Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati
Lucas: Live With This
February 9, 2018 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
We wanted to be Theo Pinson and Theo Pinson wanted to be us on a memorable Smith Center night.
By Adam Lucas
Every single one of us wanted to be him. All 21,750 of us, we all wanted to be Theo Pinson at that exact moment with 11.1 seconds left when he was swinging on the rim after dunking home the final Tar Heel points of Carolina's eventual 82-78 win over Duke.
And what did Pinson want? Well, he wanted to be us.
"I wish I could have just stood there," he said of the moments after his dunk.
Well, Theo, let me tell you, and sorry if I'm shouting but my ears are still ringing and I don't know if I'm talking abnormally loudly because of it: it's pretty great.
But you don't just stand there. No sir. Not in the Smith Center on Thursday night. You can't just stand there when the Tar Heel senior dunks home the exclamation point ("I thought about just dribbling it out," Pinson said, and I am sorry to tell you this, Mr. Pinson, but I absolutely forbid you from dribbling it out in this game, at that moment). You jump and you hug and you scream. What you scream makes no difference, and truthfully you have no voice by that point anyway, so mostly it is just unintelligible mush, but it is screaming.
It's really not surprising that Pinson would want to be us. Everyone else in the country wanted to be inside that building, too. The rest of the college basketball world wishes for maybe one game every five years that approaches Carolina-Duke. We do it twice a year, at minimum, as part of the normal schedule. Hey, no problem. Twice a year, we're going to play the most intense games of the college basketball year…oh, and we'll also play the rest of the schedule, too.
This one featured one of the best crowds in Smith Center history, a giant two-hour dome of noise that never took a breath, never paused, never stopped, ever. Cameron Johnson was sensational (18 points, 13 rebounds, a key loose ball secured with a dive on the floor in the final minutes) in his first Carolina-Duke game on Thursday and this is what he said: "It was everything that everybody said it would be. The fans were incredible. At times I couldn't hear myself think. The fans brought a special dimension to this place, and we fed off that."
You know what happens in a Carolina-Duke game? People miss shots that they talk about for 20 years. For the last two decades, we've had Vince Carter's off the backboard pass from Ed Cota. Carter missed the dunk, and yet here we are, still talking about it.
I was there for that one, and I was there for this one. And I will tell you that if Pinson had connected on his attempted throwdown over Marvin Bagley with 1:22 remaining, they would currently be trying to reassemble the tiny shards of the Smith Center from a court-shaped hole in the ground.
Every time—every single time—you see his finishing dunk from this game, you're going to elbow your buddy and say, "That was the game where Theo almost posterized that big guy from Duke who was there for one year," and hopefully one of you will remember (one year goes fast) it was Bagley.
That's how big Carolina-Duke is. The missed shots become legendary. Joel Berry caught some grief this week because he said Carolina-State isn't as much of a rivalry as Carolina-Duke. But consider his frame of reference. Twice a year, he plays in…this. Carolina-Duke is a national event. Berry compares every other rivalry to this one, because this is what he knows, and there simply aren't any comparisons. Not just at Carolina, but anywhere. That's not something to which anyone should take offense. It's something to be proud of.
For four years, he got to play in this game, the one the rest of us alternately look forward to and dread. If you could know the outcome ahead of time, would you want to? Part of the alternating agony and thrill is not knowing. But maybe there would be a second to enjoy it if we knew what was coming, and therefore it wasn't our absolute duty to implore the Tar Heels to "Rebound!" or "Get a hand up!" or "Knock it down!" on every possession.
At noon on Thursday, driving down Franklin Street, it was already obvious it was a Carolina-Duke day. On the corner of Franklin, right outside Spanky's, stood a gentleman with a hand-lettered sign that had just one word: "Tickets."
An automobile with (this will surprise you) an out of state plate and a Duke car flag drove down the street. A man on the opposite corner of Franklin eyeballed the driver of the car while popping his 2017 national championship shirt. In the one-block range from Chapel Hill Sportswear to Spanky's, six of eight females who walked by were wearing Carolina basketball jerseys. This should go on a pamphlet given out to every young man in the state of North Carolina: find yourself a girl who is passionate enough about the Tar Heels that she wears a jersey on the day of the game. This is important life advice. File it away.
Those are the kinds of people you will bond with over the course of two hours during a Carolina-Duke game at the Smith Center. You can be complete strangers, but it doesn't matter, because a Duke player will contract whiplash from a wind gust and will be rewarded with two free throws. And when the second attempt trickles off the rim, you will, in unison, without any forethought or planning, scream it just the way Rasheed taught us:
Ball.
Don't.
Lie.
Over behind the scorer's table sat George Karl and Mitch Kupchak and Antawn Jamison and Phil Ford and Lennie Rosenbluth. Understand: that is in one section of the Smith Center. Just one. This is the Carolina family.
After a recent home game, Jamison encountered Rosenbluth in the home tunnel. "What's up, big time?" Jamison greeted Rosenbluth. They proceeded to have a lengthy conversation, just Antawn Jamison (who last played for Carolina in 1998) chatting with Rosenbluth (who last played for Carolina in 1957) as if they had been four-year teammates.
It is not a hashtag or a social media gimmick. It's just life. Carolina basketball has lived it for the last 40 years. It doesn't have to be on the warmup shirts. It's on the fridge in the basketball office, which features photos of former players' children, or the way so many former players still use Bill Guthridge's secret handshake with each other.
One day Pinson and Berry will be the returning alums in that tunnel, and some other whippersnapper will be out there on the court, and maybe Pinson will finally get to see what it's like to stand there and soak it all in when some young Tar Heel makes a big play, while we're pointing at him and saying, "Remember that night Theo had that dunk against Duke?"
A quick secret: Pinson and Berry still remember going to a Hoop Summit AAU tournament before they enrolled at Carolina and sitting on the bench for almost the entire game while the highly touted Duke signees played extensive minutes. They're not bitter about it, because it's hard to be bitter when you're wearing a national championship ring, but they haven't forgotten it, either.
So there was very little chance they were letting the Blue Devils beat them in the duo's last Carolina-Duke game in the Smith Center.
"I couldn't let that happen," Berry said. "I wouldn't be able to live with knowing I lost my last time here against Duke."
That's why you want players who grow up in your program. That's why you want players with multiple years of perspective, who think not that it would just be disappointing, but that they would not be able to live with it.
Pinson was asked to reflect once more on his evening.
"It got rocking in there," he said. "It's something I will never forget."
Us either.
Every single one of us wanted to be him. All 21,750 of us, we all wanted to be Theo Pinson at that exact moment with 11.1 seconds left when he was swinging on the rim after dunking home the final Tar Heel points of Carolina's eventual 82-78 win over Duke.
And what did Pinson want? Well, he wanted to be us.
"I wish I could have just stood there," he said of the moments after his dunk.
Well, Theo, let me tell you, and sorry if I'm shouting but my ears are still ringing and I don't know if I'm talking abnormally loudly because of it: it's pretty great.
But you don't just stand there. No sir. Not in the Smith Center on Thursday night. You can't just stand there when the Tar Heel senior dunks home the exclamation point ("I thought about just dribbling it out," Pinson said, and I am sorry to tell you this, Mr. Pinson, but I absolutely forbid you from dribbling it out in this game, at that moment). You jump and you hug and you scream. What you scream makes no difference, and truthfully you have no voice by that point anyway, so mostly it is just unintelligible mush, but it is screaming.
It's really not surprising that Pinson would want to be us. Everyone else in the country wanted to be inside that building, too. The rest of the college basketball world wishes for maybe one game every five years that approaches Carolina-Duke. We do it twice a year, at minimum, as part of the normal schedule. Hey, no problem. Twice a year, we're going to play the most intense games of the college basketball year…oh, and we'll also play the rest of the schedule, too.
This one featured one of the best crowds in Smith Center history, a giant two-hour dome of noise that never took a breath, never paused, never stopped, ever. Cameron Johnson was sensational (18 points, 13 rebounds, a key loose ball secured with a dive on the floor in the final minutes) in his first Carolina-Duke game on Thursday and this is what he said: "It was everything that everybody said it would be. The fans were incredible. At times I couldn't hear myself think. The fans brought a special dimension to this place, and we fed off that."
You know what happens in a Carolina-Duke game? People miss shots that they talk about for 20 years. For the last two decades, we've had Vince Carter's off the backboard pass from Ed Cota. Carter missed the dunk, and yet here we are, still talking about it.
I was there for that one, and I was there for this one. And I will tell you that if Pinson had connected on his attempted throwdown over Marvin Bagley with 1:22 remaining, they would currently be trying to reassemble the tiny shards of the Smith Center from a court-shaped hole in the ground.
Every time—every single time—you see his finishing dunk from this game, you're going to elbow your buddy and say, "That was the game where Theo almost posterized that big guy from Duke who was there for one year," and hopefully one of you will remember (one year goes fast) it was Bagley.
That's how big Carolina-Duke is. The missed shots become legendary. Joel Berry caught some grief this week because he said Carolina-State isn't as much of a rivalry as Carolina-Duke. But consider his frame of reference. Twice a year, he plays in…this. Carolina-Duke is a national event. Berry compares every other rivalry to this one, because this is what he knows, and there simply aren't any comparisons. Not just at Carolina, but anywhere. That's not something to which anyone should take offense. It's something to be proud of.
For four years, he got to play in this game, the one the rest of us alternately look forward to and dread. If you could know the outcome ahead of time, would you want to? Part of the alternating agony and thrill is not knowing. But maybe there would be a second to enjoy it if we knew what was coming, and therefore it wasn't our absolute duty to implore the Tar Heels to "Rebound!" or "Get a hand up!" or "Knock it down!" on every possession.
At noon on Thursday, driving down Franklin Street, it was already obvious it was a Carolina-Duke day. On the corner of Franklin, right outside Spanky's, stood a gentleman with a hand-lettered sign that had just one word: "Tickets."
An automobile with (this will surprise you) an out of state plate and a Duke car flag drove down the street. A man on the opposite corner of Franklin eyeballed the driver of the car while popping his 2017 national championship shirt. In the one-block range from Chapel Hill Sportswear to Spanky's, six of eight females who walked by were wearing Carolina basketball jerseys. This should go on a pamphlet given out to every young man in the state of North Carolina: find yourself a girl who is passionate enough about the Tar Heels that she wears a jersey on the day of the game. This is important life advice. File it away.
Those are the kinds of people you will bond with over the course of two hours during a Carolina-Duke game at the Smith Center. You can be complete strangers, but it doesn't matter, because a Duke player will contract whiplash from a wind gust and will be rewarded with two free throws. And when the second attempt trickles off the rim, you will, in unison, without any forethought or planning, scream it just the way Rasheed taught us:
Ball.
Don't.
Lie.
Over behind the scorer's table sat George Karl and Mitch Kupchak and Antawn Jamison and Phil Ford and Lennie Rosenbluth. Understand: that is in one section of the Smith Center. Just one. This is the Carolina family.
After a recent home game, Jamison encountered Rosenbluth in the home tunnel. "What's up, big time?" Jamison greeted Rosenbluth. They proceeded to have a lengthy conversation, just Antawn Jamison (who last played for Carolina in 1998) chatting with Rosenbluth (who last played for Carolina in 1957) as if they had been four-year teammates.
It is not a hashtag or a social media gimmick. It's just life. Carolina basketball has lived it for the last 40 years. It doesn't have to be on the warmup shirts. It's on the fridge in the basketball office, which features photos of former players' children, or the way so many former players still use Bill Guthridge's secret handshake with each other.
One day Pinson and Berry will be the returning alums in that tunnel, and some other whippersnapper will be out there on the court, and maybe Pinson will finally get to see what it's like to stand there and soak it all in when some young Tar Heel makes a big play, while we're pointing at him and saying, "Remember that night Theo had that dunk against Duke?"
A quick secret: Pinson and Berry still remember going to a Hoop Summit AAU tournament before they enrolled at Carolina and sitting on the bench for almost the entire game while the highly touted Duke signees played extensive minutes. They're not bitter about it, because it's hard to be bitter when you're wearing a national championship ring, but they haven't forgotten it, either.
So there was very little chance they were letting the Blue Devils beat them in the duo's last Carolina-Duke game in the Smith Center.
"I couldn't let that happen," Berry said. "I wouldn't be able to live with knowing I lost my last time here against Duke."
That's why you want players who grow up in your program. That's why you want players with multiple years of perspective, who think not that it would just be disappointing, but that they would not be able to live with it.
Pinson was asked to reflect once more on his evening.
"It got rocking in there," he said. "It's something I will never forget."
Us either.