July 29, 2009
Buy Tickets To Alumni Game
By Adam
Lucas
Jerry Stackhouse doesn't think about what might have been. He and teammate Rasheed Wallace left Carolina after helping the Tar Heels to a Final Four in 1995, eliminating the chance of a potential 1995-96 dream squad that would have included Stackhouse, Wallace, Jeff McInnis, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Ademola Okulaja and Shammond Williams.
"I like to call that 0/0 hindsight," Stackhouse says. "It didn't happen, so I don't think about it."
But if you're a Tar Heel fan, it's hard not to think about it. Imagine McInnis leading the break with Stackhouse on one wing, Carter on the other wing, and Jamison and Wallace trailing the play.
That's a group with so much athleticism, they might not have needed offensive sets; instead, they could have just thrown alley-oops to a different recipient on each possession.
"Whoa," Stackhouse says with a grin. "We still would've been playing for Coach Smith. So we still would've had plays."
The what-could've-been 1996 squad ranks with the potential 1983, 1985, 1999 and 2006 teams as the five of the most enticing teams that almost were in the post-1980 era. Forget scholarship limits, forget battles for playing time. Part of the appeal of the upcoming NBA alumni game on Sept. 4 in Chapel Hill is the chance to see some of those teams finally brought together on the Smith Center court.
1999's squad would have given Ed Cota another year with Carter and Jamison and put Cota's career assist record (with 1,030, he's a staggering 262 ahead of second-place Kenny Smith) even further into the stratosphere. The 2006 team would have been absurdly loaded, with returnees Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, Marvin Williams and Sean May added to freshmen Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, Bobby Frasor and Marcus Ginyard.
The 1983 team would have added James Worthy to a team that already included Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins, while the 1985 Tar Heels could have added Jordan to a group that won the ACC regular season and reached the NCAA regional final.
"That '85 team would have been without Sam, but we could've added Michael to Brad Daugherty, Joe Wolf and those guys," says Roy Williams, who was an assistant coach on both the '83 and '85 teams. "I think '85 with Michael might have been a little better team than '83 with James."
But for pure athleticism, it's hard to imagine that any pseudo-Tar Heel team could handle the 1996 team. McInnis led the actual '96 Tar Heels in scoring with 16.5 points per game. Add his buddies Stackhouse and Wallace, of course, and the scoring pressure on the point guard would've decreased, leaving him free to feed Carolina's twin post presences or simply lob the ball to the wings. It would have meant decreased playing time for Williams, Okulaja and Dante Calabria, but it's hard to imagine a more formidable starting five.
"It's college basketball, so there's always the chance that some team comes along that can knock you off," says Stackhouse. "But the majority of the season we would have dominated college basketball."
But as Marty McFly learned first-hand, be careful of creating a ripple in history, because you never know what the later impact might be. That dream 2006 squad with Felton, May, Williams and McCants would have been a dozen deep. But the lessons learned by the actual freshmen in 2006 eventually paid off with a national title in 2009.
Would Tyler Hansbrough have become one of the greatest players in Carolina history without such an important freshman season? For better or worse, we'll never know.
"In '06, if those guys had come back Tyler would have been effective but he would've have been as crucial," says Williams. "That year gave him the confidence to be what he was and it was the first step to making him believe he could be the best player in the country. If Raymond and Rashad are there, maybe Danny and Marcus and Bobby aren't asked to do everything they were asked to do, and Danny doesn't become what we saw in 2009. With those guys, maybe I would have enjoyed 2006 a little more, but I don't know that I would have enjoyed 2009 as much."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the upcoming book on the 2009 national title, One Fantastic Ride. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
