The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Like many great coaches, Roy Williams first developed his knowledge of (and love for) the game of basketball as a player.
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Born in Marion, North Carolina on August 1, 1950, Williams spent his early years there and in nearby Spruce Pine. As a child his family relocated to Asheville where he grew up and lettered in basketball and baseball all four years at T. C. Roberson High School. In basketball he was named all-county and all-conference for two years (1967 and 1968), all-western North Carolina in 1968 and served as captain in the North Carolina Blue-White All-Star Game.
After high school Williams went on to play on the freshman team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying the game under legendary coach Dean Smith. As a sophomore he would attend varsity practices to observe and take notes, volunteer as a statistician for theTar Heels at home games, and work at Smith’s summer basketball camps.
Williams’ first coaching job would come in 1973 at Charles D. Owen High School in Black Mountain, North Carolina where he coached both basketball and golf for five years, and ninth-grade football for four years, while also serving as the school’s athletic director for two years. But in 1978 Williams decided to return to UNC to serve as an assistant to coach Smith from 1978 to 1988. During that span the Tar Heels went 275–61 and won the NCAA National Championship in 1982.
In 1988 Williams became the head coach at Kansas, but just weeks after taking the position, the Jayhawks was placed on probation for violations that took place before his arrival. As a result, the team was banned from postseason play for the 1988–89 season.
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Williams coached a total of 15 seasons at Kansas (1988 to 2003), during which time he compiled a 418–101 record. By the end of his run there, he was second on Kansas’ all-time wins list behind only the legendary Phog Allen. He has since been surpassed by current coach Bill Self.
Kansas won nine regular-season conference championships over Williams’ last 13 years there, and in seven years of Big 12 Conference play his teams went 94–18, capturing the regular-season title in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2003, and the postseason tournament crown in 1997, 1998 and 1999.
Under Williams, the Jayhawks had several deep runs in the NCAA Tournament, making it to the Final Four four times and appearing in the national championship game in both 1991 and 2003. In fact North Carolina offered Williams the head coaching job in 2000 but he declined, opting to remain in Lawrence, Kansas.
“Here, at Kansas, I’m able to run a basketball program with my idea of success. Being good every year representing the university the right way,” he said about he decision to remain at Kansas. “I still want to win it all, that hasn’t changed. But, if I don’t and still do those other things, and still have the feelings I have about my players and they have about me, then I’ll consider my life a success.”
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Williams, a member of a coaching tree dating back to the game’s founder, Dr. James Naismith, took the 2003 Kansas team to the NCAA championship game where it fell to Syracuse 81–78. Following the tournament Williams announced he would be leaving Kansas for the vacant North Carolina coaching position. “There’s several factors for my decision,” he said at the time. “My roots, my dream and my family. And I think all three things are my factors. And I don’t mind saying this, but there’s Coach (Dean) Smith. It’s hard saying no to him twice.”
Williams led UNC to NCAA championships as a head coach in 2005, 2009 and 2017 and the team made five Final Four appearances during his tenure, won nine Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championships and three ACC tournament titles. He is also the only head coach to win three national championships at his alma mater.
On April 1, 2021, Williams announced his retirement after 48 years on the sidelines, 33 as a head coach and 18 years at North Carolina. In 2003, following his first season with the Tar Heels, he received the prestigious John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award, and he was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.
Like many of his predecessors, Williams is a man of values and principles, and in March 2021, he and his wife Wanda donated $3 million to support various scholarships for UNC. Williams also donated $600,000 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide scholarships for an extra year of eligibility for UNC spring sport athletes who had their 2020 seasons cut short.
“The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there,” he was once quoted as saying. To that I say, “How was the climb coach?”
