn't know anybody could do those kind of things. Two quotes I wanted to read to you, one from your son and then another from you. But first, your son said, as it pertains to coaching, the highs are never as high as the lows are low. You mentioned you would say that. Why would you want a job that makes you feel that way?

1:13:46For me, it all goes back to Buddy Baldwin. I wanted to be important and to make somebody feel like my high school coach made me feel. That was it. That I wanted to give everything I had so that I could help some, quote, kid who just got a little older when he got into college level. And then secondly, the competitive side, it is the lows are much, much lower than highs are high. I felt like it was a desperate level that it was some way of, yes, grading, are you successful or not? Yes. But I not only hated losing, it was hard for me to handle. You wrote in your book, if you haven't walked in my shoes, you don't know the pain, you don't know the regret, you don't know the anguish.

1:14:37It eats at your soul. And that was part of the reason for retiring because it just got so hard. And the losses or the mistakes would just hang with me so much longer. I mean, I have a good friend who's an NBA general manager who made some bad free agent deals that said, you know, I made this deal for$50 million and the guy wasn't any good. He said, those are mistakes. He said, you didn't foul a guy and that's the mistake that's going to make you change your life. But the losing and the mistakes got to be so dominating in my life that it was hard to handle. Michael Jordan, your close friend. You were one of the first college coaches to really get excited about Michael.

1:15:29What do you think you saw that others missed? Well, everybody missed, and we would have too. But I just saw him on a Sunday afternoon, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this may be the best six-foot, four-inch high school player I've ever seen. But none of us, Dean Smith, Bill Guthrer, Jetty Fogler, Roy Williams, knew that he was going to be Michael Jordan. Right. But he was just gifted, but he had a desire that was different from everybody else. He had the gifts. The Lord gave him all these gifts, but he had this it, this attitude, this desire to be the best. Although you did have an interesting conversation with him on that front when he said he wanted to be the best to ever play at UNC.

1:16:15He told me he wanted to be the best player ever at North Carolina. I said, well, you've got to work harder than you did in high school. And he said, I worked as hard as everybody else. I said, excuse me. I thought you told me you wanted to be the best. You have no chance. No chance. And two days later, he came back and said, I want to talk to you. And he said, I'm going to show you nobody will ever outwork me. And nobody ever has to this day. What do you think made him unique? That desire. There's guys on the street corner that can run and jump. There's guys playing basketball that can shoot. there's guys doing so many things and there are great players but nobody's great as Michael Jordan was that expression the goat greatest of all time he's the goat and I've watched a lot of basketball 71 years nobody's done what Michael Jordan and his desire his passion his focus his work ethic his competitiveness oh my gosh it's off the charts and it was just a great mix and And that he got in there and he mixed everything together and it came out as the best of ever.

1:17:20Speaking of competitiveness, tell about this rivalry on the golf course that you guys have. I used to be able to beat him. He beats me to death right now. Oh, does he? Oh, yeah. You have more time to work on your game. We haven't played since I retired. Come on. I'll have a chance to hopefully next spring. After I have my second knee replaced, I'm going to try to work on my game and see if I can get when I left high school coach my handicap was a three and for 45 years I've been able to keep it in single digits in the summer but this summer at 71 it took me until August to get it to single digits so I've got to go back to work what's this I hear about a motorcycle he gave you yeah he we were at auction the charity auction Jimmy V challenge and he's always been great and Wanda is a great, great cook, and she used to fix him from fried shrimp.

1:18:16And he came in and sat down at our table because she said he hadn't seen me in almost a year. And they bring this Harley and vroom, vroom. And Wanda said, you can buy me that motorcycle to me. And she said, I could use that to go to the grocery store because we had a place in Charleston, and we were flying from Kansas and then getting a rental car and taking the whole week. And she was talking about getting an old jalopy and leaving it down there so we at least could go to the grocery store. And she said, and Michael said, do you ride a bike? And I said, she's never ridden a bike in her life. And she said, well, I could learn.

1:18:50And Michael said, I'm going to buy you that bike. And my wife almost, no. And it was unbelievable. But he sat there in an auction. Charles Barkley's across the room, and he's over there bidding. And Michael gave him the sign to stop it. He was buying it for Wanda. And so he bought her a motorcycle. We still have it. Tell the story about his dad installing a wood stove at your house. I was still the part-time assistant. Wasn't making very much money, but we had bought a house. It was a very little house, south side of Chapel Hill. And in January of his, crazy, January 24th of Michael's senior year in high school, I had talked to Mr.

1:19:34Jordan and told him I was going to buy a wood stove because we had FWA, forced warm air, was a way of heating. And they have these heating coils and then they blow air across that and it comes out your vents as warm air. But that's the way we were heating in our house. You probably didn't know that. But our bill was just ridiculous. And I told Mr. Jordan, I said, I can chop wood. And I've had a wood stove in my home when I was a kid and all that kind of stuff. So I told him I was wanting to get a fireplace insert. And he said, well, how big is your, he said, I'm gonna call you. I want you to measure you.

1:20:12He said, I may have something for you. So he called one night and I measured the fireplace. And January 24th, he called and said he was coming up. He had me a stove. And I said, great. You know, and so we came in, it was heavy. We get it out of the truck and put it in and start it and it works. And I said, wanted to get the checkbook. And he said, what for? I said, I won't write you a check. He said, if you write me a check, I'm taking it out and putting it in my truck. He says, I made this for you. I built this. I said, you built it? And he said, yeah, I built this for you. And I was just blown away.

1:20:52And our heating bill dramatically went down. And I started cutting a lot of wood. and a local guy in town, Russ McCormick, our banker, was a friend, a good friend. And so he and I would drive around and find out people were trying to get rid of trees and we'd cut them down and split the wood. And so we heated and then we moved to another house and it had bigger. So Mr. Jordan came over and measured it again and built me a second one. Oh, no way. Yeah, and I'll never forget when I took the job at Kansas. I'm in the house in Chapel Hill when we're leaving and the realtor says, is that a Fisherwood stove?

1:21:30And I said, no, that's a Jordan. And she said, a Jordan. And I said, yes, Mr. James Jordan built that for me. I wanted to drag it out and take it with me kind of thing. So Michael's dad was great. One of the most well-known, efficient, hardworking guy, loyal to the core. And his mom was great. Dolores was special, but James Jordan was a hero of mine. I want to wrap up talking about Wanda. In what ways does she provide the perfect balance for you? She's everything to our family. She's the glue. I wanted her to be the mother of my children, and she's the perfect mom, the perfect grandmom, and I walk around and have fun.

1:22:18Everything that I'm bad at, she's good at, And that's about everything. Just now in social media and computer work, I don't do any of that stuff. I'm the only guy you've ever known that does not have an email. Oh, come on. I don't know. No. When email first came out, I had a computer at Kansas, and I'd press a button. It said, you've got mail. And it'd be sort of cute. But Scott and Kimberly, both in school here and there, are the only ones that had my email address. The fifth day, I went in and pushed the button. and had 208 messages because Kansas released everyone's email address. So now I've got all this.

1:22:54And it was over 200 for five straight days. And I cut it off, closed the computer and never opened it up again. I came here and they said, where do you want your computer? I said, I don't want one. And they said, well, you got to have a computer. I said, no, I don't. They put a computer behind my desk. I never opened it in 18 years. And in fact, this summer after I retired, they came in and nobody had that email address. Some half they got it, but there were over 18 ,000 emails in there they had to erase because I never opened it. And because I'm not going to be dominated by that computer that I get up and I've got, you know, it was from fans, people wanting to take this recruiting service.

1:23:33It was, you know, just ridiculous, and I wasn't going to do it. So I'm not, my life's not dominated by the computer. Okay, in fairness, so you had, I'm sure you had to learn how to text because in the recruiting process, you're having to text. Oh, yeah, I can call somebody, they can call me, they text me, I can text them back. I've even gotten the ESPN app, so I can check the scores and see how the Yankees are doing, how our guys are doing in the NBA. So you have a smartphone. I don't know what this is, but it's, that's what I have. I got my pictures of my grandchildren on the back, so it's good, but no, I don't do those things.

1:24:06To what extent do you think she's always gotten the appreciation she deserves? Oh, for me, I don't deal with people when we're building a house, moving or anything like that I tell them you need to have a great relationship and be able to take instruction from a woman because I will never speak to you but I'll work hard enough that there'll be enough money there to pay you at the end yeah I understand she's not one to pump you up and tell you how great you are no no no she keeps me grounded the important thing to her is not winning the game the important thing is when we're gonna go see the kids important thing is seeing the grandkids and important thing is helping helping people what's this I hear about a jockstrap proposal it's gotten overplayed in my mind I'm sure she thinks it's played exactly the right level so I'm in graduate school spring spring break Easter and we had talked about being very serious we had been we're ninth grade algebra one class together never dated in high school and then got here and we hung around started dating, doing those things.

1:25:14And so we're going to a movie. And at that time, I always was ready for a game. So I had my shoes and socks, gym shorts and my jock, yes, in the backseat. Because if I went by a playground and guys were playing, I'd stop and play sometime. Because I was always ready for a game. I'm 21, 22, 23, 21 or 22 years old. And so I said, I've got something for you in the back seat under my shorts and I didn't really think about the fact that the jock was there too but so she gets it out and it's this little package and she opened it up and it was a ring and I did the world's worst job I tell every player every friend young person do 180 degrees away from the way I asked Wanda to marry me because she opened it up and it's a ring and instead of stopping the car and getting down on one knee or making it romantic or something that I made it something she could remember I started to say I stood on making it memorable I did but in a bad way because she opened it up and she looked at me and I said well what do you think that was the way I proposed so yeah I shouldn't do it like that but we've survived 48 years And she means what to you?

1:26:29Everything. She's the perfect mom, the perfect grandmom. She's been able to do things in areas where I'm very weak. She was just phenomenal raising our children. She's singing little songs, little lullabies, and itsy-bitsy spider, and I never heard those things in my entire life. I had never seen those kind of things. And she's very bright, and she's everything. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's just a portion of our time with retired UNC basketball coach Roy Williams. We toured the Carolina Basketball Museum, filled with relics from the program's rich history. Hop onto our YouTube page to check that out, youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger.

1:27:23Coach and I also went for a walk and drive around campus and had lunch at a famous Chapel Hill establishment. If you're still here, hopefully that means you'll give us a rating and review as well. And as always, thanks again for listening.