Welcome to Roy Williams’ dream job. He can’t sleep. After taking Kansas to the national championship game, he spent a week waking up in the middle of the night and throwing up.
“Fifteen years,” Roy says fiercely. “I gave Kansas my blood, my sweat, my heart for 15 years. I gave …”
His voice chokes off. Roy has always been famously emotional. Now, though, the tears are always just a word away. Say “loyalty.” Say “Langford.” Say “linguine.” Doesn’t matter.
Say anything at all, and he connects it to a moment at Kansas and a past that’s gone.
Roy Williams left Kansas after 15 mostly wonderful years to become the basketball coach at North Carolina. His dream job.
Wednesday morning, he talked at length about everything.
“I didn’t do anything immoral,” he says. “I didn’t do anything sinful. I just took another job. It’s just another job.”
He’s right, of course. Funny thing is, even Roy Williams doesn’t believe it.
Q. The story goes that on April 11, you saw a picture of recruit Omar Wilkes and decided to call North Carolina to pull out. True?
RW. That’s right. I was at my desk. It was 5:55 a.m. I looked right at the clock. And I picked up the phone to call. I actually picked up the phone.
Q. Well, then, why didn’t you call?
RW. I don’t know.
Roy Williams’ friends call him “The Committee.” That’s because he makes all the decisions. All of them. He decides when to meet for golf, where to eat, how much to bet. He decides where to vacation and who will come along and where everybody will stay and who will drive.
“Check with The Committee,” friends will say whenever an issue comes up.
This is what Roy Williams was thinking about. He couldn’t make a decision. And he was furious with himself. He was flying back from California, from the Wooden Award ceremony, and as he tells it, he still had not decided whether to take the North Carolina job.
His own son, Scott, had told him: “Dad, forget everything else. Do what you want to do.”
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“That’s the problem, Scott,” Roy said. “I don’t know what I want to do.”
Even as he retells that little exchange, Roy Williams is ticked at himself. Why was this so hard? He had made literally millions of decisions in 15 years. He had turned down big jobs–one offered him nine times his Kansas salary–and he had never thought twice.
But this one had him baffled. Every time he thought about a reason to stay (his players), a reason to go would pop up (loyalty to Dean Smith). When he came up with a decisive reason to go (“That’s it, my roots are in North Carolina”), something would scream at him to stay (“The people in Kansas love ya, Roy”).
Roy finally had enough of his own wavering. He resolved that when his flight landed, he would have his decision, right or wrong. He thought about all the things he had thought about before, all the same things he thought about three years before when North Carolina had called the first time.
And then the strangest question occurred to him.
How could he turn down North Carolina again after all this delaying? Three years earlier, he had taken a week–felt like 10 years–and finally chose to stay at Kansas. How could he take all those North Carolina people he loved through another week of dawdling and dithering and then say no at the end?
Roy Williams felt trapped. By himself.
“If I had known how much this was going to eat away at me,” Williams says, “I would have told Coach Smith no right away or told him yes right away. That’s what I should have done. I shouldn’t have let it come down like it did.
“I couldn’t think of any way I could say no after all I had put those people through.
How about that? Williams took so long to make a choice that, in the end, he felt like he did not even have a choice to make.
– – –
Q. You have heard what former Kansas athletic director Al Bohl said about you. He called you vindictive and hateful. What did you think when you heard?
RW. That I never want to be like that man.
– – –
Things were not perfect at Kansas. Williams has been reluctant to talk much about that because he does not like to fight in the mud. But he has taken enough abuse the last week or so that he feels he has to defend himself.
“Things the last couple of years were hard,” he says.
Two years ago Kansas forced out athletic director Bob Frederick, who hired Williams. The school, after a fairly unusual nationwide search, settled on Bohl, who had made a reputation for hiring football coaches and inviting choirs to sing the national anthem so their family members could boost attendance.
“That man never did one thing for me in two years,” Williams says.
Williams points out that Kansas basketball has a small budget compared with those at the nation’s other top basketball schools. He says he had been working on a study to present to Chancellor Robert Hemenway to show that the basketball program needed improvements. Bohl, he says, was of no help.
“I don’t want to go into details because it will sound like I’m blaming the chancellor, and I’m not,” Williams says. “The chancellor was very good to me. Let’s just say it was a difficult two years. I couldn’t wait to get on the court and away from the madness. The basketball court was my salvation.”
– – –
Q. Your players have been critical. You have heard Wayne Simien say he gave his right arm for you. You have heard Keith Langford say he did not come to Kansas for this. There were others. How do you respond?
RW. Players are like your children. They do things you disapprove of sometimes. They say hurtful things sometimes. But you don’t stop loving them.
– – –
The people who bet that Roy Williams would stay at Kansas bet on one simple premise–that Williams could not say goodbye to his players. That was the decisive factor three years ago, and there seemed little reason to believe it would be different this time.
This time, though, he said goodbye. And this is something Williams has a hard time justifying. As coaches will, he promised those players he would be with them until the end. Leaving those players goes against everything the man believes. Everything. Williams himself sounds like an angry radio caller when he talks about it.
“I felt like a traitor when I called those recruits I would never get to coach,” he says. “A dadgum traitor.”
Trouble is, few know what Williams went through last time. Yes, he stayed with his players, and they were happy. Everybody in Kansas was happy. But Williams’ family was not. His son lives in North Carolina. His wife is from North Carolina. His sister and father are in North Carolina, and they are going through serious health issues, and Kansas is far away. Some of the people Williams admires most, beginning with Dean Smith, were not happy.
There would be pain no matter which way Williams decided to go. That was why Roy wavered. He never could decide which side he was willing to hurt.
This time, it was his Kansas players. He understands their comments.
“They’re kids,” he says. “And they’re hurt. I understand.”
– – –
One thing is undeniable: Roy Williams never thought the North Carolina job would open up for him again. When he turned it down three years ago, the Tar Heels hired Matt Doherty, who was promptly named national coach of the year. Williams, like everyone else, thought Doherty would have that job for two decades.
But when the North Carolina job opened again, Williams could not help thinking it felt a little like fate.
“It’s a second chance,” his wife, Wanda, told him. “Who would have thought you would have had a second chance at North Carolina?”
“A friend told me it was in the stars,” Roy says. “He said, `You should have taken it the first time, but you didn’t, and now you have to take it. It’s destiny.'”
– – –
Q. Roy, what seems to have hurt people back in the Midwest is that you decided North Carolina was more your home than Kansas. You spent the last 15 years in Kansas. Your kids really grew up in Kansas. Your whole life as a head coach was in Kansas. You said you would retire at Kansas. Why is Kansas not home?
RW. I can’t change who I am.
– – –
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Here’s what bothers Roy Williams more than anything: People already forget the good times. Forget them? They burn the good times. Roy Williams recites the resume like the Pledge of Allegiance: Four hundred wins. Nine conference championships. Four Final Fours.
“His senior year, my son played on a state-championship basketball team,” Williams says. “He played 28 games or something. You know how many I saw? Nine. That’s it. Nine. I was too busy coaching the rest of the time. Too busy for my own son. I gave my life to Kansas.”
And now, many call him a deserter.
“I didn’t sign a lifetime contract,” he says bitterly.
Of course, it’s not that simple, and Williams knows it. His relationship with Kansas was always bigger than basketball coach and basketball team. Who is loved as much? Mike Krzyzewski at Duke? Maybe, but Duke is also just 13 miles from the state’s most beloved school. Coach K has a small kingdom. Williams had a whole state.
And he left.
Fans ask: What, it wasn’t enough?
Williams asks: “How could people forget? For 15 years, we cried and jumped and hugged and danced. We did everything except win the national championship.”
He pauses with a sad look on his face.
“Could that be it?” he asks. “Would people have been less cruel if we had won a national championship?”
It’s hard to answer. No one can deny that every Roy Williams season, no matter how breathtaking, no matter how exciting, no matter how uplifting, ended in heartbreak. Even the last season ended that way.
And one week later, Roy Williams himself was gone.
“Someday,” he says, “I hope people remember what we did. I hope that with all my heart.”
– – –
Q. Do you ever regret this decision?
RW. Two answers. One is no. I don’t regret it. But I will say that a couple of times, in the middle of the night, I’ll think, “Did I really leave Kansas?”
– – –
Roy Williams tells a story. Some years ago, before he took the Kansas job, he was offered the job at James Madison. He accepted. Then, after two sleepless nights, he called the athletic director back and pulled out.
“I can’t leave,” he said. “I just can’t.”
When he told Dean Smith all about it, Smith asked how he felt. “Relieved,” Williams said.
“Good,” Smith said. “That means you made the right decision.”
Three years ago, Roy Williams turned down North Carolina. And afterward, despite hurting a lot of people he loves, he felt relieved. He knew he had done the right thing.
– – –
Q. So now, after it’s done, do you feel relieved?
RW. No.