Billy Packer Q&A: Remembering Michael Jordan and the 1982 Final Four

When it comes to the Final Four, Billy Packer literally had a front row to history. As a TV analyst, he covered every Final Four between 1975 and 2008, as a confluence of factors – four-year stars, iconic coaches, the proliferation of regular-season games on cable TV – helped create the game’s modern era.

Packer moved from NBC to CBS in 1981, and joined the network’s play-by-play man, Gary Bender, as color commentator for CBS’ first Final Four in 1982. It’s the 40th anniversary of that unforgettable event in New Orleans – the site of this weekend’s festivities – which was punctuated by North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan’s 16-foot, game-winning jumper from the left wing to beat Georgetown. 

On3 caught up with Packer for a wide-ranging, 45-minute discussion that inevitably veered off into stories about players, coaches and moments over the decades. Particularly interesting were Packer’s memories about the astonishing evolution of Jordan – from a North Carolina underclassman with an unreliable jump shot to someone anointed by Bob Knight in 1984 to be on track to become the greatest player who ever lived … all before he played even one minute in the NBA.

Enjoy a stroll through the history of college basketball with a portion of the interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and context. 

Q: What are the first memories that jump out about the 1982 Final Four?

Packer: The tournament was great. And then, of course, to have a dome stadium, which was really kind of funny. There weren’t a lot of dome games. And everybody was complaining. The depth perception – people saying guys won’t shoot 30 percent from the floor because of depth perception. Nobody really knew what to expect. But the crowd was so great. New Orleans was so great. The teams were so unbelievably competitive with John [Thompson] and Dean Smith, you had Hall of Famers involved in it. I had, in the regular season, a chance to do the St. John’s-Georgetown battles that were classic. And they were the two best teams in the country, along with North Carolina. And so it had the makings of just a sensational Final Four setup, not only with the teams, the coaches, but then you had the players. Michael, as you brought out, hit the winning shot. Michael was very important to North Carolina, his team, but Michael, at the start of the year, didn’t even make the Sports Illustrated cover saluting North Carolina as a preseason No. 1. It was Dean and four other players. And then Patrick [Ewing] was incredible, and John and Patrick were not only intimidating people, they were intimidating in the style of utilizing their physical and mental abilities. So if you remember when that game started, John and I, we’ve talked about this, but he would deny it, but it was kind of like Dean saying, ‘I told Michael to take the last shot.’ I never did believe that. Just as I really never bought the deal that Patrick’s job was to block a shot [early] whether it was goaltending or not to put fear into the North Carolina team.

Q: The game had such great flow, but wasn’t it also unusual because of all those Ewing goaltending calls at the start and of course the odd ending with Fred Brown’s pass to James Worthy?

Packer: There were so many things that were unique for the game. Experienced, great players, unlike what we have today, and great teams with senior leadership, great coaches and a phenomenal basketball game with outstanding plays and players and coaching decisions. I can still remember like it was yesterday – Fred Brown’s pass, and what I remember most about that and having played the game myself [Packer was a star guard on Wake Forest’s 1962 Final Four team], I knew exactly what had happened to him. You come down the court. Some guys think faster than others. Everybody talks about [Wayne] Gretzky could see the plays in slow motion, and in basketball the same thing happens. I could tell he had seen the action that was taking place on the floor and his brain had a vision of that action. But James Worthy actually was out of position. That should have been a Georgetown player. It was an incredible ending to what happened, and what I remember is not only that moment for Fred Brown but also the way that John Thompson handled it. In 1984, when they won the championship, although [Brown] was no longer maybe as important to the team as he had been two years before, the hug between John and he was just unbelievable. John was a very misinterpreted guy. He was a brilliant person. I used to kid him about the fact that he ought to get out of coaching and run for mayor of D.C., and then become the President of the United States. And I say that not kiddingly. I really felt that he had the opportunity to be that kind of a person because he was so deep, so brilliant in the way he operated. And, of course, Dean was a man ahead of his time, with all the various things he did in changing the game of basketball. And surprisingly to most people, their friendship was really genuine. They both had incredible respect for each other. So it was quite a moment.

Q: The younger generation may not realize – Michael Jordan was not the headliner of the Final Four. Not when you had Clyde Drexler, Rob Williams and Akeem Olajuwon and Houston, and Ewing and Worthy and Sam Perkins. Jordan’s name wasn’t even mentioned once in the CBS pregame.

Packer: Absolutely. This is one of the things that really kind of annoys me, one of the reasons I don’t miss being involved with the game. When you saw the change coming with the one-and-done philosophy, the fact you wouldn’t watch a team mature as a team. … The fifth-year player that we see now is not a great player. But he is a mature physical, mental and emotional player who is now on a team with other guys in the same way. They can be taught. That senior player today might not be as good a player, potentially, as the freshmen or sophomore, particularly the freshmen that come in. But he could give a better performance in that kind of game because the coach has been able to basically take his years of experience and blend it into a much better team concept, both offensively and defensively, where the coach of the one-and-done type player basically has him for a month before he’s ready to start playing and then he’s gone after the year is over. So that’s the difference. We will never see a great college basketball team again. And we’ll never see a great college player again. We’ll see great potential players, but we’ll never see them participate in the college level as a great player. And when you figure, in the history of the game, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the greatest college player of all time. He played when he was a senior. Bill Russell played as a senior. Jerry Lucas played as a senior, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson. Those guys in this era would have never seen their sophomore year. In some cases, even the press doesn’t understand. I’m not saying that today’s athlete is or is not a better athlete than he was then. But he’s not a better basketball player from a team concept. And [1982] was the example where you had coaches, great coaches, who were great recruiters recruited great players, but they matured into great junior and senior players. 

Q: Roy Williams has said this on numerous occasions – when Jordan turned on his competitiveness, he just never turned it off. That seemed to be one of the traits that differentiated him.

Packer: I did a lot of their games. I saw a lot of their practices. I actually did the McDonald’s All-American Game that he played in high school, OK, in Wichita, Kansas. He broke the record for McDonald’s scoring that year. But he had to go through a maturation process of learning how to do the things he didn’t know how to do, and learning how to make his teammates better as he grew. But even when he left the University of North Carolina, and Bobby [Knight] would maybe say Packer is full of shit, but when they had the Olympic trials [in 1984], I was up there to watch. Bobby was not doing any on-the-floor coaching. He picked the staff of guys from all over the country to kind of coordinate those workouts and to be in his observation deal. Michael was not the star of the workouts and he had not been the star of the Pan American Games team the year before. And Bobby said to me, ‘You know what my biggest problem is going to be?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Michael Jordan.’ I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘Well, he is going to make the team. But how the hell can I use him?’ I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He said, ‘He can’t shoot the ball.’ 

Q: And Knight obviously coached against Jordan’s Tar Heels in the Sweet 16 in 1984, what would be an Indiana upset victory.

Packer: The last game Michael ever played in college, and Dan Dakich to this day gets the credit for guarding him. Bobby that night was going to let him shoot any shot beyond 17 feet. So we think of Jordan today, we think of what he became. He became that because he was one of those kids that never stopped wanting to be better and worked on his weaknesses. But, anyway, what happened was funny. Michael does make the [Olympic] team and I was doing [commentating] for a television station in Indianapolis. They were broadcasting all of the games between Bobby’s Olympic team and the NBA pros. And after two games, Bobby, Coach [Hank] Iba, myself, and C.M. Newton are grabbing something to eat. And Bobby says to me, ‘The son of a bitch still can’t shoot. But I tell you, he can really compete.’ 

Q: Again, his competitiveness. Dean Smith said that he had never seen another player improve as much from his freshman to sophomore season. And when he made the Olympic team following his junior season, that competitiveness was unleashed. 

Packer: So we go to Indianapolis and Michael plays well again, but he still hasn’t taken over. They’re playing against the pros. Oscar is coaching the NBA guys and there’s a no foul-out rule. So what Oscar tells his team is, ‘Guys, just beat the hell out of the kids.’ And they’re not going to make any layups and that kind of stuff. With nine minutes to go, Mike Dunleavy hits Jordan in the face on a layup, cuts Jordan’s face and [Bobby] Knight gets thrown out of the game. After a timeout, Michael came out on the court and he destroyed the NBA. That was the first time I ever saw Michael Jordan play and was like, ‘Oh, my God, this guy is unbelievable.’ It was funny, the last game they played before they went to the Olympics in Los Angeles, Bobby and I were talking and he said, ‘Let me explain something about Jordan.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘He will be the greatest [expletive] player that has ever played.’ So he went from a guy where he didn’t know how the hell he was going to use him because he couldn’t shoot to, maybe a month later, ‘He’ll be the greatest [expletive] player that has ever played.’ He just never stopped working to be the best that there ever was. And when you looked at Magic Johnson; he couldn’t shoot a ball more than 12 feet from the basket in college. And one year after he gets out of college, he jumps center in the NBA Finals, and has one of the great individual games of all time. So the great ones never stop working to become better. Unfortunately, today, you have guys with great potential, but they don’t realize how much work has to go into it to really become the player that these other guys have become.

Q: Pivoting a little bit, Dan Gavitt told me that Georgetown reaching the Final Four was “stunning” for a Big East Conference three years old. What did that breakthrough mean for his late father Dave Gavitt’s young league?

Packer: Dan knows what I thought of his father. Dave was so brilliant. I admire people in life that will ask questions of you even when you say, ‘Well, wait a minute, you’re a lot smarter than I am. Why are you asking me the question?’ And this would be an example. They didn’t start off playing their postseason tournament at Madison Square Garden. It started at Syracuse, remember? It wasn’t in Madison Square Garden. One day, Dave said to me, ‘What do you think about moving the games in the Garden? You think it would sell?’ And I said, ‘Dave, you got to be kidding me. Of course, it’s going to sell. It’s an incredible attraction.’ He had already made up his mind, but he knew that I would at least offer my opinion whether it was right or wrong. I did have an opinion. I said it will be fantastic. But those are the kind of things, the moves that he made, and in the right order. And then by picking those coaches. Like Jim Calhoun. I mean, Connecticut had no business ever being a national power in basketball. But they take Jim to go there because he knew he was such a damn competitor. And I remember, and Jim will say this to this day, ‘When I started recruiting for Connecticut, I told kids they could come and play against the best.’ He said, ‘It took me four years to be able to recruit and tell kids to come and play with the best.’ He became a national recruiter. They controlled the Northeast, which used to be a very lucrative area for recruiting. 

Q: John Thompson symbolized a lot of different things to different people. Do you think the public perception of John evolved later in his life? Did more people recognize him as one of the most consequential coaching figures in college sports history?

Packer: John was misrepresented by the press, with the exception of a few people, his entire career. I don’t think that he was ever given the credit for the person that he was. One of the greatest quotes of all time is when they were praising him for being the first Black man ever to win the championship [in 1984]. He said that’s because those better than I were not given the opportunity. I mean, just that statement alone, to me, is one of the greatest responses to a question in politics and business or in sports that have ever been made. That is the kind of thinker that he was. I have incredible respect for him as a person. I’ll tell you, my boys, when they were growing up, I always gave them an opportunity to go to one game a year on the road with me and let them pick out what game they wanted to go to. My oldest son, Mark, wanted to go to see Georgetown. So we go up there and Bill Shapland was their sports information director. When you went to Georgetown, you asked if you could come to practice, and at what time you could be there. You had to get permission. I was working with Gary Bender, so it would have been my first or second year at CBS. And so we get there, let’s just assume it was 2 o’clock. So Mark and Gary Bender and myself are standing outside the hallway, Bill Shapland says, ‘You can come into practice now.’ And John was so typical. He’s got a towel over his shoulder, he’s got street clothes. And he’s out in the middle of the court, pretty far away because they’re in their home gym with all the seats down. So I’m in here, and I’m standing against the wall, and John turns around and – knowing him as you did, you can imagine this – he turns around his head but not his body. And he shouts over to me and says, ‘Who’s that you have with you?’ I said, ‘Oh, John, this is my son, Mark.’ He said, ‘My son doesn’t come to practice unless he asks for an invitation and it is granted.’ And Gary Bender almost shit in his pants. And I thought, ‘You know what, he’s exactly right.’ But who would have noticed that?’ But it was like, ‘This is my office. I’m working at my trade. And you’ll get in my office when I want you there, and who I want there and when I grant you that permission. Give me that respect.’ 

Q: It seems like the significance of the 1982 Final Four grows the further we get from that weekend in New Orleans. Agree?

Packer: In my estimation, it would be the third-most important game that was played in college basketball in regard to what became the modern era. The first one would have been [TV executive] Eddie Einhorn putting together the game between UCLA and Houston in the Astrodome [in 1968]. People don’t realize how significant that was. I think that was the most important game because it put the whole nation – college basketball at that point was a regional sport but that put the whole nation on track to say, ‘Oh, my God.’ And a lot of it due to the fact that you had Kareem, John Wooden, Elvin Hayes. And it turned out to be a marvelous game, too. I think that was the most important game in modern basketball. The second-most important game, I think, was the Maryland-North Carolina State ACC championship [in 1974]. And the reason for that is not only was it a great game, with great players, mature players, and outstanding coaching, but it meant so much because only one team from a conference could go into the NCAA tournament. Just think what the tournament would be if we were still under those rules and how much history we never would have seen if people had gotten their way that only wanted a conference champion there. John Wooden also was a great friend in later life. He said, ‘Billy, this is going to ruin the game, to allow more than a champion to be in the tournament.’ He eventually changed from that, but it took about 10 years for him to change his mind after he had resigned from UCLA [in 1975]. The two guys that put that together were really not friendly – Willis Casey, who was another guy with great thought about the future and was persuasive and tough, and Wayne Duke. You had one from the ACC, one from the Big Ten. Both were very powerful figures in intercollegiate athletics, and when they joined forces, they are the ones that created the fact, ‘Let’s have multiple teams in there.’ That is what really made the college game. And then I would say, you take this ’82 game where you have two great conferences, great coaches, dome stadium, great game, players that then went on from that point and were Hall of Famers, both coaches were Hall of Famers, in a dome. So to me, those were the three most important games in the modern history.

Q: The great Tom McMillen called the ’82 final ‘seminal.’ But as a former great Maryland player, he played in that ’74 game that was also seminal.

Packer: The Maryland-NC State game, I really did feel that [it was special during the game]. I remember broadcasting that game. And as it was winding down in regulation, I said to my broadcast partner, ‘I don’t ever want this game to end.’ He said, ‘I don’t, either.’ I said, ‘No, because somebody is going to lose. And they go home. And that’s terrible.’ I remember when the game was over, I went down to the locker room just to say to [Maryland coach] Lefty [Driesell] and his guys what a thrill it was to have an opportunity to broadcast that game. Lefty was just coming out of the locker room and he says, ‘The guys voted not to go to the NIT – our season is over.’ Wow, that was a crushing experience for them. But it was for me also to realize, ‘How the hell can we have a national championship without a team that is very capable of winning it all?’ They didn’t even get a chance to go.