Banks, Bilas share fond memories of Dean Smith

Dean Smith’s memory was the stuff of legend, the calling card for the man who remembered everyone he met. So was his knack for employing a personal touch, whether it be through a hand-written note or a phone call.
That courtesy extended to players who competed against him, too.
Duke’s Gene Banks was the ACC rookie of the year in 1978. He was on the floor for the infamous 1979 Duke-UNC game in Cameron that is remembered for its 7-0 score at halftime (Smith’s offense went into Four Corners mode, and Duke refused to break out of its 2-3 match-up zone, and the Blue Devils ultimately prevailed 47-40). In his final home game in 1981, under a first-year coach named Mike Krzyzewski, Banks sank a jump shot from just beyond the free throw line with 1 second left to send the Duke-Carolina game into overtime, and he hit the game-winner in the extra period.
But in 1982, Banks was a young man getting married. While the ceremony was taking place in the Duke Chapel, Smith, undetected, delivered him a wedding gift.
“It was an ice maker,” Banks said Sunday. “I hold that very special.
“He wasn’t just a great coach, but a great man. He also touched my life as well.”
More than three decades later, Smith’s influence was still being felt around the state of North Carolina. Jay Bilas, who played at Duke from 1982-1986, returned home to Charlotte on Sunday morning after calling the Kentucky-Florida game for ESPN Saturday night. Bilas went out to eat with his wife and his son, where they ran into longtime Carolina fans they knew, people who had never met Smith.
“They were weepy,” Bilas said.
picture: QueenieBridal pink bridesmaid dresses “He is woven into the fabric of the state,” Bilas said. “You can’t think of the University of North Carolina, the ACC and basketball in this state without Dean’s name coming up first.”
Like nearly everyone who ever interacted with Smith, Bilas remembered how sharp Smith was, experiencing that firsthand when Bilas worked on Duke radio broadcasts in the early 1990s and first started with ESPN in 1995. Beyond that, though, Bilas said he remembered Smith for being so kind.
The memory Bilas kept coming back to Sunday was from the last time he interacted with Smith, in the mid-2000s at a hoops summit put together by Nike. Bilas saw Smith in the hotel lobby, and they started talking about golf. Bilas started to retell a story that broadcaster Bill Raftery had relayed him, something funny from one of the annual Carolina golf trips to Pinehurst. Smith recognized the story and took over the retelling – except he started laughing so hard that he couldn’t finish.
“I had never seen him laugh like that before, and I had never imagined him laughing,” Bilas said. “I’ve been thinking of that a lot, the image of him laughing at a friend.”
Playing against North Carolina – more specifically, playing against Smith – was no laughing matter for Banks, Bilas and all the Duke players who faced him until he retired before the 1997-98 season.
“You knew you had to bring your A-game, your A+ game, and you have to be mentally as well as physically prepared for it,” Banks said. “You were taking on his technique and his ability to get his team to play team basketball.”
Or, as Bilas put it: “You know that if you didn’t bring your absolute best, you could be embarrassed.”
Smith’s North Carolina teams were the gold standard of the ACC when Krzyzewski arrived in Durham in the spring of 1980. It was frustrating for Krzyzewski at first – he famously called out the ACC’s “double standard,” which he said allowed Smith to get away with behavior that would result in technical fouls for other coaches, after UNC came back to beat Duke 78-73 on Jan. 21, 1984. But as Krzyzewski grew into the coach he would become, he developed a great respect for his old rival.
“After being here for a long time I knew him better than probably anybody, as far as a competitor,” Krzyzewski said in a 2013 interview. “Because we started to have our program get to that level, and I realized that some of the things I didn’t understand about him, now I understood. We became, actually, very good friends. I love Dean. He’s remarkable. Truly remarkable.”
Sunday, Krzyzewski paid Smith one final tribute.
“We have lost a man who cannot be replaced,” Krzyzewski said in a statement. “He was one of a kind and the sport of basketball lost one of its true pillars. Dean possessed one of the greatest basketball minds, and was a magnificent teacher and tactician.
“While building an elite program at North Carolina, he was clearly ahead of his time in dealing with social issues. However, his greatest gift was his unique ability to teach what it takes to become a good man. That was easy for him to do because he was a great man himself.”
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