Dean Smith had a fairly benign public image when he was coaching UNC, but he had an iron grip on his program. It really was pretty amazing. His players knew exactly where the line was and they very rarely even came close to it.
Of course, Mike Krzyzewski had a similar level of control at Duke, but Smith did it in a different way. It’s kind of hard to explain the difference. We’re not saying one was better than the other, just that they did things differently. As a younger Coach K might have said, they didn’t necessarily smoke out of the same pack.