The Real Truth: The Best Tar Heels Team Did Not Have Jordan

Why is Michael Jordan crying in this picture?  You might think he had just been inducted into a basketball hall of fame.  But you might be wrong.  He just might be crying because he was not on the greatest UNC Tar Heels basketball team of all time.

That honor belongs to the 1977 Tar Heels. Yes, that team that lost to Marquette in one of the more memorable games in NCAA Basketball Championship history.  The Marquette team that had seven losses and that no one gave a chance.  The one with Al McGuire, the wiry energetic coach who I for one loved to hate.  The only one with four players listed among the less than twenty greatest of all time on Tar Heel Blue.

Dean Smith had collected talent that year.  Walter Davis, Phil Ford, Mike O'Koren.  They are all on list of the Tar Heel's greatest players.

Phil Ford may have been the greatest Carolina player of all.  According to Tar Heel Blue:

He is UNC's all-time leading scorer with 2,290 points and ranks second in assists with 753. In his 123 career games, Ford averaged 18.6 points and 6.1 assists per contest. A three-time first-team All-America in 1976, 1977 and 1978, Ford directed Carolina to three straight first-place ACC regular-season finishes as well as ACC Tournament titles in 1975 and 1977 and the NCAA championship game in 1977. Ford, who started at the point guard position four successive seasons, was named the National Player of the Year in 1978 by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, the National Association of Basketball Coaches and The Sporting News. That year, he also won the John Wooden Award. Ford played on the 1976 gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic Team under the leadership of Coach Smith and was named to the All-Tournament team by UPI. 

Yet he is in the place he finds himself because his teammate Tommy LaGarde blew out his knee in 1977. In fact, had he remained healthy, there is no way that LaGarde could have been prevented from winning the 1977 NCAA Championship despite the other injuries that plagued the team.

Anyone who saw LaGarde play that year knows so. A 6"10' post player, LaGarde dominated the post against all comers. He seemingly could score at will. And he had quickness and finesse, able to run the floor and pound the boards.

It is hard to pick Ford over LaGarde, just as it is hard to ignore Walter Davis. Davis, who hailed from a small town in North Carolina, matched Dean Smith at least for noses. A wonderful player with soft hands, he also could score at will. Only Phil Ford, the greatest guard (sorry Jordan) in Tar Heel history kept him at bay in the record books.  Davis hit the tying shot with time expiring when Carolina had what could be the greatest comeback in NCAA history the year before, from eight points down to Duke in seventeen seconds.

The 1977 Carolina team players had dominated Dean Smith's roster at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. From these four stars, only O'Koren missed the team.  And that was because he was still in high school. Even then, he might have made it but for the fact that this was just not done and the three other 1977 teammates made the team creating some controversy for their coach Smith.  The joke about only Dean Smith could keep Jordan from scoring has no real meaning because O'Koren sailed into the tournaments his freshman year, scoring 31 points in one game and having a phenomenal post-season.

LaGarde missed almost all of the season and all of the post-season because of a blown out knee. For many, this was a non-issue during the tournament. In fact, many accounts say little at all about Carolina's injuries. They were severe.

In addition to LaGarde, Walter Davis broke a finger or two on his shooting hand.  And Phil Ford hyper-extended his knee well before the NCAA Basketball Finals.

Losing three healthy starters to injuries would have been brutal to the team.  So Davis and Ford played despite their injuries. They were clearly sub-par.

And Marquette won.

I still remember my buddies leaping in glee from our TV in Chicago when Marquette clearly had won.  Yet, for all that, and despite this loss, the 1977 team remains the greatest in Carolina history, bar none.  And that is The Real Truth.