March 15, 2008

By Adam Lucas

CHARLOTTE--At some places, the junior All-America sinks a game-winning jumper to send his team to the conference tournament finals and your first reaction is, "Wow, what a clutch play."

Not here.

At Carolina, Tyler Hansbrough sinks a baseline jumper to steal a win against Virginia Tech, 68-66, and your first reaction is: Wow, he's going to hear it about that celebration.

I almost typed "celebratory dance" right there. But that's not right.

"No, I wouldn't have called it a dance," Marcus Ginyard said in the wake of Hansbrough's arm-waving, shadow-boxing, mad dash downcourt after his follow shot provided the winning margin with eight tenths of a second remaining.

"I don't know what I'd call it, honestly," continued Ginyard, one of Hansbrough's housemates. "But I do hope we'll be getting to see that on tape."

Oh, you'll see it on tape. Heck, I've watched it four times already and it just happened a couple of hours ago. But at some point, we're going to need a name for it. It was a little bit of Jerry Stackhouse, a little bit of Antawn Jamison, and a whole lot of Hansbrough.

Some people, of course, will see luck.

"Boy, the ball really finds Hansbrough, doesn't it?" one reporter asked Ginyard.

Yeah, sure it does. The ball finds you when you spend hours in the gym and even more hours in the weight room. The ball finds you when you never give up on a play. Why do you think it might be that the ball seems to find Hansbrough more than anyone else in college basketball?

"Hey," Ginyard said, "he finds the ball. Don't get that confused."

Well said. And after what had been a bland two days of basketball, semifinal Saturday finally felt like the ACC Tournament is supposed to feel. Two close games. A roaring crowd. And a stacked ACC Legends lineup that was introduced at halftime of the Carolina-Virginia Tech game and included Dean Smith, Lefty Driesell, Mike Gminski, Kenny Anderson, Charlie Ward, Len Chappell and more. That would be a pretty good lineup at an autograph show, much less as halftime entertainment.

Smith, predictably, received the biggest roar. He handled it exactly the way you'd expect--with an almost embarrassed wave and then some pleading motions for the crowd to settle down.

Smith had Phil Ford as his quintessential player. On most occasions, they seemed to be sharing a brain and a basketball. Other great players came and went through the Carolina program, but there was never any doubt that Smith and Ford would always be linked.

We may be watching that unfold again, and this time the duo is Roy Williams and Hansbrough. The head coach spent his entire first year in Chapel Hill proclaiming, "I shouldn't have to coach effort." And then along came a player who bleeds effort.

The debates about who should win National Player of the Year have almost gotten silly. Michael Beasley is good. Hansbrough is good. But there's no one I'd rather have on my team than the Poplar Bluff native, and I have a feeling Williams feels the same way.

While some players would have been shining their trophies or admiring their rewriting of the record book, Hansbrough was in the gym. I've read that Hansbrough is not pretty, that he achieves his numbers through brute force. The brute force he was born with. What separates him is that he wasn't satisfied with what it could produce for him.

Instead, he worked to develop a face-up game. He shot jumper after jumper, sometimes spending entire pickup games on the perimeter so he could become a multi-dimensional player. It has made him virtually unguardable. Defenders must come out to guard him because otherwise he can make the 17-footer. But if they come out, he'll pump fake and drive to the hoop, which is when the brute force takes over.

Somewhere during all those sessions in the gym, he spent an hour hoisting baseline jumpers. And when the ball "found him" after Ty Lawson's miss, Hansbrough didn't rush. He gathered himself, squared up to the hoop, and calmly dropped it through.

Then, and only then, did he dance. Or whatever you want to call it.

"I didn't see it," said Bobby Frasor, and by "it" he meant the celebration. This is distressing, because Frasor has taken two months worth of grief from Hansbrough for his exuberant, knee-crunching celebration of Wayne Ellington's game-winner at Clemson. The big man saved it on their home television, where he replays it for anyone who stops by. Now, when Frasor finally might be able to equalize the situation, he missed it. Fortunately, tape lives forever.

"I heard about it," Frasor said. "And I'm going to record it. And everyone who comes to the house, I'm going to sit them down and show it to them."

Back at Carolina's hotel after the game, Lennie Rosenbluth was being greeted with respect by a crowd of adoring Tar Heel fans. "I don't think he's ever signed this many autographs before," said his wife, Pat.

"See that man?" one father was telling his young daughter. "He was the Player of the Year when he played, just like Tyler Hansbrough."

Yep, just like Tyler. Except that the people standing in line for Rosenbluth's signature knew him mostly through the record book. And at some point, maybe we'll forget all of Hansbrough's idiosyncrasies--the dancing and the celebrating and the screaming--and remember only the records and points and victories.

But I hope not.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.