Kevin B Blackistone Posts

If his name was Kobe Bryant we'd say he was little more than a ball hog.

If his name was Manny Ramirez we'd dismiss him as being all about him.

If he went by the initials T.O. we'd criticize him as a narcissist.

His name is Lance Armstrong, however, and because of all he's been through, what he's accomplished and how many people he continues to inspire, we aren't going to call him what he's unquestionably become: selfish.

DETROIT – The last North Carolinian to climb the ladder Monday night and clip a piece of the championship net for a keepsake was the head basketball coach, Roy Williams. He went up twice. The first time, he snipped just a strand. The second time, he severed everything that was left. It was quite apropos.

After all, there isn't anyone in Chapel Hill more deserving of all the success that has come to Tar Heels' basketball in the last few years than their dadgum, corny coach from Asheville, N.C., the '72 graduate who went away for awhile to Kansas before returning to his alma mater six years.

DETROIT -- There are few places -- the golf course, maybe -- where Roy Williams would rather be than where he was Saturday night and will be again on Monday night: the biggest stage in college basketball. He'd just prefer it not be raised like it is at Ford Field.

"I don't like the safety [of it]," Williams said Sunday afternoon of the floor the NCAA is using for this tournament championship round, which is waist high off the ground and has everyone around it, the benches included, seated around it in a moat.

DETROIT -- If you really think about it, to call the North Carolina basketball team Tar Heels has always been more of an oxymoron. Michael Jordan. Walter Davis. Bob McAdoo. Vince Carter. James Worthy. On and on. You think of them and you think smooth. You think finesse. You think of a pretty way of playing.

It isn't that Jordan and Carter and lots of other North Carolina basketball players weren't tough, but you don't think of them as the 19th century North Carolinians who burned trees into black muck, or tar, that they then spread on the bottom of boats. You don't think of them as part of that North Carolina Civil War lore -- the wrong and losing side, by the way -- where a Confederate troop leader pleaded with his boys to fight with the toughness of those North Carolinians he'd heard about, those Tar Heels.

At least not until now.

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DETROIT -- In an earlier journalistic life, Friday would've been a really big day for me. The reason: the government, each first Friday of the month, issued its most-important piece of economic news -- the unemployment report -- and I covered economics. The report it issued this Friday was an instant Page 1 story, which is what they called the first thing you saw on this thing I worked at forever called a newspaper. Friday's report revealed the recession we're in pushed the unemployment rate to its highest mark in a quarter century, 8.5 percent.

At the University of Maryland, where I started teaching a course last semester, the university president just before last Christmas announced that the campus would have to implement a furlough plan -- unpaid leave -- this year because of budget cutbacks from the state due to the economic downturn. Maryland wasn't alone.

Arizona State implemented furloughs. Utah State did the same for all of its 2,995 employees the second week of last month. That followed layoffs at Clemson. Small schools like John Carroll University in Cleveland aren't immune as it, too, forced unpaid vacations on employees.

MEMPHIS – After Roy Williams answered his last question Sunday night at the press conference following his Tar Heels' easy 72-60 win over Oklahoma to advance to next weekend's Final Four, a North Carolina sports information official barked out some trivia for the departing media: the Tar Heels won for the first time all season with forward Tyler Hansbrough, the defending player of the year, and shooting guard Wayne Ellington failing to score in double figures.

MEMPHIS -- Of all the things a little boy growing up in North Carolina coveted in his bedroom, none was more precious than one of the Tar Heels posters on his wall, the one with Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot against North Carolina State.

"It was picture perfect form, his legs were spread out, and it had, 'The Tradition Continues,' " the now grown-up little boy cooed Saturday afternoon. "I just thought that was incredible."

Who's the little boy who was all grown up on Saturday? He's the coach who will try to knock off North Carolina on Sunday, Jeff Capel.

MEMPHIS – The last time I came to Memphis for a heavyweight title bout it turned out to be the dud most everyone figured it would be. It was 2002 and Lennox Lewis battered and befuddled Mike Tyson for eight rounds in The Pyramid before Tyson toppled over and could not get up.

This time, Sunday afternoon in FedEx Forum, I expect to see a more competitive match: 6-foot-10, 255-pound Blake Griffin v. 6-9, 250-pound Tyler Hansbrough.

MEMPHIS – For those who doubted Blake Griffin was really head and shoulders above the rest of college basketball this year, among the last of his 30 points for the Sooners' Friday night victory over Syracuse came on a baseline dunk - after he hit his head on the side of the backboard. (I know. It used to happen to you every now and then too.)

"That was the first time that happened," Griffin said afterward. "It kind of took me by surprise."

(Video proof after the jump.)