Dean Smith, legendary North Carolina basketball coach, is dead at 83

“Coach Dean Smith passed away peacefully the evening of February 7 at his home in Chapel Hill, and surrounded by his wife and five children,” the Smith family said in a statement. “We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as arrangements are made available to the public. Thank you.”

Smith coached UNC from 1961 through 1997 and made an incredible mark not just on the famed Tar Heels program, but on all of basketball. He coached a number of legends, including Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Bob McAdoo and Billy Cunningham. His coaching tree is massive, claiming high-profile names like Larry Brown, George Karl and Roy Williams. Most importantly, he was a leader in the community on civil rights issues, recruiting UNC’s first black scholarship athlete, Charlie Scott, in 1967.

Smith won national titles in 1982 and 1993. The first was led by Jordan and Worthy, perhaps one of the greatest college teams ever. The second came with a less-renowned cast, with Smith leading the Heels past Michigan’s Fab Five in the championship game.

UNC’s basketball arena is named the Dean Smith Center in his honor. Reports suggest he had suffered from dementia in recent years, which kept him out of the public eye.

“It’s such a great loss for North Carolina - our state, the University, of course the Tar Heel basketball program, but really the entire basketball world,” current UNC coach Roy Williams said in a statement. “We lost one of our greatest ambassadors for college basketball for the way in which a program should be run. We lost a man of the highest integrity who did so many things off the court to help make the world a better place to live in.”

In a statement from Michael Jordan, the former UNC star said: “Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith. He was more than a coach -- he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father. Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life. My heart goes out to Linnea and their kids. We’ve lost a great man who had an incredible impact on his players, his staff and the entire UNC family.”

Smith is said to have graduated some 96 percent of his players -- an incredibly high rate for a coach in a power conference.

President Barack Obama also issued a statement following Smith’s death:

”Last night, America lost not just a coaching legend but a gentleman and a citizen. When he retired, Dean Smith had won more games than any other college basketball coach in history. He went to 11 Final Fours, won two national titles, and reared a generation of players who went on to even better things elsewhere, including a young man named Michael Jordan—and all of us from Chicago are thankful for that.

But more importantly, Coach Smith showed us something that I’ve seen again and again on the court – that basketball can tell us a lot more about who you are than a jumpshot alone ever could. He graduated more than 96 percent of his players and taught his teams to point to the teammate who passed them the ball after a basket. He pushed forward the Civil Rights movement, recruiting the first black scholarship athlete to North Carolina and helping to integrate a restaurant and a neighborhood in Chapel Hill. And in his final years, Coach Smith showed us how to fight an illness with courage and dignity. For all of that, I couldn’t have been prouder to honor Coach Smith with Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to his wife Linnea, to his family, and to his fans all across North Carolina and the country.”

In 2013, Obama presented Smith with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.