Although there were some highlights to all three years from 1978-1980, many involving Dudley Bradley, and Carolina finished first or second all three years and won one tourney, I believe, the play in the NCAA all three years was really bad and we went out meekly against San Francisco, Penn and Texas A&M.

In 1975, 1976, and 1977, Dean reasserted himself over Lefty and Norm Sloan and would never again have a true rival in the conference as top coach until the early 1990′s.

Maybe one last thing about statistics. People have generally believed that Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player of all time. People saw him and said he was great. But when you actually look at the statistics, guess what?

Babe Ruth was the best baseball player of all time, even if you never saw him play.

Basketball statistics are just beginning to catch up with baseball. I saw Phil Ford and I thought he was the best guard in America. I just wish we had a bit more to back it up on paper. His stats were essentially equal to John Lucas’s, with very little to choose between them, particularly when Lucas played point guard his first two years, before moving to shooting guard when Brad Davis arrived. Ford and Lucas played on equally successful teams.

Yet, you never hear anybody from Maryland trying to claim that John Lucas was the greatest guard in the history of the ACC, strangely enough. John Roche scored more than Ford and also had a good pro career.

Once again, my point is not that Ford was not great; it is simply that I don’t think he was close to being great in the way that Lew Alcindor or David Thompson were. Ford had a verve on the court similar to Ozzie Smith in baseball, which made him seem even better than he was, perhaps. Jordan had this as well and I have to admit that Jordan seemed much better to me live than the actual numbers he put up in his career, that don’t differ that much from Walter Davis’s either.

http://www.sportsstats.com/bball/individual.stats/player_stats/player1636.txt

http://www.sportsstats.com/bball/individual.stats/player_stats/player1174.txt

The other myth about 1977 is that UNC would have easily won with Tommy Lagarde. In actually, all of UNC’s losses until the Marquette game, were with Lagarde. I am not saying Lagarde was not an excellent player, but the three-headed center that Smith concocted after the injury seemed to work, although none of those three guys ever did much after that. Krafcisin was one of the few UNC guys to transfer out.

I actually think that the 1976 team was better than the 1977 team, as was the 1976 Marquette team, but Indiana was going to win in 1976 no matter what. Things were much more wide open in 1977 and would remain so after that, pretty much.

I love John Coltrane. Perhaps my favorite jazz song of all time is India which he made with Eric Dolphy and the group at the Village Vanguard. Ole Coltrane is amazing, as is My Favorite Things. His Atlantic years are often overlooked but are as good as anything he did later. I do think that after Impressions, his music became difficult to listen to. I think he was trying for something that Ornette Coleman achieved more successfully on Free Jazz, which is similar to Ascension but much more accessible to casual listeners.

Miles Davis probably gets the slight nod because of his amazing discograpy, with what is often called the greatest or most influential jazz record of all time, Kind of Blue, perhaps followed by Bitches’ Brew which started the fusion movement,and honestly Miles’ fusion stuff is pretty much the only good fusion stuff ever done.

He also mentored an amazing amount of jazz greats, including Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett and John McLaughlin.

I probably listen to Coltrane more because his music is more involving, but Miles is often, along with Louis Armstrong and Bird, considered one of the three seminal jazz greats.

I will say that I believe some of the press about the Ford Corners is overblown. Go look at the 1975 ACC championship on youtube and you will see that Ford actually ran it very poorly that night. He did run it great against UNLV, and then not so great against Marquette, although they only had a few minutes in that game and were without O’Koren. That game went almost to the wire but the score disguises how close UNC came.

I don’t think Roy Williams agreed with Dean Smith about the Four Corners, although I do think part of Smith’s using it was to force a rule change, which it did.

I know it is a different time, with different rules, but I also doubt that Ford’s junior or senior seasons were as good as Ty Lawson’s junior season, although Ford may have been better his first two years. It would be helpful if we had the efficiency break-outs for back then, but I have never seen any.

Lawson was number one in the country in offensive efficiency, blowing away Hansbrough, Ellington and Green, who were all merely great on offense. Ray Felton never came close to posting the kind of efficiency numbers that Lawson did. Lawson was another sort of Walter Davis type for UNC, slightly under-appreciated while there and then quickly showing his meddle in the NBA.

Walter Davis never had the same opportunity. When Davis was a freshman, Bobby Jones was “the man.” When Davis was a sophomore and junior and senior, he had to share laurels with fellow Olympians Lagarde, Mitch Kupchak and Phil Ford. By Ford’s senior year, the cupboard was a bit bare relatively, which presented both an opportunity to score more, but also a situation where he had to, resulting in fewer assists.

I know the conventional wisdom but the numbers don’t seem to bear out the conclusion. You can take a look at them here:

http://www.sportsstats.com/bball/individual.stats/player_stats/player461.txt

http://www.sportsstats.com/bball/individual.stats/player_stats/player613.txt

Some of the data is incomplete or wasn’t kept back then but we can see the following:

Walter Davis had a higher shooting percentage, more steals, more rebounds, a surprisingly high assist total and was roughly as good from the line (81% for Ford to 78% for Davis).

Ford averaged slightly more from the floor, but had a lower shooting percentage.

These all time leader lists are generally not as important as people think. Yes, Ford is ahead of Davis in steals, but they didn’t keep steal records for the first two years of Davis’s career. Davis had significantly more steals than Ford for the years they kept tabs, 149 for Davis and only 109 for Ford.

The idea that Hansbrough and Ford are the two greatest Tar Heels because they are number one and two on the scoring list is, to me, rubbish.

They might be the two greatest, but that is no clincher. Jordan and Rosenbluth only played three years, as did Charlie Scott, Ty Lawson and Antawn Jamison. These are all great players and there is no easy way to say that Hansbrough is/was better than Jamison.

Thus, I don’t see a good case for superiority being made for Ford, strictly on the numbers. You can say he had a unique style and was the playmaker and all that, but if that is the case, then probably Ty Lawson would come out ahead of Tyler Hansbrough, which is another close call, particularly if Lawson had stayed four years.

I also think it is relevant to look at the player’s career and see how he matched up with other guys. Michael Jordan was head and shoulders the best at his position his sophomore and junior years. The same was true for David Thompson. I don’t know whether you can say the same for Ford. He may have been the best guard in the nation over all during his four years, but it wasn’t the same sort of talent differential. Butch Lee, Rickey Green, John Lucas and Quinn Buckner were all comparable talents, with Lucas having some of the same problems in the pro’s that Ford faced.

People talk about Dean Smith holding back Phil Ford, but people were simply shocked by how well Davis did in his first year in the NBA. The Hawks used to play some games in Charlotte back then and I saw Atlanta play Phoenix who had Davis and it was a huge deal.

With respect to Miles and Coltrane, I think that Coltrane had bigger highs where he would basically melt the record (Live at the Village Vanguard, A Love Supreme) but he also had a couple that were pretty much unlistenable. Put on Ascension and see how long you can listen. It is simply a bizarre record. Miles had album after album of great stuff but nothing that really, really blew people away until the record called “Bitches’ Brew”

NCSU 67 – UGA 60