Remembering Mike Cooke: Witness to Greatness

Mike Cooke (‘64) didn’t know at the time that his years in Chapel Hill would serve as the opening chapter to a magical story. Cooke died earlier this month, so we’re republishing this Inside Carolina story from the archives 20 years ago that captured his Tar Heel journey.

by Jack Morton

Mike Cooke fondly remembers Frank McGuire’s dapper swagger. It was on full display when the former North Carolina coach entered his parents’ home in 1959. 

“McGuire came into our house and was just the slickest, coolest guy I’d ever seen,” Cooke said. “He had everything – he was two years removed from winning the national championship – he was so well-dressed and very convincing. McGuire’s the reason I went to Carolina.”

Cooke was a big guard at 6-foot-2, tall by the standards of the late 1950s. Recruited for a period of time by Everett Case (NC State) and Vic Bubas (Duke), Cooke arrived in Chapel Hill in 1960 in a freshman class with four New Yorkers, not too atypical for a Frank McGuire class.

“That didn’t surprise me, really,” Cooke laughed. “What did surprise me, and everyone else, was when McGuire decided to leave to go coach Wilt – Larry Brown and I were rooming together that summer, and I remember both of us being surprised.”

Leaving a UNC program on probation for the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors in 1961, McGuire had left a stamp on the Carolina team he inherited in 1952 after five seasons at St. John’s. His nine-year record was 164-58, and his Tar Heel teams finished first or tied for first in the conference standings five times. As every hoop lover knows, his 1956-57 squad won the NCAA title and finished the season 32-0.

Entering the fray was a young assistant hired by McGuire prior to the 1958 season. Dean Smith had graduated from Kansas in 1953 where he further developed much of his basketball mind learning under the eminence of Phog Allen.  He had won a national title as a Jayhawk in 1952. For three seasons he served as an assistant under Bob Spear at the Air Force Academy, coaching overseas in Germany. Dean Smith was 30 years old when he was asked by UNC chancellor William Aycock to assume the role as head coach.

“We had had very little interaction with Dean Smith during my freshman year,” said Cooke, thinking of his first season in Chapel Hill. “I didn’t know him all that well, but I knew he was tough. He was a disciplinarian, and he was going to need all of that going into the ‘61-62 season because we were on probation.”

Dean Smith’s first Tar Heel team featured Jim Hudock, a natural forward who had to play out of position at center for much of the season. Cooke, at 6-2, played forward, along with Charlie Shaffer. Larry Brown, Donnie Walsh, and Yogi Poteet were the guards – the team only played 16 games due to the probation, and finished the campaign 8-9. It would be Smith’s only losing season as Carolina coach.

“We all knew he was smart, that he had a brilliant mind,” Cooke recalled. “His time at the Air Force had made him structured, but what really stood out that first year was how innovative he was. We were a small team and had very limited talent, and we still won eight games.

“We had to compensate for our weaknesses by forcing the baseline,” continued Cooke. “We’d pick up a handful of charges each game just by bringing weak side help over to the other side. We had four main defenses and would throw teams off by switching all the time. Dean really handled the situation he inherited as well as you can.”

During Cooke’s junior season, the 1962-63 Tar Heels finished 15-6, going 10-4 in the ACC. The season was highlighted by a 68-66 Carolina win at Kentucky. The young Smith orchestrated a fundamental symphony to upset the larger-than-life Adolph Rupp, the man he would pass in the ultimate standings some 33 ½ years later. The symbolism of this victory, Dean Smith’s first “huge” win at Carolina, is obvious and significant. Rupp and his Kentucky Wildcats were the face of college basketball in the early 1960s. 

“That was a breakthrough game for Coach Smith, without question,” said Cooke. “We played the box-and-one on their star ‘Cotton’ Walsh all game. What a win that was for Dean.”

As a senior, Cooke and his teammates went 12-12, finishing fifth in the conference. Cooke averaged a career high 11.1 points. Despite the overall record, the three-time letterman recalled that four games during the 1963-64 season went to overtime.  It was the final time in Dean Smith’s 36 years that he would finish a season at or seriously close to .500.

“At the time it was really hard to assess him,” Cooke recalled. “Of course, we had no idea he’d go on to be a Hall of Fame coach. 

“He was very young,” continued Cooke. “He knew tons of basketball and it seemed his greatest challenge was getting it all across to us. He certainly taught us a lot of basketball.”

Cooke reflected on how impressive the overall team resume was from his four years in Chapel Hill. He highlighted the four future Hall of Fame members, four NBA coaches, and four All-Americans on campus during some facet of his four years as a Tar Heel, an amazing group for any generation.

“When you look at a four-year period when there’s a Frank McGuire and then a Dean Smith coaching, and then guys like Donnie Walsh, Doug Moe, Billy Cunningham, Larry Brown, and the like are all there during the same period – it’s an amazing group,” said Cooke. “It really didn’t surprise me that Dean went on to be successful, but at the time, in the first years, he really wasn’t a great recruiter. No one really did a lot of recruiting in person – schools simply didn’t have the budget for it – so you’d mostly get letters from coaches.

“Bubas was the master recruiter at that time,” Cooke continued. “He really changed the game at Duke by incorporating forwards who could handle the ball, like Jeff Mullins and Art Heyman. They were more like point forwards.”

Cooke pointed to Larry Miller, who joined the Carolina varsity squad in 1965, as the player who forever altered the game for Dean Smith and the Tar Heels.

“Miller – he was as a ball-handling forward that really changed things for Dean,” said Cooke. “Bubas also started recruiting high school kids as juniors, and Dean did a good job of reacting to that and doing the same. Not to mention McGuire had established a family feeling within the program, and it continued that way with Coach Smith. Even fellas from that ’57 team were back in Chapel Hill quite a bit, and every one of them that came from New York City, that was a tight bunch. 

“The basketball program has always been very strong, and I think that’s something that’s so special that Coach Smith really made even stronger,” he continued. “I had an Educational Foundation meeting recently in Lumberton, and the program was represented by four different generations of Tar Heels – Pud Hassell and me from the early 60s, Franklin (Rusty) Clark from the late 60s, Ged Doughton from the 70s, Jimmy Black from the 80s, and Jeff Denny from the early 90s. What other program in America can cross generations like that? And all of us played for the same man. It’s truly amazing.”

Cooke credits Dean Smith’s work “behind the scenes” as the backbone for his legendary patchwork of caring relationships. 

“He’s really a very shy person,” Cooke laughed with admiration. “He doesn’t like to speak in public, but he keeps in touch with everyone. Ask any former player – if they ever need anything, their list consists of their father, their lawyer, and Coach Smith.”

Cooke receives a Christmas card with a personal note from Coach Smith every December, something he likely shares in common with every other former Tar Heel from 1961-1997. He credits Smith’s accessibility as a comforting virtue, even though it’s been 43 years since he laced his Chuck Taylor’s under his coach’s tutelage.

“I think he always tried to recruit good people with character, and would guess that he still influences others to do the same,” said Cooke. “There have been a few characters that left me wondering how Dean handled them, but that’s another aspect of why he’s so special – he was able to change with the times and adapt to different generations of kids while maintaining the search for good character.”

When asked about Dean Smith’s innovative tendencies, Cooke’s answer was well-thought and revealing.

“If Dean had had a perfect team, he probably wouldn’t have needed to adapt,” he said. “With the early teams, like the ones I played for, he trapped with his defenses a lot, forcing the opposition to the baseline and bringing weak side help. There was a lot of team swarming and double teaming – he would rather attack on defense than on offense, to be perfectly honest.”

The aforementioned victory at Kentucky in December 1962 also served as a debut for perhaps Dean Smith’s most noteworthy and uniquely characteristic signature, the Four Corners. 

“We were getting ready for Rupp and Kentucky and we knew that we had in Larry Brown a guard who was lightning quick,” said Cooke of Brown, who went on to become a coaching legend in his own right.  “Larry could take it hard to the basket and draw the defense in, leaving our other guys open – we used it as an offensive set, not as a stalling mechanism, and it became a style for Dean.”

Cooke considers himself somewhat lucky to have been lured to Carolina by a dapper, dandy New Yorker but to have played on an eventual icon’s first few teams. His ties to the Tar Heel family remain strong – in fact he gave his friend Roy Williams a ride to the December Beach Ball Classic high school tournament in Myrtle Beach to do some recruiting. They weren’t on campus at the same time and never coached or played together, but Cooke and Williams share a love for the same university and a fond admiration for the same former coach.

“No one could ever keep up that level of excellence for 36 seasons – that’s what’s most impressive,” Cooke reflected. “Dean Smith was always in the hunt, always a factor.  After 1967 he never had a bad season – he was always competitive.

“I’ve never been late for a meeting,” laughed Cooke when asked what Smith traits have stuck with him over the years. “The things he teaches you stick with you. When you play for someone like that you might not grasp the moment, but later you look back and think ‘gosh, what an amazing man.’”

Cooke recalled a unique visit with then Tar Heels Rick Fox and J.R. Reid at Nags Head, N.C., sometime in the late 1980s.

“We happened to be there vacationing at the same time, and Rick and J.R. were still in school,” said Cooke. “All they wanted to talk about was ‘What was Coach Smith like when you were in school?’ and ‘What were his practices like?’ They were so interested and amazed that he was the same man and that nothing had changed. It was dawning on them just how fortunate they were to play for Dean Smith.”