I have watched in its televised entirety the 1993 North Carolina-Michigan NCAA men’s basketball championship game, the game in which Chris Webber called a timeout that his team didn’t have with Michigan down by two with 11 seconds left. The game is available here.
Some impressions….
* North Carolina was up by three and had the ball with 45 seconds left when forward Brian Reese stepped out of bounds, giving Michigan the ball back and basically keeping alive their chance of winning the game.
That was the second big blunder Reese made in the NCAA tournament that year. During the Elite Eight against Cincinnati with the score tied toward the end of regulation, Reese tried to violently dunk the ball instead of simply laying it in and ensuring a Carolina victory. He missed the dunk, sending the game to OT, with Carolina nevertheless prevailing.
* Billy Packer and Jim Nantz are better as announcers than I remember them. My memory was that their raison d’etre was to be against anything exciting like dunks or trash-talking or anything where an individual player conveyed emotion or personality. I also remember that Packer had an encyclopedic knowledge of Final Fours that literally happened around the Korean War.
Nantz is fairly understated. Packer sometimes lent sophistication to basketball announcing by, say, giving a specific example of when Jalen Roses’ major height advantage as a college point guard helped him or when Webber was trying to do too much on defense and his teammates were slow to help.
One of their themes was that both times were tired, but especially Michigan, because Michigan beat an awesome Kentucky team in OT during the national semifinals. Kentucky was favored in that game because they killed everyone on the way to the Final Four (they beat Florida State — a team that went 12-4 in the ACC that year, and had four future NBA first-round picks including Sam Cassell by 25 in the elite eight). Michigan did indeed keep going to their bench, more than they usually did that year.
Packer, though, became almost a self-parody midway through the second half when Webber made an awesome steal, dribbled 60 feet, and completed a breakaway slam. Packer was angry at Webber for hanging on the rim, and at the officials for not giving Webber a technical for hanging on the rim (which Webber did for like .5 seconds). Clearly a man of great priorities and perspective, Packer anticipated that the major thing the NCAA would do in the summer of 1993 was instruct referees to enforce the technical foul when someone hangs on the rim.
Nantz, meanwhile, proved capable of moments of unmatched blandness. Offering some pre-tipoff chatter, Nantz mused whether George Lynch, North Carolina’s senior power forward, told his teammates what he had uttered prior to the Kansas game in the national semis. The words of inspiration? “Win one for Coach Smith”
* It’s easy to see why people thought Jimmy King had star potential. King had a breakaway dunk in the 2nd half where, Dr. J/Jordan-like, he leaped 8-10 feet away from the basket and then slammed it in. King also drew the toughest back court defensive assignments (UNC shooting guard Donald Wlliams in the title game; Kentucky point guard Travis Ford in the national semifinals game) with the idea that his superior athleticism could at least partly neutralize the other team’s best perimeter threat.
But it turns out that the ’93 Michigan team was King’s plateau. He didn’t have the consistency or personality, or something.
* With Webber, Rose and Juwan Howard, Michigan had the more talented team. Pat Sullivan and Henrik Rodl played major minutes for Carolina. UNC obviously had a talented starting five of Williams, Reese, Derrick Phelps, Lynch, and Eric Montross. But those guys were just good pieces on a couple of UNC teams. Only Lynch had a substantial NBA career.
* Nobody on either team had a tattoo
* Regarding the time out itself
….Rose was screaming for the ball and was open in the back court. It defies all logic that Webber simply did not pass the ball to Rose, their point guard.
…Webber looks so freakishly morose as North Carolina is shooting the free throws resulting from the time out. Usually, I feel, in moments of great athletic setbacks, the athlete is an expressionless stoic. But Webber couldn’t hide his emotions.
…For all the analysis of this time out, e.g. what it reveals about the Fab Five; how it shaped Webber’s career; how both of Dean Smith’s titles were aided by incredible blunders, I’ve never read anything where somebody questions the point of a technical foul for calling a timeout.
Like it’s a severe penalty, no? What if the refs let game action keep going if a player, on a team without a timeout, signals for a time out? Or does there need to be a certain penalty?