Buzz Peterson on Dean Smith: ‘It was how much he cared for you after your career was over’

“Coach (Roy) Williams called me and let me know this morning, and we were just talking about what a remarkable life coach Smith led. It wasn’t so much the coaching. It was how much coach Smith cared for you after your career was over.

“I’ll never forget I was in his office after I was done playing. He said, ‘All right, you worked hard for me for four years. Now I want to work hard for you. What do you want to do?’

“I said I wanted to coach. He spent 15 minutes trying to talk me out of it, but then he helped me get every job I ever got after that. When Les Robinson wanted me to come with him and be his assistant at N.C. State, I called coach Smith first. I worried about what he’d say since it was State. But he said, ‘That’s a great opportunity for you. Do it. Be loyal to them.’

“Years later, in 2001, I was the head coach at Tulsa. Coach was already retired. He wanted our game film all the time, so he could watch us. So I had an assistant always send it to him. One time he called me right before the NIT and said he was going to send me some ideas we should consider on offense if we wanted to win that tournament.

“I got it a couple of days later – four sheets of paper. It was all sorts of new wrinkles, based on putting four players further from the basket because we had a small team and doing more dribble-drives. We had a good team already. But we won the NIT that year, mostly because of those four sheets of paper.”

Scott Fowler

This story was originally published February 8, 2015 at 7:25 PM with the headline "Buzz Peterson on Dean Smith: ‘It was how much he cared for you after your career was over’."