PBS高端访谈:让我们缅怀迪恩史密斯,一位伟大的篮球教练

 JUDY WOODRUFF: Some thoughts now about the many legacies¹ of Dean Smith on and off the court with sportswriter John Feinstein, who long covered Smith him and knew him well. He wrote about him today in The Washington Post and is working on a book about Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, and Jim Valvano.

It's great to see you again, John.

JOHN FEINSTEIN, Sportswriter/Author: Thanks, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: First, tell us about Dean Smith the basketball coach. Why was he so successful?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Probably because he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into. You start with that.

He was an innovator². Coaches will tell you that they were always copying Dean. One of the things he always said was, I hope I'm a better coach than he was — than I was a year ago. I hope I will be a better coach a year from now than I am now.

And he worked at that every summer, tried to come up with new ways to beat the opposition³. But the other thing was his ability to make his players understand why he did things. He didn't just say, do this. He would tell them why he wanted them to do it and why he built the program the way he did, why the freshmen⁴, whether it was Michael Jordan or anybody else, carried the bags for the seniors, even if the seniors were walk-ons.

And he had a system. He believed in it totally. And he kept working at making it better year in and year out.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And he inspired a lot of loyalty⁵.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Oh, my God, yes.

A lot of players are loyal to their former coaches, but it's at a completely different level with Carolina players. And I asked Larry Brown, who played for him and then coached under him once, why? Why is the loyalty so incredibly intense?

And I thought Larry's answer was great. He said, he's the single most decent man I have ever met.

And I think that's a wonderful way to be remembered and a perfect description of Dean Smith.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, talk about that, because in all the tributes I have been reading today, so much of it is about Dean Smith the man, as well as a successful basketball coach.

You talked to him a lot. You have spent time with him. What was it about him?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, he was never afraid to take on an issue, even if he thought it might make him unpopular.

He was very much against the death penalty in North Carolina, a state where most people are for the death penalty. When he got to North Carolina in 1958, being the son of the first high school coach in Kansas to coach an integrated basketball team in the state playoffs, he was shocked to learn that the restaurants there were still segregated⁶.

And he spoke⁷ to his minister, the Reverend Robert Seymour, about it, and the two of them agreed that he and a black member of their church would walk into a segregated restaurant and dare management not to serve them.

Now, remember, he wasn't Dean Smith at that point. He was an assistant coach. He could have been fired. He could have been arrested. He had no idea what would happen, but he didn't hesitate to do it. And the management did serve them. And that was the beginning really of desegregation in restaurants in Chapel⁸ Hill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the pushback on that didn't get to him?

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Not at all.

I don't think Dean ever worried about what outsiders thought. And the best coaches need to do that, because — especially today, but even back then. If you did, you would lose your mind. In 1965, his fourth year at North Carolina, he was hung in effigy⁹ by students after a bad loss at Wake Forest.

Billy Cunningham, who was on the team then, pulled the effigy down. Dean read — as I said, he was a deeply spiritual guy. And he read a lot of Catherine Marshall. And he said he took a lot of strength from an essay she wrote called “The Powerful of Helplessness.” Don't concern yourself with that which you cannot control.

And he always did that, whether he won and lost basketball games. He saw that there was more to life than that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You described, in the piece you wrote today in The Washington Post, in an interview you did with him, the decision he made to integrate, to work on desegregating the restaurant.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you had spoken with his minister.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Correct.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And in that conversation, you talked about how he was judged. And how — tell us about that..

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, what happened was, I was doing a profile on him. This is in 1981 for The Washington Post.

And Reverend Seymour — by the way, Dean didn't want me to do the profile. He always wanted you to write about somebody other than him. But I had spoken to Reverend Seymour, who had told me the story about the restaurant.

And I went back to Dean and I said: “Can you fill in some of these details? What was it like that night? Were you nervous?”

He said, “Who told you the story?”

And I said, “Reverend Seymour.”

And he said, “I wish he hadn't told you that.”

And I said: “Why, Dean? You should be proud of doing something that like.”

And he looked at me and he said, “John, you never should be proud of doing the right thing. You just should do the right thing.”

And, really, that's the way he lived his life. He never wanted or needed a pat on the back. But he wanted to do what was right for all the people in his life.

JUDY WOODRUFF: John Feinstein talking about the great North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, thank you.

JOHN FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Judy.

1 legacies   

n.遗产( legacy的名词复数 )；遗留之物；遗留问题；后遗症

参考例句：

• Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind. 书是伟大的天才留给人类的精神财富。 来自辞典例句
• General legacies are subject to the same principles as demonstrative legacies. 一般的遗赠要与指定数目的遗赠遵循同样的原则。 来自辞典例句

2 innovator   

n.改革者；创新者

参考例句：

• The young technical innovator didn't lose heart though the new system was not yet brought into a workable condition. 尽管这种新方法尚未达到切实可行的状况，这位青年技术革新者也没有泄气。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Caesar planned vast projects and emerged as a great innovator. 恺撒制定了庞大的革新计划。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史

3 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

4 freshmen   

n.（中学或大学的）一年级学生( freshman的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We are freshmen and they are sophomores. 我们是一年级学生，他们是二年级学生。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• University freshmen get lots of razzing, but they like the initiation. 大一新生受各种嘲弄，但是他们对这种入门经验甘之如饴。 来自辞典例句

5 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

6 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 chapel   

n.小教堂，殡仪馆

参考例句：

• The nimble hero,skipped into a chapel that stood near.敏捷的英雄跳进近旁的一座小教堂里。
• She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel.那个星期天的下午，她在小教堂的演出，可以说是登峰造极。

9 effigy   

n.肖像

参考例句：

• There the effigy stands,and stares from age to age across the changing ocean.雕像依然耸立在那儿，千秋万载地凝视着那变幻无常的大海。
• The deposed dictator was burned in effigy by the crowd.群众焚烧退位独裁者的模拟像。