When Roy Williams announced his retirement with an hour-long press conference last week, the number of people he named and thanked with connections to North Carolina basketball was too large to count.
He cited contributions from former players, current players, current and former employees, secretaries, administrators and others who supported and inspired him during his 18 years as the program’s head coach.
At one point, however, he reduced the list to the names of just two people who might be able to rival his level of affinity for the University of North Carolina. These two were UNC’s player development director Eric Hoots and Williams’ ninth-year assistant Hubert Davis.
“I think they are the only two people who can love this university as much as I do,” said Williams of Davis and Hoots.
Less than a week later, Davis is officially Williams’ successor, and his affection for the light blue and everything he represents in college basketball is undoubtedly the main factor in his getting the job.
However, Davis will also bring a unique perspective to the position gained through an unorthodox career up to this point. He’s just not a “Carolina guy”. He is also a veteran of a long NBA career and a post-game job that has led him to learn about some of the sport’s major programs.
Here’s a look at Davis’ journey to one of college basketball’s most prestigious jobs.
Family ties Tar Heel
Davis is considered a hiring par excellence of the “Carolina family” because of his time as a player and program assistant. However, his inclusion in the UNC tree predates his own commitment to playing for legendary coach Dean Smith as a candidate for the 1988 class.
His uncle, Walter Davis, played for the Tar Heels from 1973 to 1977 and was the team’s second highest scorer from 1976-77 to the national championship. Walter Davis averaged 15.7 points over his four-year playing career for Smith, and that family draw certainly played a role in which young Davis decided to play college basketball.
“I was not a high school McDonald’s All-American,” Hubert Davis said in a 2019 interview with the North Carolina Study Center. “He (Smith) gave me an opportunity, a chance to come here and compete. That is generosity.”
Although Williams left his post as a UNC assistant to train Kansas just before Davis arrived on campus, he helped recruit Davis at UNC and trained him at the World University Games in 1991.
A 3-point shooter
1.80 meter striker Walter Davis played for UNC before the advent of the 3-point line in the 1986-87 season and was never known as an outside shooter during a long NBA career that led him to be named an All-Star Six times.
However, his nephew prospered beyond the bow. Despite the relatively new presence of 3-point shooting in the college game, Hubert Davis prospered during his career with the Tar Heels from 1988 to 1992. Guard 6-5 made 149 of 329 attempts in the 3-point range (45.3%) while playing a leading role for Tar Heels as a junior and senior.
Davis explored skill in a 12-year NBA career and retired in 2004 with a 44.1% career shot target. That brand is still number 2 of all time, behind Steve Kerr and ahead of active players like Seth Curry and Joe Harris.
The irony, of course, is that North Carolina came in at 268th place nationally in a 3-point pitch percentage this season with 31.8% and 313th last season with 30.4%. If the Tar Heels are going to compete for titles again, they could use some of the external shot that Davis displayed during his playing career.
Spent time on both sides of the camera
Davis spent seven years after his career as an analyst at ESPN. It was the kind of show that many ex-players and coaches keep for so long that it becomes a bigger part of their public personality than their increasingly distant achievements on the court.
However, when current Stanford coach Jerod Haase left the UNC team for the position of chief coach at UAB in 2012, this created a vacancy for Williams to fill.
“For the past four or five years, Hubert was always on my mind if a vacancy was opened,” said Williams at the time. “I didn’t know if I could get him back, but I knew I wanted him to be the first option. Coaching is about teaching, relationship and passion and I think Hubert is the perfect choice. Our student-athletes will benefit a lot from what he adds to our team. “
He never said that, but it seemed obvious that there was only one school that could have influenced Davis to leave behind his growing television stardom.
“I loved being part of college basketball during my time on ESPN, participating in training and games and developing relationships with players and coaches,” said Davis. “Now I will have the opportunity to do this on a more personal level at the university and with a basketball program that I have loved all my life.”
Coaching experience
Davis joins a growing list of coaches with strong NBA performance records to take up the position of chief coach at colleges where they served. Juwan Howard has had rapid success in two seasons in Michigan, and Indiana recently hired former Hoosiers star Mike Woodson as a coach. Patrick Ewing of Georgetown and Penny Hardaway of Memphis also took on the challenge of training their old schools after long careers in the NBA.
Ewing and Howard were both NBA assistants before taking over as head of the college, and Woodson is a former NBA assistant and former coach of two NBA franchises. What Davis differs from is his nine years of experience as a college coach.
He won’t need to study cinema to catch up on what North Carolina’s ACC rivals are doing on the court, and he won’t need to take an intensive course to avoid breaking NCAA rules. The ever-important recruiting skill must also be second nature to Davis at this point, when he enters his 10th season in college basketball.
Davis served as the primary recruiter for current UNC players such as RJ Davis and Armando Bacot. Time will tell if your familiarity with current UNC players holds the current squad together. But at the very least, Davis’s relationships in the recruiting world and his experience in winning coveted candidates set him apart from some other former NBA players who may have faced steeper learning curves in the relentless world of college basketball recruiting.
He also gained some experience on the court as coach of the junior team of the UNC university team, which means that the 2021-22 season will not be the first time that he will give all the cards to a team using his beloved light blue.