Many fans would say simply that Williams is the best basketball coach in the profession today. But there is more.

A few days ago Coach Williams' memoir, "Hard Work: A Life on and Off the Court," arrived in the bookstores. While he might not be the best writer in America today, he knows how to tell an engaging story, and his story is something very special.

Williams shares in vivid detail how his abusive father abandoned the family and left Williams' mother, a mill worker, to struggle through the poverty that bore down on them. Williams recognizes the importance of his mother's contribution to his success, and the book overflows with his love for her.

Another of Williams' ingredients of success gives the book its title, "Hard Work." Williams always worked hard and required those he taught or coached to work hard.

But Williams recognizes that the hard work paid off because other people provided opportunities for him. Williams remembers Mrs. Cheek, his third grade teacher, who posted a list of the top ten students in the class. Williams' name was not on the list, which "really ticked me off." By the time the next list was posted, Williams' name was at the top of the list, where it stayed for the rest of the year.

Opportunity and accountability became Williams' watchwords and ultimately opened the door for him to work with Dean Smith.

Williams remembers the encouragement his high school coach, Buddy Baldwin, gave him. One day he thought, "How good must Coach Baldwin feel to make me feel this good? And I am not the only person he's done this for. I want to be like Buddy Baldwin. I want to be a coach."

It turned out that Williams was a pretty good high school player for Coach Baldwin and good enough to make the Jayvee team at Carolina. But that was it, at least as a player. His opening to work with Dean Smith came another way, through statistics. While a senior at Carolina, Williams kept a "points per possession" chart for Smith, who made Williams' year when he said, "You really do a nice job."

After a few years coaching in high school, Williams came back to Chapel Hill to work as a part-time assistant to Smith for $2,700 a year, not enough to live on. So Williams went into the calendar business, selling Carolina basketball calendars. The first year he made $2,400. He did better every year, making $30,000 in the fourth year, becoming as he said "the best dadgum calendar salesman there ever was."

During his first year as an assistant coach, Williams' talent with numbers paid off again. "During games, I kept a chart on the bench of what offenses and defenses we called, the quality of shots taken, and the results of each possession... It was the first time Coach Smith had ever had that kind of information and he really liked it."

Like Coach Baldwin, Coach Smith gave Williams an example of how a combination of "tough love" and hard work could make such an important difference in a player's performance on the court and success off the court.

Having been the beneficiary of opportunities that required hard work, Williams now passes on to others what came to him, maybe making his charges work even harder than he did, just to ensure that they will be even more successful as players than he was.