Here's to their careers after their UNC days are over... Williams, Scott, and Manuel are all class acts!! Hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I did!!




Lucas: Senior Appreciation

Manuel, Scott and Williams make final home court appearance on Sunday.

March 4, 2005

# Everett Continues Family Tradition
# Hooker Returns To NC Via Alaska
# Senior Festivities Added To All-Access

By Adam Lucas

The tears will come.

That's what you tell Jawad Williams, Melvin Scott, and Jackie Manuel when you talk to them about senior day in Chapel Hill.





You tell them about the pregame introductions, about the hugs at midcourt. You tell them about Phil Ford's last game in Carmichael Auditorium, about the 1984 game against Duke, about Montross, Phelps, and Reese in 1994; Curtis Hunter, Dave Popson, Kenny Smith, and Joe Wolf in 1987.

You tell them about Wolf standing at a podium at Carolina's annual basketball banquet completely unable to continue with his speech because of the raw emotion flowing through him, about Dante Calabria cracking jokes through his speech until he tried to thank Kay Thomas and immediately turning from cool-guy-with-great-hair into cool-guy-not-wanting-to-leave-a-friend.

The banquet will come later. Senior day is now. They do not think the tears will come.

"Nobody is going to cry," Manuel says. "Out of anybody, maybe I would. But I'm not crying. It is going to be a no-crying day."

As he says it, the Smith Center is empty, just the sound of a couple teammates shooting around before practice echoing off the blue seats. Manuel looks around.

You are not convinced.

***

It is minutes after Virginia has handed Carolina a 71-67 loss at the Smith Center during the trio's freshman year. Six games are left in the season--8-20 is becoming a grim reality.

The Tar Heels had played the Cavaliers tough. A reporter asks Jawad Williams if he believes in moral victories. Williams is sitting with his head down. Suddenly he looks up, stares the questioner right in the eye.

"No," he says firmly.

***

How long did it take you to understand Jawad Williams? It's OK to admit it. A month? A year? Two years?

Maybe he walked past you and didn't say hello. Maybe you gave him the ol' head nod and he didn't nod back. What, he's too good to nod?

He attended the second session of summer school the summer before his freshman year. He was hanging out--predictably--with Melvin Scott and Jackie Manuel. The group encountered some females and Scott and Manuel immediately turned on the charm. They were Carolina basketball players just beginning to understand the various perks of being a Carolina basketball player.

Jawad Williams did not turn on the charm. He stood quietly in the corner. One of the girls asked him, "Why aren't you talking?"

His response: "Because I don't know you."

He and that girl have now been together for four years. He is protective of her, aware of the complications that can come for her with dating one of the highest-profile people on campus. You will not find her name in this story. That is how Jawad would want it. Quiet. No glitz. No unnecessary attention.




Do you understand Jawad Williams yet? Maybe you need to know more. If he'll let you.

***

It is two days after Carolina lost to Duke in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament in 2002. Jawad Williams is back in the Smith Center firing up jumpers.

"I've always been like that," he says. "There's no reason to sit around and mope about it. You have to get better."

***

He has gotten better. He is having one of the best senior years of any Tar Heel in the past decade. Every measurable statistic has increased from last year's figures.

And yet he does not seem to care. He is having too much fun to stop and look at the stat sheet. Consider this career path:

Freshman year: 8-20. Fully expected the NCAA Tournament to be a birthright, now doesn't even bother to watch the selection show. Sometimes feels so disheartened by the season he dreads walking across campus.

Sophomore year: Year of the drama. Has to mediate numerous player/coaching staff tiffs. He is 19. He feels much older, like the big kid in a room full of toddlers arguing over the blocks.

Junior year: Year of the injuries. Suffers a broken nose and a concussion, loses self-confidence. Plays in pain for much of the year.

Senior year: Year of the fun. His close friends have always hinted that there is a devilish side to Jawad Williams, something behind the shroud of the almost regal bearing he shows the public. Now, here it is. He jokes with teammates in front of the media, pulls practical jokes on them in public. He walks up to friends with a broad smile on his face. They are not used to this. They worry something is wrong.

"Why are you smiling?" they say.

"I'm just happy," he says.

Do you understand enough about Jawad Williams to know the significance of that smile? For him, this is a crying-on-the-shoulder-of-Barbara-Walters moment. It is the guard going down, the personality peeking out. It has taken four years.

University of North Carolina, meet Jawad Williams.

***

It is February of 2005. He has not played well lately and has just nine points in his last three games. Everyone wonders what is wrong with Jawad Williams.

A reporter grabs him before the next Tar Heel practice. They exchange greetings, and the reporter says, "So, how's the knee?"

The senior's head jerks up to meet his questioner's eyes.

"How did you know about that?" he says.

It turns out Williams has been playing with a strained knee muscle for over a week, an injury that's painful enough to limit his practice participation. But he has told exactly no one. He will not draw attention to himself. He will not make excuses.

***

Seniors should not have to defend their toughness. Make it through three years at Carolina, including two of the most turbulent seasons in the history of the program, and there should be no doubt.

People doubt Jawad Williams. They see the 6-foot-9 height and say he should get more rebounds, should stay chained to the post and never attempt a perimeter shot. They speculate about his injury status.

He does not try to defend himself. He is too busy getting three stitches in his left eyelid, as he did during the Miami game his junior season. He returns to the game and holds NBA prospect Darius Rice to just eight shot attempts. Or maybe he is too busy shaking off a hip pointer to play against Illinois last season. Head coach Roy Williams knows his leader was able to participate only in the walk-through portion of practice the previous day. He has the following conversation with his junior forward an hour before the game.

Roy: "Jawad, what do you think?"

Jawad: "About what?"

Roy: "About playing."

Jawad: "I'm playing."

After the game, Jawad Williams seems almost disgusted that the question would be asked. "I knew I was going to play when they started questioning me," he says. "The last thing I need is someone questioning me. I wanted to go out there and prove them wrong."

***

It is December 2004 and the Carolina basketball players are participating in their second annual shopping excursion for underprivileged locals. Every player has a request list from their designated family and a $50 per person spending limit.

On Melvin Scott's list is a young girl who wants a bike. He finds a $59 model and immediately has the sales clerk fill the tires so it will be ready to ride on Christmas morning. It is pointed out that $59 is well over the rigidly enforced spending limit set by Roy Williams.

"I'll be back," Scott says.

An hour later, he's ringing up his purchases. The bike is among them. In a one-on-one consultation with Roy Williams, he persuaded the head coach to change his policy. What did it?

"Melvin said he could tell she really wanted the bike," Williams says, shaking his head as though he's still not sure how it happened. "How he could tell that, I have no idea. Knowing Melvin, he probably called her on the phone."

***

You would like Melvin Scott. No, you would love him. You would push people out of the way to sit next to him at lunch. You would grow to appreciate the hat perched just so on his head, always perfectly accenting his shirt. You would learn to immediately identify his pending arrival by the fact that he almost always walks through the Smith Center tunnel belting out whatever song happens to be on his mind at that moment.

You would smile. A lot.




If Jawad Williams is regal, Melvin Scott is irrepressible. Maybe he's wearing his practice jersey backwards. Maybe he's taking a shine to a headband that ties in the back, Sylvester Stallone-style, and laughing with delight when Joe Holladay dubs him, "Rambo."

Some people never learn how to handle him. Under the previous coaching staff, there was a major practice blowup over Scott's irreverence towards a parking pass. Even today, the mere mention of the words "parking pass" cause him to giggle.

What, exactly, does Melvin Scott have to be so darn happy about? Could be that he's relieved he's not on the street corner in Baltimore where so many of his friends wound up, waiting to get shot or arrested. Could be that that middle school principal who snapped him out of his self-destructive phase when he was getting kicked out of schools on a weekly basis gave him a second chance when no one else would. Could be that he's gone from a hellion to, as his older brother Charles says, "A gentleman."

You think about asking Melvin Scott what he thinks of the "gentleman" tag. But you don't have to. You know what he would do.

He would laugh.

***

Same shopping trip, 30 minutes later. Scott is back in the checkout line, this time with only one item in his cart--a remote controlled Cadillac Escalade. He gleefully shows off every feature to anyone who cares to look and pronounces he's about to give himself an early Christmas present.

The next day, the Escalade is careening around the Carolina locker room. Wes Miller nearly wrecks the car. His driving privileges are revoked.

***

Dial Melvin Scott's cell phone number. He's not there, so the voice mail picks up. You expect to hear something a little crazy, something like many of his teammates use. Maybe something along the lines of the freestyle rap that serves as C.J. Hooker's voice mail greeting.

Instead, you get a verse from Proverbs, regularly rotated to make sure there's a variety.

Of all the players on this year's team, it's probably Melvin Scott's reality that is the furthest removed from the idyllic postcard of Chapel Hill. Growing up in Baltimore, he saw drugs. He saw crime. He saw friends killed.

That could be him. Instead, he is the type of friend you'd like to have. He is the one who counseled Jackie Manuel about the seriousness of marriage when Manuel was considering proposing to his girlfriend. He is the one who, when given the chance to joke about Manuel's pending marriage, instead turns serious. "I'm praying for him," he says. "Marriage isn't easy."

His older brother has seen the changes.

"He's made the biggest turnaround of anyone I know," Charles says. "I'm so proud of him. It doesn't matter what he does after this. I've never told him this, but he's showed me so much. He's like my role model."

***

Frankly, Melvin Scott's smile seemed completely inappropriate. This was no time for smiling. Carolina held a thin 70-68 lead over Wake Forest during his junior season, there were 90 seconds remaining, the Tar Heels had watched a seven-point advantage nearly evaporate, and the Lawrence Joel Coliseum crowd was about to yell the tie-dye right off their shirts.

There was nothing especially humorous about the moment. And yet as Raymond Felton brought the ball up the court, Scott ran down the right side in front of the Carolina bench with a wide smile, even darting his eyes into the crowd to take in the raucous fans.

The question has to be asked: Melvin, with the game hanging in the balance, with the Heels a thread from 3-6 in the ACC, what in the world were you smiling about?

"I knew something the crowd didn't know and the Wake Forest guys didn't know," he said.

And what was that?

"That we were going to pull this one out."

***

He will tell you proudly that he is old school. Unlike some of the wannabes who claim old school status, Scott has some of the attributes to back it up. He doesn't have a PlayStation2, instead preferring to hang on to his Nintendo. He doesn't drive a souped-up SUV, instead wheeling into the Smith Center parking lot in his 2001 Crown Victoria. Not just any college student could make that car work.

For Scott, it works.

"It's laid back," he says. "It has a shine, but at the same time it's a Crown Vic."

Old school players don't whine. Do you know what this season has been like for Melvin Scott?

Never mind. There's no need to ask. Change the question into a statement: you don't know what this year has been like for Melvin Scott.

His identity has been determined by his success on the basketball court for almost a decade. Now, as a senior, he has seen his minutes drop. He wants to play, wants to get on the floor for 30 minutes per game as he did as a junior. Instead, he's hovering around 15 minutes per game.

Poisonous seniors have destroyed teams more talented than this year's Carolina squad. Scott has not done that. He is playing at the school he has followed since he first tacked up the Michael Jordan poster on his wall. He understands Carolina.

Reliving that win over Wake Forest during his junior year, he smiles. It feels good.

"Hey," he says, "this is North Carolina. It's supposed to feel like this."

***

Jackie Manuel is a gangly freshman and he seems to be trying to persuade himself he belongs at the UNC level. He is shooting 30 percent from the field and turning the ball over at a frightening rate. He is asked to describe his offensive game.

"Unstoppable," he says. The word choice prompts a quizzical look from his interrogator.

"No, really," he says. "If I get it going, it's unstoppable."

***

Now, it seems so simple. Of course Jackie Manuel is confident. Of course he is comfortable on the basketball court. Of course he is having fun. Hasn't it always been that way?

No.




There are those inside the program, the few who have been around all of the past four years, who will tell you that Manuel has changed more than any of the seniors. Actually, he's changed--and then changed back again.

He arrived in Chapel Hill the fun-loving Jackie Manuel likely to crack a joke at any time. Basketball had never been very complicated for him. He believed he was unstoppable. But by the time he was midway through his freshman year, and he said it out loud, he almost seemed to be trying to remind himself of how he thought he was supposed to feel.

The situation spiraled downward during his sophomore year. Friends noticed a change in his personality. His eyes were usually on the floor. The jokes were fewer, less raucous. Was this right? Maybe he would be happier somewhere else. He would leave Carolina, get a fresh start somewhere new. Maybe he'd find the old Jackie there.

***

The Tar Heels are putting on a clinic for Special Olympians over the holidays in the Smith Center. Jackie Manuel is a senior; it is his last such clinic. He is making the most of it, bouncing from station to station, always with a smile and a high five for every person he encounters.

The Olympians are broken into teams for a brief scrimmage, three Olympians and two Carolina basketball players on each side. Manuel immediately sets about instilling some swagger in his charges.

When one of his charges rejects a shot in the lane, Manuel sprints across the floor for a celebration, shouting, "Don't let him bring that in your house!"

"Yeah!" the shot-blocker yells. "This is my house!"

Manuel laughs. He is having fun.

***

His parents deserve part of the credit for keeping him in Chapel Hill. They moved from Florida to North Carolina before his freshman year and were constant presences those first two years. They'd listen to him doubt himself, listen to him wonder about his future. They were parents. They were sympathetic. And they told him to stick it out.

His friends deserve part of the credit for keeping him in Chapel Hill. He'd talk to them for hours, imagining different scenarios, wondering where he could find a better fit. They were his friends. They were supportive. And they told him--most of them told him--to stick it out.

All of those people deserve some credit for the person you know today. But the biggest share of the responsibility goes to Jackie Manuel. He easily could have left. There were plenty of schools in need of a 6-foot-5 guard with a quick first step who would play solid minutes on the court and stay out of trouble off the court. He had options.

He chose the hardest one.

He chose the route that would require him to make a new basketball identity. Maybe his game would never again be described as unstoppable. What does that mean? Should he give up? Devote himself to acting, a side hobby that he greatly enjoys?

No. He should find a new identity. One that would eventually bring back the old Jackie Manuel.

***

Ronda Norman is walking out of a basketball game against NC State in 2004 when she spots something strange. Is that Jackie's face on a t-shirt?

She is his girlfriend and will soon become his fiancée. Even she does not have a t-shirt with his face on it. She looks closer. That's exactly what it is. She stops the fan wearing the shirt, asks about it.

The shirt reads, "Jackie Manuel has a posse."

He does? When did that happen?

***

Sure, she might be biased. But Norman thinks she knows why out of all the talented Carolina players on the roster, it is Manuel's face that ended up on a t-shirt.

"You get a vibe from his personality when he's on the court," she says. "They can tell from his demeanor that he's a nice person and also how much appreciation he has for everything in his life, both basketball and things outside of basketball."

This year he will become the first Tar Heel ever to be a repeat member of the All-ACC Defensive team. But that may not be his legacy.

In the summer of 2004, he was watching a pickup game on the floor of the Smith Center. He had a twisted ankle, which was keeping him out of action for a day or two.

He checked with a teammate for the rest of the week's workout schedule and was told the team planned to take Friday off. Manuel slammed down the basketball he was holding.

"Take the day off?" he said. "We don't need to be taking any days off. You think other guys at other schools are taking the day off? We're not good enough to deserve any days off."

After last year's NCAA Tournament appearance, he was asked if the Tar Heels had finally earned a summer day off.

"No way," he said. "Not until we win a national championship. When we do that, then come talk to me about days off."

***

The last remnant of their freshman season is a dance. They didn't exactly plan to come up with it, weren't trying to break into the choreography business. But one of those late nights they spent together, joking, playing video games, trying to make sense of what was happening during a season that didn't make any sense, the dance emerged. Eyewitness accounts of the dance vary, but all are relayed with much hilarity.

"There's always been something special between the three of them," says someone who has known them all four years. "That dance, come on. That's the kind of thing you do with your brother or sister. That's what they are. They've been through a lot, but they've been through all of it together. They are much more than teammates. They are brothers."

***

The Duke game will be their 62nd game in the Smith Center. They have seen losses to Hampton and Davidson, wins over Duke and Connecticut.

You're just trying to warn them. PA announcer Kearney Andrews will read their names over the Smith Center sound system. They will walk, one-by-one, to midcourt. Memories will flood them. All the practices, all the late nights shooting well after midnight. All the friends. All the wins, all the losses. But especially the wins.

They have not been Jackie. Jawad. And Melvin. They have been Jackie, Jawad, and Melvin.

It is going to be emotional, you tell them. You just don't realize it.

Then Sean May walks by. He hears your conversation, knows people are wondering who will cry first.

"Hey," he says. "I might cry too. They're leaving and they've done so much for us. Think about what they've done here."

Then you realize it: he is right. Maybe it's not them you're trying to prepare, but yourself. You're going to watch them walk to midcourt, huddle together one last time above that familiar interlocking "NC." They will not be back.

The tears will come. Not for them, maybe.

But for you.