Retired UNC basketball coach Dean Smith deserves respect & credit for his progressive actions:
***You can despise him all you want as a sport's rival. You can dislike him because you just don't care for him and UNC.
However, you should know what he did and what he stood for as a very high profile coach in a Southern state. The following excerpt from an article is just one example of his willingness to take on entrenched interests and be a voice for fairness.
With Smith, it wasn't just a basketball move to have a bigger pool of good players. It was his firm belief in treating people with dignity and equality.***
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No coach ever genuinely cared about his players — from Michael Jordan to walk-ons who never scored a point — more than Smith. He had one firm rule that Linda Woods, his longtime assistant, knew had to be followed to the letter: If any player — any player — showed up in his office needing to see him, she was to interrupt whatever he was doing, regardless of who he might be talking to. No one came before the players. It wasn’t a credo or a motto; it was a way of life.
He was also as competitive a human being as has ever lived. It wasn’t just in basketball. He was almost ruthlessly competitive on the golf course, even when playing with close friends. He might have despised losing an argument even more than he despised losing a basketball game. As with basketball, he won a lot more than he lost.
There’s one story that — to me — defines him. I’ve told it in the past, but it bears re-telling. In 1981, Smith very grudgingly agreed to cooperate with me on a profile for this newspaper. He kept insisting I should write about his players, but I said I had written about them. I wanted to write about him. He finally agreed.
One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith’s pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill’s restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church.
“You have to remember,” Reverend Seymour said. “Back then, he wasn’t Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more.”
Smith agreed and went to a restaurant where management knew him. He and his companion sat down and were served. That was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.
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More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/memories-of-dean-smith-linger-even-as-his-memory-sadly-fails-him/2014/03/01/fade81c0-a0ae-11e3-b8d8-94577ff66b28_story.html
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