Williams family begins its journey to Chapel Hill

One day in 1978, the offer came. Coach Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team invited high school coach Roy Williams to leave Black Mountain, N.C., and move to Chapel Hill to join Smith’s staff as a part-time assistant coach. The job paid a paltry $2,700 a year.

By then, Roy and Wanda Williamses had an infant son, Scott, and a mortgage on their new house. They both had decent jobs in Black Mountain – Wanda taught high school English. They had a combined income of $30,000 a year. 

“When Roy mentioned the offer to Wanda, she groaned in protest. ‘That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard of,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a new baby. We just moved into this house. I’m from here. You’re from here. Our friends are all here.’” 

“‘When do we leave?’ she asked.” 

“After the boys (his players) are told,” he reportedly replied. 

Tim Raines, one of the golf team members, said: “Coach Williams gathered us all together and gave us the news. He was really upset about it. And we were like, ‘Coach, we love you, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’” 

Another player from Williams’ golf team, Kenny Ford, said: “I remember asking Coach Williams what he was thinking? I thought at that time he had everything. To be a head coach and an athletic director at Owen High School…what more could a man want?” 

Bill Mott, a coaching colleague of Williams at Owen High, advised Williams to turn down the offer because the pay was lousy. 

Fast-forward 40 years. Roy Williams tied Dean Smith with 879 career college wins in late December 2018.

 

To celebrate, a crowd gathered for lunch one day at Phil’s Bar-B-Que Pit in Black Mountain. “They gave Mott “a hard time about his career counseling skills,” wrote Andrew Carter of The (Raleigh) News & Observer. 

Carl Bartlett, who was Black Mountain’s mayor for 25 years, has a noon-time reservation at Phil’s “back table” every Tuesday, and typically, the old gang’s all there. 

They don’t always tell stories about “Roy Boy,” but “the thing that we really appreciate and love about Roy – he’s not changed,” Bartlett said. 

“At Owen, Williams tried to model everything after how Smith did it,” Mott said. “I told him, ‘That’s all you talk about – Dean Smith. He can’t walk on water.” 

“Roy said, ‘No, but I’ve seen him fly for short distances.’” 

Of all the Owen High Warhorses to play basketball under Coach Williams, the longest running relationship that Williams has with a former player is with Napoleon “Porky” Spencer. 

“I felt like a part of his family,” Spencer said. “He was like a father.”

 

At Carolina, Williams put Porky Spencer’s name on the “ticket list” for every home game. The men shared a special bond; they grew up poor. Williams was raised by his mother in a small home in Asheville. She took in laundry. 

Spencer grew up in a house in Black Mountain with no running water. 

Porky Spencer’s gift to Roy Williams was the script for the pre-game pep talk that Roy used to get his Tar Heels team ready to play Notre Dame in an “Elite Eight” game of the 2016 NCAA Basketball Tournament held in Philadelphia. 

Williams echoed Porky’s words of wisdom: “We didn’t come this far, just to come this far.”

The Tar Heels won that night, 88-74, and moved on to the “Final Four” in Houston.