CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlie Scott, this week’s star of the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series, was the first Black basketball player on scholarship at the University of North Carolina. In many ways, he was the Tar Heels’ version of baseball player Jackie Robinson, dealing with the racism inherent in that time period while gracefully excelling in his sport.
An All-American basketball player at UNC in 1969 and 1970, Scott won a gold medal playing for the U.S. Olympic team in Mexico City in 1968. He also won an NBA championship with the Boston Celtics in 1976 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
Before choosing Chapel Hill, he almost went to Davidson, where the dynamic Lefty Driesell was the coach at the time. Driesell had a hard time taking “No” for an answer, and Scott’s recruiting stories almost have to be heard to be believed.
