Bernstein: Dean Smith Was The Good Guy
By Dan Bernstein-
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Dean Smith was the bad guy, I realized soon after arriving to attend the school just up Highway 15/501 in 1987.
The glowering chain-smoker with the squeaky voice was the patriarch of the evil basketball empire, a Sith lord presiding over a just-completed Death Star of an arena that bore his name. He and all things powder blue were to be fundamentally resented as the enemy.
Fighting him was the brash Chicago kid with this motion offense and man-to-man defense in the tiny, gothic barn on west campus. Mike Krzyzewski, the rebel leader.
In my four years there, there were four Final Fours for Duke and a senior-year national title. That critical period ended with Krzyzewski and his program on a trajectory to become it's own national brand, while Smith would retire six years later.
And as more time than that has passed, other truths emerged.
Krzyzewski was a great coach and a frightening megalomaniac, unleashing furious tirades at referees, his own players, student journalists, parents of players leaving early for the NBA and anyone or anything standing in the way of his personal ascension to greatness. He got there, and now has the towering office, the vast personal fortune and his own name emblazoned on the home court. He has sought glory and power, and he has both.
As that was happening, Dean Smith was confronting the governor over his state's death penalty law, which he believed made murderers of all North Carolinians. That was only the latest and last cause for the proud progressive before he fell ill.
In the political climate of a state represented in the U.S. Senate by Jesse Helms, Smith himself integrated a Chapel Hill restaurant, triggering the desegregation of the city. He signed the school's first black scholarship athlete, and other ACC schools followed suit. He openly protested the Vietnam War and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He stood for equal rights for women and went out of his way to ensure them for the female reporters that began covering his teams. He sought more to empower others than himself.
There was a good guy and a bad guy, but for a while I had it wrong.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
