Roy’s retirement reminds us all to recognize what we have before we lose it

Roy Williams’ sudden retirement Thursday is a reminder that even 900-plus wins and three national championships are not enough to provide invincibility. (Photo by Jeffrey Camarati/Tar Heel Photo)

The announcement Thursday morning was shocking enough in its own right. The words that followed hours later were even more sobering, with the common theme linking them being the sharpest of scissors that tore through the strings of every Carolina blue-colored heart across the land.

No one ever adequately prepares for moments like this. In fairness, though, how can you? What reaction suffices or justifies the abrupt retirement of a Hall of Fame coach with 903 career wins and three national championships, one who arguably saved his alma mater by coming home and lifting the gold standard of college basketball from an unforgivable 8-20 campaign two seasons prior back into the fairytale kingdom his mentor spent 36 years constructing and building upon?

Very few among us would have been able to find exactly the right words to describe Roy Williams’ emotional decision to call it a career after a third of a century split between Kansas and North Carolina, the last 18 years in Chapel Hill, where he not only upheld the legacy of the late great Dean Smith, but accomplished the Herculean task of magnifying and enhancing it while also forging his own in a uniquely distinct fashion.

And when Roy explained his decision, letting nothing get in the way of his rationale, even fewer knew how to process multiple invocations of no longer feeling as though he were the right man for a job that was, by all accounts, destined to be his even after he declined it at first offer in 2000 upon the retirement of Smith’s longtime lieutenant and hand-picked successor, Bill Guthridge.

It will always be sobering whenever one watches someone come to grips with — even warmly accepting — his or her own mortality. In a world and society that rewards those who tap into their fullest potential, it is a harsh and shrill cry to the senses when one acknowledges incapability. Seeing that in Williams, who pushed his 70-year-old body more in recent years than ever between a combination of his recurring battles with vertigo, the pandemic, and the off-the-court uncertainty that lingered around his 2015-16 and 2016-17 teams — the former coming within seconds of a national championship, the latter having earned its redemption — confirms once more that time not only waits for no one, it also remains, and will always be, a flat circle.

If nothing else, Williams being at peace with his decision to walk away from a game and sport that, in light of recent legislation regarding the usage of student-athletes’ name, image and likeness; as well as the much-maligned transfer portal that counts approximately a quarter of the entire complement of Division I players, is a small consolation to the most ardent of Carolina fans who do not have it in them to see their coach struggle to adapt to a landscape he may not be a suitable fit for. Younger Tar Heel fans may now find themselves wondering where the program goes from the only coach many of them have ever known or remembered. I was one of those myself when Smith retired in October 1997, several weeks after my 11th birthday. This is different for many reasons, but even 24 years later, the same question is being asked:

Where do we go from here?

The answer, as it was when Smith passed the reins to Guthridge and will when Williams’ successor — whomever it may be — is announced, remains unchanged:

Forward.

Williams, as has always been the case whether observing from a distance or up close and personal, tackled the elephant in the room head-on. He admitted to being scared of what may lie ahead with the book now closed on one of the most prolific careers in the sport, but at the same time, walks away — in his own words — happy and proud of what he, his players and coaching staff accomplished.

“My teams have taken me to nine Final Fours,” Williams recalled in 2016 after UNC had secured yet another trip to the national semifinals after defeating Indiana and Notre Dame to leave Philadelphia with an East Regional championship, a living, breathing display of the same luck and good fortune he reiterated Thursday in his farewell to a sport and community who is far more fortunate to have had him around than he will ever know.

Through every daggum, tough little nut, frickin’, and every other colorful expression he articulated with an equally charming smile, Roy Williams validated the collective luck of the world to have been in his presence, and we will all realize now that one truly never does know what he or she has until it is gone.

It’s just going to hurt like the dickens when we do.

Thanks, Roy.