During an interview Wednesday on the Stoney & Jansen Show, Lakers legend and Hall of Famer James Worthy, a three-time NBA champ, was asked what he thinks of today’s game and its heavy reliance on the three. And Worthy said the NBA has been diminished by “the rush of guys not going to college” — or at least not going for more than a year. “I mean, Kareem had four years with John Wooden, Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith, Isiah (Thomas) had some years with Bobby Knight. So you learned the fundamentals,” Worthy said. “Not only that, you learned how to live. You learned how to balance your freaking checkbook in college, there’s a lot of things. When you don’t get that, guys are coming to the NBA who are not fundamentally sound. All they do is practice threes, lift weights, get tattoos, tweet and go on social media. That’s it.
Tag: Dean Smith
UNC Basketball: Dante Calabria inks high school head coaching job
Former UNC basketball wing Dante Calabria is returning to the high school league he starred in and taking over as head coach of Bethel Park.
Former UNC basketball wing [autotag]Dante Calabria[/autotag] is returning back to his home state for the next step in his professional career. On Wednesday, it was announced that Calabria would be the newest men’s basketball coach at Bethel Park in Pennsylvania.
Calabria returns back to the WPIAL basketball league where he starred for Blackhawk back in the early 1990’s and was inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame in 2014.
Bethel Park moves on from Josh Bears who resigned after last season. Bethel Park went 16-7 overall last year and reached the first round of the WPIAL Class 6A playoffs.
Calabria arrives at Bethel after a professional playing career that stretched 16 years overseas. He most recently was an assistant coach at Barry University in Miami (Fla.).
“His resume speaks for itself,” Bethel Park athletic director Dan Sloan said. “It’s exciting to be able to show our kids a guy who came from around this area and made it to where he made it, played at a big-time Division I college under legendary coaches, played professionally and then moved up through the coaching ranks.”
Calabria played for North Carolina from 1992-96 under Dean Smith. He was on the 1993 NCAA Championship team and was a Third-Team All-ACC player his senior season.
Following his time at UNC, he went on to eventually be an assistant for Larry Brown in Italy’s Lega Basket Serie A and also an assistant for Rollie Massimino at Keiser University. He also spent time at powerhouse prep school Montverde Academy and UNC Wilmington.
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Who are the top former UNC players in NBA history?
The UNC men’s basketball program has produced an incredible number of iconic names. Who are the top former UNC players in NBA history?
Few programs have been more successful or produced more NBA players than the University of Carolina men’s basketball team. With seven National Championships and twenty Final Four appearances, the Tar Heels are a true collegiate powerhouse.
At the NBA level, UNC players have gone on to enjoyed immense success. Michael Jordan, of course, is the first and last word in Tar Heel greatness, but there are plenty of other players who made a splash in the Association after a stint on Chapel Hill.
The UNC men’s basketball team played its first season way back in 1910-11. Before both World Wars and a generation before the NBA came to be. In fact, they started playing hoops at UNC only twenty years after the sport was invented. Tobacco Road has long been a bastion for basketball.
Unsurprisingly, the list of former Tar Heels who went on to have successful professional careers is long and storied. Let’s jump and and assess who are the top former UNC players in NBA history.
Scott Williams: “We find ourselves down …
Scott Williams: “We find ourselves down one late in the game, I’ve got the ball in my hands — I believe it was off an offensive rebound because they really didn’t throw the young college kid the ball very much — and fire one of these textbook, two-hand chest passes that Dean Smith taught me right over to M.J., who’s on the baseline about 19-20 feet out and he goes up, tongue out of his mouth, patented Jordan form on the jumper, right up over the defender and cans the bucket for the win. So he’s the one that makes a call to Jerry Krause leaving that game saying, ‘Hey, I think Scott Williams might be able to help us out.’ … I always say I am the luckiest undrafted player in the history of the NBA, if there is such a thing.”
“Roy Williams (then a young UNC …
“Roy Williams (then a young UNC assistant) told us a great story about how everyone got one chance to play in Carmichael (Auditorium) during the UNC camp week,” Hehir said. “Michael killed everybody. After seeing him play, Dean Smith pulled Roy aside and told him, ‘This kid can’t go to any other camp.’ But Roy insisted that he had to go to Five-Star to see how he would do against Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and all these other kids. “I knew that we were going to do an episode on the making of Michael Jordan. Brendon Malone appears with us (in ‘The Last Dance’) primarily as Chuck Daly’s assistant for the Pistons, but back then he was a Syracuse University assistant basketball coach and Michael’s coach at Five-Star. He told us stories about Michael’s will to win as a 16- and 17-year-old.”
“Early on, I wasn’t that familiar with …
“Early on, I wasn’t that familiar with him in college,’’ Frazier told The Post in a phone interview Tuesday from his Harlem residence. “Anyone who plays for Dean Smith, he holds them back. Vince Carter, (James) Worthy. You never know the versatility of these guys when they play for North Carolina. He keeps them in a team system. No one knew he was going to do what he did.”