A Coach's Life - My Forty Years in College Basketball (Electronic book text)

For almost forty years, Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina men's basketball program with unsurpassed success, on the court and in shaping young men's lives. In his long-awaited memoir, he reflects back on the great games, teams, players, strategies and rivalries that defined his career, and explains the philosophy that guided his way. There's a lot more to life than basketball -- though some might beg to differ -- but there's a lot more to basketball than basketball, and this is a book about basketball filled with wisdom about life. Dean Smith insisted that the fundamentals of good basketball are the fundamentals of character -- passion, discipline, focus, selflessness, and responsibility -- and he strove to unite each of his teams in pursuit of those values. To read this book is to understand why Dean Smith changed the lives of the players he coached, from Michael Jordan, who calls him his second father, and who never played a single NBA game without wearing a pair of UNC basketball shorts under his uniform, to the last man on the bench of his least talented team. Everyone wishes they had a coach like Dean Smith in their lives, and now they will have that chance.