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Former University of North Carolina men's basketball coach Dean Smith was one of the most successful coaches ever to hold a whistle. In his 36 years at North Carolina, his teams won a record 879 games. They also captured 17 conference championships and two NCAA championships, claimed 30 seasons with at least 20 wins, and made 11 Final Four appearances. Coach Smith developed 26 consensus All-Americans, five NBA rookies of the year (including the great Michael Jordan) , and 25 first-round draft picks.But Smith's basketball accomplishments tell only part of his story. You may not know that Smith worked to abolish the death penalty in North Carolina and openly supported gay rights. As a high school senior in 1949, five years before the Supreme Court's historic ruling in Brown vs.
