Why the 2016 Carolina Basketball team should be remembered
The season was so much more than those last 4.7 seconds
There is a table filled with Tar Heel legends.
This table is extremely coveted. It’s the place where everyone wants to be, but few ever get to sit. It’s a small table, but once you’re there, you have a seat forever. Eric Montross is there. Tyler Hansbrough has a seat, too. But this isn’t about them.
I’m talking about the table where Marcus Paige, Joel James and Brice Johnson wanted to sit. It’s the table they had a chair pulled up to. A chair we believed (and still believe) the 2015-2016 Tar Heels deserved more than anyone.
Several weeks have passed since “it” happened. Many days of remembering the incredible ride that led to the saddest 4.7 seconds that could’ve ever happened to the team we love so much.
But before those 4.7 seconds, there was a season filled with joy.
There were four years of Carolina blue skies that pushed through a dark cloud over our school. There was dancing and jumping and Joel eating celebratory cereal. There was fun and laughter and Theo interrupting press conferences.
There was screaming and dunking and pointing to the passer. There was Brice playing every second for his mother. There was Marcus making the entire Dean Dome cry with his senior speech. There was Roy in a sideways hat surrounded by possibly his favorite team ever.
There were wins and there were losses. There were critics and there were believers.
From the first time they walked into the Dean Dome as players until the last moment they played for The University of North Carolina, this team brought joy to the ones who chose to believe. Isn’t that what it was really about? Wasn’t it always about more than basketball?
Who was it that never talked about winning? Oh, right. It was Coach Dean Smith. It was the head of the Tar Heel legends table. It was the one who said: “I do believe in praising that which deserves to be praised.”
It was the coach who knew it was about the process. It was the man who knows, maybe more than anyone, how much this team has done for those of us who love this place.
Marcus Paige said there are only five seats at the Tar Heel legends table: ’57, ’82, ’93, ’05 and ’09.
But, Marcus, because of what this team did. Because of what it meant. Because of what it restored. Because of what it healed. Because of the joy it made us feel.
There is a seat for 2016, too.