SLAM Presents UNC is Available Now, Featuring Extensive Apparel Collection

There’s something different about Carolina basketball. Always has been. It’s not just the banners or the players or the argyle and blue, though those definitely help. It’s the standard in college basketball, the expectation that every cut, every closeout, every shot, every timeout means something. That you carry yourself a certain way because the jersey demands it. Play hard. Play smart. Play together. The Dean Smith philosophical triple threat that powers the way Carolina plays the game.

This magazine, and everything inside it, is a love letter to that standard.

For a lot of us, this isn’t just a team. It’s a tradition passed down like a family recipe. It’s watching games with people who aren’t around anymore. It’s hearing Woobkdy Durham’s voice in your head when the ball finds the right shot. It’s knowing exactly where you were when Marvin tipped it in, or when Joel Berry II hit back-to-back threes on two bad ankles. It’s the belief that a walk-on in practice is just as important as a McDonald’s All-American, because Dean said so. Because Roy believed it. And because Hubert is continuing it now.

Being a Carolina fan isn’t performative, it’s inherited. It’s internal. You feel it before you can explain it. It’s what makes every March feel like destiny, and every November feel like the start of something worth remembering.

Carolina Basketball raised me. And I don’t just mean as a fan, I mean as a person. When I was a kid in Henderson, the Heels weren’t background noise. They were the whole story. We scheduled dinners around tipoff. You weren’t allowed to call the house during games. My brother and I would stand up in front of the TV for the last two minutes of every close game and stick to every superstitious thing that was working like somehow that would help. And when we lost, when Ed Cota’s floater rimmed out against Utah in ’98 or when Kris Jenkins broke every heart in Chapel Hill at the buzzer, we didn’t talk for a few hours. Not because we were mad at each other, but because we were in mourning. We took it personally. We still do.

When I started One Shining Podcast, it wasn’t just a job. It was a chance to talk about the sport the way we talk about it in North Carolina, no agendas, no gimmicks. Just ball. I’ve been lucky to sit courtside at Final Fours, to talk to legends about what it means to bleed for a program, to interview Roy Williams during the days of his tenure when he still had something to prove—and been even luckier to watch him prove it. I’ve watched practices from the sideline at the Smith Center and I’ve sat in student sections packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people who care way too much about a free Chick-fil-A sandwich. Every one of those moments reminded me: Carolina Basketball isn’t just a product. It’s a promise.

And here’s the thing, you don’t have to have worn the jersey to be part of it. You just have to get it. You have to understand that when Coach Smith taught players to point to the passer, he wasn’t just coaching basketball. He was instilling a way of life. You have to feel something when you walk into the Dean Dome and see the banners, not as trophies, but as responsibilities. You have to believe that when Hubert Davis says, “I love this place,” he means it in a way that can’t be measured on a whiteboard or in a postgame presser.

Carolina fans don’t need to shout about being elite. We’ve lived it. We’ve felt the weight of expectations, and we’ve felt the joy of meeting them. We’ve seen Rasheed Wallace play with fire in his eyes and Vince Carter levitate like a myth. We’ve seen Roy Williams, fresh off heartbreak, come back hungrier than ever. We’ve seen Isaiah Hicks, once the fall guy, redeem himself with a right-handed double-pump shot that sealed a title. And we’ve seen the next generation begin to carve out a legacy of its own.

This issue is about that legacy. Not just the big moments, but the values behind them. The things that don’t show up in the box score. The lessons that last a lifetime. And maybe, if we’re lucky, it reminds someone out there, maybe a kid in Henderson flipping through pages after practice, that they’re part of something bigger. That they’re connected to all who came before, who cheered and cried and believed just as hard.

If you’ve ever felt like Carolina Basketball gave you something that special, something everlasting, then this is for you.

Thanks for reading. Thanks to all the talented people involved in putting this issue together. Thanks to the greatest college basketball player in the 21st century, Tyler Hansbrough. And as always…Go Heels.

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