Phil Ford, one of the best players in UNC basketball history, is this week’s guest on “Sports Legends of the Carolinas.”
Ford was a lot of things for UNC — the 1978 National Player of the Year, for one, as well as a longtime assistant basketball coach at UNC and also the point guard who made the Four Corners famous.
When the Rocky Mount native held up four fingers, back in the no-shot-clock era of college basketball, it was game over, because no one could run out the clock like Ford could. Ford held UNC’s scoring record for 30 years, despite playing in the era where there was no three-point shot, until Tyler Hansbrough finally broke that record in 2008. He still ranks No. 2 all-time on UNC’s scoring list.
When I think of Ford, now 66, I also think of something the former legendary UNC coach Dean Smith mentioned to me in an interview several years after the coach had retired. Said Smith: “There has never been a guy more loyal to Carolina than Phil, I can tell you that.”
I interviewed Ford inside the Smith Center in Chapel Hill, N.C. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
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Scott Fowler: Let’s start with the Four Corners. Not many people do something in college that people remember almost 40 years later. How did it start?
Phil Ford: Well, of course it was the brainchild of Coach Smith and it was something that we practiced every day. It’s just not something that Coach Smith thought of at the end of the game and told us to stall. We had rules — things you could do and things you couldn’t do.
You had to have five very good ball handlers on the court. ... And five very good free throw shooters who could hit free throws in some tough situations.
My job was to initially act like we weren’t going to score. But if an opportunity came, we were going to go backdoor and get a layup. And then the other team would go down and a lot of times, out of frustration, take a quick, bad shot. We’d block out, get the rebound, come down and do it again. And we’d get up seven or eight points and at that time, you know, that was pretty much the game.
I get a lot of credit for it, but you had to have five very good players on the court for the Four Corners to work.
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SF: You played with Walter Davis. So I guess you’ve known Hubert Davis, his nephew and now UNC’s basketball coach, for a long time?
PF: Since elementary school. I’ve got pictures on my phone of him, along with Walter and one of our basketball managers, where Coach Davis can’t be more than 10 years old. He’s been a great guy ever since then, and a great player. He’s a fighter.
I know Walt begged Coach Smith to recruit him, but Coach Smith first told (Hubert Davis) to go to George Washington, I think Walt then told Coach: “He may not be your best player as a freshman. But by the time he’s a senior, he’ll be your best player.”
And he was, and went on to play 12 years in the NBA. He knows what it is to fight. And I’m just so impressed with his leadership skills.
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SF: Do you think UNC will win the national championship in 2023?
PF: I’m not going to jinx them. But I do believe that we’re probably one of 20-25 schools that could win it if everything goes well. In order to win, you have to be very good, but you have to be lucky, too.
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SF: Tell me about growing up in Rocky Mount, N.C. What was that like?
PF: It was great. I wouldn’t want to grow up in any other city in the world. It was an “everybody knows everybody” kind of place.
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SF: What was your relationship like with your parents?
PF: I was a daddy’s boy, I guess you could say. My dad (known as “Big Phil”) was a sharecropper’s son. And that’s why I admire him so much. He went on to get a master’s degree. That’s pretty impressive from where he started.
He couldn’t play sports, but he had a good time watching me play sports. And I did — from around 6 years old, football, basketball and baseball. When I was 6 or 7 years old, a grown man could throw a baseball to me as hard as he could and I could catch it. My dad always thought I would have been a better baseball player. But I couldn’t hit, man. I was a shortstop.
If you hit it on that side of the field, I could go get it and throw you out. But when it came time to hit? I was terrible.
My mom, Mabel, was a French and English teacher. My dad taught history.
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SF: And your mom didn’t really know who Dean Smith was, right?
PF: (Laughs) My mom is rolling over if she knows I’m telling this. No, she wasn’t a big sports fan. From junior high to high school to four years of college and seven years in the NBA, she may have gone to three games personally.
So when I had narrowed it down to about five or six schools when the schools were coming in to recruit me, my mom never wanted to sit in on the meeting. It was usually my dad, my high school coach and myself. But when she heard Dean Smith was coming, she wanted to sit in, because she thought Dean Smith was the dean of the college, and she was happy that someone was finally talking to me about academics instead of basketball.
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SF: You did talk about more than basketball though, I imagine.
PF: For the first 30-35 minutes, we didn’t even bring up basketball. And then when we finally brought up basketball, that’s when he told me that I might have to play junior varsity. He wasn’t sure where I fit in.
And really, I think that’s when my mom fell in love with him
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SF: Isn’t there some story about you and a missing tooth?
PF: Coach Smith used to use that one all the time, and the guys got so tired of it. In the 1976 ACC tournament, Clemson’s Stan Rome knocked my tooth out. And I didn’t really know what it was. Then I see it’s my tooth. So I just dribble over to the trainer, hand him my tooth and keep on playing.
So anytime somebody would get hurt, Coach Smith would use that. And he just used it so much that the guys got tired of it. They start killing me about it, you know: “Coach Ford, tell us about the time that your arm came off, and you dribbled over and handed your arm to the trainer and kept playing.” J.R. Reid was the leader of that.
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SF: People forget how good of an NBA player you were. You were the No. 2 overall draft pick in 1978 by the Kansas City Kings. And then had a really freak injury, right?
PF: It’s called a blowout fracture of my left orbital. A guy named World B. Free was making a baseball pass. I jumped up and he stuck his thumb in my eye and pushed my eyeball down through its shell. And I got some double vision that I still have to this day.
Up until that point, you know, things were going pretty well. But after that point, I didn’t handle things as well as I possibly should have off the court.
And it kind of grew into a monster, and I battled that monster most of my adult life. Luckily, through spirituality and where I am right now, I don’t battle that anymore.
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SF: The monster you’re speaking about is alcohol?
PF: Addiction. Yes.
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SF: How long did you struggle with that?
PF: Off and on most of my adult life. There were periods of time in there — six years, 10 years — where I was sober. But right now I’m in a sober period and it’s been multiple years, and I’m thankful to Jesus Christ. I’m just at a great place in my life right now. I couldn’t be happier.
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SF: Did you manage to fight that demon on your own with your family, or did you involve Alcoholics Anonymous?
PF: Oh yes. Alcoholics Anonymous. My family. My spirituality. My faith. Everything. It takes everything.
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SF: What do you drink at functions now?
PF: Coffee. Juice. I’ll take a soda every now and then, which I probably shouldn’t. Anything non-alcoholic.
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SF: And so did your NBA career end because of that (addiction), or the injury or what exactly?
PF: My skills. The older you get, the skills erode. And when you aren’t taking care of your body, your skills erode a lot faster. And that’s what happened to me.
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SF: You were an assistant in both college and in the NBA. Are you disappointed you never became a head coach?
PF: I think every young coach would like to be a head coach. But it never happened, and I understand. I don’t lose sleep over it or anything.
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SF: So you did everything you did as a player in basketball without being able to dunk?
PF: (Laughs) So that has to come up, huh?
I sort of dunked one time, in high school, in a pep rally. It probably wasn’t a real dunk. It was like a squeegee, I just pushed it across the rim. I just never could jump that high.
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SF: Did you consider yourself a great shooter or just a great scorer?
PF: I never considered myself great in anything. I had great coaching and great teammates, and I just tried as hard as I possibly could. And it was fun. It was so much fun. I think that’s what a lot of young people today have to ask themselves when they get involved in sports.
And parents have to ask themselves, too: Does their child really like it? I loved it.
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SF: The best team you played on was in 1977, when UNC got to the national final and lost to Marquette. Do you ever think about that game?
PF: It’s the only game I still have nightmares about. We were so close.
Individual honors are great — don’t get me wrong. But the ultimate is to be a national champion. And to be so close to that. I tell Joel Berry all the time that I will trade him my number in the rafters for his national title (in 2017). He goes, “No, no, we won’t do that.”
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SF: Who was the best college player that you played against in college?
PF: I can’t name just one. But David Thompson now — he was a different breed. You start talking about DT, and Michael Jordan and Ralph Sampson — they were unbelievable, you know? To this day, it’s hard to beat DT, MJ and Ralph in this league.
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SF: What was the loudest environment you played in on the road?
PF: N.C. State. I’m friends with Dereck Whittenburg and I tell him the song I hate the most — well, as a Christian I don’t hate. But if I had to hate something? (Ford then hummed a portion of the N.C. State fight song). The way those guys got to playing that thing in Reynolds — you talk about loud!
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SF: Did you ever consider going to State seriously?
PF: If I hadn’t come to North Carolina, I was going to State.
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SF: Was it close?
PF: Well, I grew up a Carolina fan. And when Charles Scott (UNC’s first Black scholarship player) enrolled here, that’s when I really started following North Carolina basketball.
I was going to be the next Charlie Scott. In fact, the teachers at my elementary school and junior high school would use Charlie as an example because they knew all of us loved Charlie Scott. If we did something wrong it was: “I bet Charlie Scott wouldn’t be talking in class.”
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SF: What do you do now to keep busy these days?
PF: I do some public speaking, make appearances every now and then. I’m on a couple of boards that keep me busy. I have three grandbabies. So I stay busy.
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SF: Is it true that when UNC lost in the NCAA tournament in 1978 you wouldn’t cut the tape off your ankles?
PF: Yes. I left it for a couple of days. That’s the stupidest thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t know how I didn’t get gangrene or something. But I just didn’t want to leave.
For much more from this interview and to hear other “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” interviews, including 1-on-1 conversations with Charlie Scott, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Dawn Staley, subscribe to the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast. New episodes drop every Wednesday, and bonus content is available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
