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A
You know that moment when you order food and suddenly everyone around you gets very interested in your dinner? Yeah, that's what GrubHub does. Gives you deals so good you'll have to guard them. Gold Days of grubhub plus is here. Four weeks of grubhub's best offers all month long in May only for grubhub members. And if you're not a member, you can sign up now for just 99 cents a month for six months. That's 90% off Grubhub membership. Auto renews and terms apply. Sign up now on the app or@grubhub.com plus gold don't miss it. Jason I'm Jason Concepcion and welcome to Six Trophies, a podcast hosted by myself and four time New York Times bestselling author Shay Serrano.
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Each week Shay and I are finding the best of the NBA storylines and
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then handing out six pop culture themed trophies for six basketball related activities. Listen to six Trophies with Jason Concepcion and Chase Serrano on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
Brendan Marks, you wrote about a pretty significant day in Armando Baycot's basketball career all the way back on April 2, 2022. Can you take us back to that day to Bakecott's hotel room in New Orleans and tell us what happened?
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A
North Carolina and Duke have just finished playing in the Final Four for their first ever meeting in the NCAA Tournament. Mike Krzyzewski's career has been ended by his arch rival. All of Armando Bacot's UNC teammates are a block away, enjoying all of the fe Bourbon street has to offer, and Armando, who badly rolled his ankle in the final minutes of the game against Duke, is not celebrating with him. Instead, he is stuck in his hotel room 10 or 15 floors above bourbon Street. His ankle is swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and he's deciding whether or not he should take off his shoe if he has any chances of playing the national championship game. This is a guy who had lost more games in North Carolina history than anybody in the last two decades. And as he's sitting there looking at his ankle, it's a question of how bad do I really want this? And he doesn't know if he takes his shoe off if he's ever going to get it back on again. So he decides, I'm going to do it. I'm going to sleep in my shoe. He sleeps in the shoe, goes on to play in the national championship game against Kansas two days later and unfortunately UNC loses and It's a moment he hasn't stopped thinking about in the year and a half since.
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B
Over the last four years, Armando Bacott has been a double double machine for one of college basketball's most storied programs.
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Armando Baycott, by the way, is 56th career double double in the books here today. Bacot another rebound and puts it back in.
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B
But the reminders of what Baycott hasn't accomplished continue to hang over him.
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We came this far and this was a huge goal for us was to just hang up a banner and I really wouldn't let any from, you know, getting to that point. And this won't be the last time y' all see this program here today, the athletics.
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B
Brendan Marks explains why Baycott decided to come back for one last high stakes season at Chapel Hill. Plus how his fame off the court could influence a potential championship run from Wondery. I'm Tiffany OSHINSKI. It's Friday, December 15th, and this is the leap. So Brendan, Armando Bacott is back for a fifth and final season as a Tar Heel. And today we're looking at what's at stake for him this year. So to set the stage, I want to rewind the clock for a minute so that we get a sense of the journey he's been on to get to this moment. So take us back to the moment that Bakehot's UNC odyssey began and tell us how did they find him in the first place?
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A
Kind of by accident. Now head coach Hubert Davis was an assistant at the time and was headed to New York to go see a player North Carolina is recruiting there. He gets word at the last minute the player is injured and not going to be participating. And so he hears, hey, there's this other random tournament in Richmond, Virginia of all places. And he texts Roy Williams and says, hey, coach, can I go? And he says, yeah, sure, what have we got to lose? So Hubert Davis goes, he walks into the gym at Richmond, Virginia, 9am the next morning and he sees this three man front court of dudes, all 6 foot 9 and taller. And he goes, awesome. I got here just in time for the U17 game. One of the ushers taps him on the shoulder, goes, Coach, these are 15 year olds. And one of those players is Armando Bacon. And it was early, but his report back to Roy Williams essentially was, this is a guy that we need to be watching. And obviously he couldn't have known what was coming next. But good thing he ended up canceling his flight to New York. Armando Bacot did not mess around North Carolina Came after him ever from that first meeting. Really hard, aggressive in recruiting him. Several unofficial visits where he got to meet the staff, the staff met Hay and his family and one night he was at his dad's house about 10 o', clock, goes upstairs, come back downstairs, dad, I committed. His dad goes, what?
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D
What happened?
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We said we were going to do this. Dad, I committed. He just knew.
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I chose to commit to UNC early because I just felt like it was the best fit and I didn't want to lead other coaches on and have them keep trying to recruit me if I knew where I wanted to go. Once I got to the coaches and just see how they play, I knew it fit me the best.
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A
You know, as his mom told me when I was writing the piece, he didn't want to play games. He didn't want to waste his or anybody else's time going on visits he knew weren't going to be productive. North Carolina was the place he always wanted to be and as soon as they offered, that was pretty much a sealed deal.
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B
So Baycot arrived in UNC what feels like a lifetime ago in 2019. What were his first couple of years like as a player at Chapel Hill?
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His first two seasons at North Carolina actually probably have started as poorly as any North Carolina player in the last 25 years.
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Stairs of disbelief on the Carolina bench. It's really been a season all year long. It's been hard to believe. A lot of close losses.
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Individually he was productive. He was a five star, top 25 guy. Somebody who entered college and realistically was considered a one and done kin. It didn't necessarily translate to any sort
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of team success for the win from half court. No. Another excruciating loss in a season of agony for Roy Williams and these Tar
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Heels in a place like North Carolina that is so accustomed to winning and the NCAA tournament, it's not an expectation. That's the standard if you don't make it. Something has gone horribly wrong to not win an NCAA tournament game in two years there. I mean, it was really, really hard on him.
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D
Before then I hadn't won anything. Like I was just one of the most losing players in UNC history. So I really didn't kind of reap the benefits of what comes with being here.
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A
And like obviously he lost more games as a freshman and a sophomore than any North Carolina player had. And like I said, In 20 years, in a two year period that included being part of Roy Williams worst ever team, the only losing season of the hall of Famer's career. So he knew what losing was like. And I think that's in a really important context because those experiences, his first two seasons at North Carolina, really propelled what has come after.
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B
So Baycott and UNC went 32, 30 his first two seasons combined. Definitely not up to the program's high standards. And it sounds like at that point, he kind of hit a crossroads when it came to his future at the school. Can you explain?
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Absolutely. You know, not only was he at a crossroads in terms of what do I do with my career, am I ready to go to the NBA? I see all my teammates are about to go professional. Roy Williams retired up. And pretty suddenly this morning when I
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talked to the team, it was really difficult. And then when I realized that I was going to walk through that tunnel
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for the last time as a coach, that was really difficult. And this is the guy who had been responsible for recruiting him. And, you know, he told me that that was the closest he ever came to leaving North Carolina.
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Obviously, Coach Williams leaving, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Like, possibly I was thinking leaving. I was probably.
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A
He strongly considered following his teammates and going to the NBA. He also strongly considered just moving back closer to home, going to a place like vcu, closer to Richmond. But in the end, Roy Williams ends up calling Armando Bacott and says, listen, I need you to trust me. I have a head coach coming who I know you're gonna, like, stick it out.
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D
We got somebody that I know you would love to play for. And obviously, Coach Davis, he recruited me. So once I knew Coach Davis was a coach, he didn't have to recruit me. I knew I wanted to come back.
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A
Lo and behold, it turned out to be Hubert Davis, the guy who first discovered him in that Richmond gym when he was 15 years old. And that belief in that relationship essentially was enough to convince him that North Carolina was gonna be the place for him. And, I mean, this is a guy who, I think looked at North Carolina, and every day when you walk into the Smith center, he's going in there for practice, and he's seen these great, great names up in the rafters. He's seen James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Brad Dougherty, Eric Montross, Sean May. He's seeing these legends, and they all had the same pedigree he did, but they all have a lot of things that he didn't have, which was winning, which was NCAA Tournament experience, which were these moments that. That really cement you in the lore of Carolina basketball. And so once Hubert Davis got the job, that was really his big selling point. To Armando, it was. You can be the guy to help deliver some of those moments for the team and you certainly won't regret coming along for the ride. And I don't think that he did based on what came next.
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B
Well, along those lines, after that gut check moment when he did decide to stay, remind us how things went for Baycott and the team when he was a Junior in 2021. 22.
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A
Yeah. So Hubert Davis, first year as head coach did not start out super well. It looked like early on Armando Macot might continue his losing ways. You know, North Carolina was getting smoked in the non conference, lost to Purdue, lost to Tennessee, got embarrassed by Kentucky. And in the middle of February we were questioning, is this even an NCAA tournament team? I mean, it looked like it might be three years in a row that Armando Bacott was not going to have any sort of postseason success. And then he flipped a switch and the team flipped the switch and he put together one of the most incredible postseason runs of all time.
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Inside Bacon. Bacon. And a foul. That one goes big. Got a chance at a three point play.
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He still is and would end up becoming the only player in NCAA tournament history to have six double doubles in a single NCAA tournament. One for every game. They're not even a top five seed. And second round they knock out the defending champs in Baylor in overtime and in a crazy game.
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And the defending national champions, the Baylor Bears, are out in round number two. A one seed is gone in the east and North Carolina is moving on to the Sweet 16.
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They end up beating UCLA, coming from behind, they get kind of lucky and play St. Peters in the Elite Eight to go to the Final Four. Setting up the only ever NCAA tournament game between Duke and North Carolina in the Final Four. With Coach K's career basically hanging in the balance.
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And here we go with Williams and Bacon about to meet for the opening tap and a little slice of history down here in the Superdome.
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And in that game he was tremendous,
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driving in high off the glass, followed up by Bacon. That's what happens when you go challenged as Williams did. Pairs the weak side. Big time finish, by the way. Bacon with seven points but 16 rebounds, including six.
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A
You know, he was arguably the best player on the floor, easily the most determined player on the floor. And in the last couple of minutes, right as North Carolina is really fighting for its life, he goes down with what looks like a pretty bad sprained ankle. And he checks out of the game
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on his feet now, barely able to put any weight on that injured foot.
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D
And his presence inside so big for
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this team, even when he's not scoring defensively, takes up so much size. So hopefully he's okay. He'll be able to get back, but not looking good right now.
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And it's like, okay, he's done. UNC is done. They can't do this without him. You blink and look over at the scorers table and he's coming back in
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D
and he's a warrior. Wow, that was a pretty nasty role. But gutted out here, understanding what's at stake.
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A
I will never forget asking him after the game what he was thinking when he came back in. And he said, you know, I was sitting in the Superdome on the bench and I looked up and I saw 70,000 people and realized I was playing in the biggest college basketball game of all time. And so he gets back in, ends up setting some huge screens for North Carolina. Win knockoff Duke, pull up three no good.
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Rebound Carolina. And the fairytale ride for the Tar Heels continues. And Coach K's legendary career has come to a close.
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A
He limps off the court. You know, he looks like he's in terrible, terrible shape. And then again, as we would come to find out just how bad it was, he goes and ends up in the hotel room later that night. All of his teammates are out celebrating and he's just sitting there looking at his ankle, knowing he's one game away from having the ultimate moment for himself and for the team and not knowing if he's going to be able to go. And like, I, I personally have never been in so much pain that I'm looking down at my ankle wondering if I should sleep with my shoe on because I don't know that I'm going to be able to get it back on. And the fact that he was willing to do that, I think is just such a great representation of how much drive he had. You know, he goes out before the championship game, basically whispers to his assistant coach, hey, I can't move out here. We got to get out here. You know, they limp, they. They throw him in an old ESPN broadcast room in the back and he's doing post moves back there. So that's how bad this guy wanted to play and wanted to have that ultimate moment.
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B
So how did Bakehot play in that championship game as he was gutting it out through that badly sprained ankle?
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He played well. He was leading all scorers at halftime
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with the follow and a foul and Carolina can take the lead at the line. That's the advantage. Management that side differential. A big fella A lot of guts with this kid.
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It's one of the grittier performances I've ever seen at any level of sports. I mean, I've covered the NFL, covered the NBA, covered the Olympics. And what he did that night was just sheer will. Sheer will.
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Johnson robs it. Hovachi comes over, and he scores. Anyway, North Carolina getting it from side to side, exploiting the mismatch. Bacon really having an impact inside on both ends.
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I mean, there's no way he should have been able to be out there. He could barely walk, and he's dominating. North Carolina goes on and puts together the fifth largest halftime lead ever in an NCAA title game. They're 20 minutes away from having this moment. And in the second half, everything started to fall apart. In the final minute of the game, North Carolina's down by one. It gives the ball to Bakecott, and d' ankle finally gives Bakecott with four.
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He slipped, slips on the floor, and he's hurt. He is hurt. He slipped, and he is still down.
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He has to to be helped off the court. It's totally shy. And ultimately that was the basket that would have given North Carolina the lead. With less than a minute to play in the national championship, and he never checks back in.
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Love's going to be the one to take it. Puts up the shot. It's off. The game is over. And Kansas completes the biggest championship comeback all time.
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He watches as Kansas confetti falls and he can't even walk off the court alone. He basically has to to be carried off it in this confetti shower that was supposed to be for him. And this incredible month that he's put together this awesome record, all of a sudden, poof, snap of the fingers. It all means nothing.
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B
Okay, Coming up, Armando Bacot finds a silver lining in that devastating loss and why the big man is back at UNC for one final.
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A
What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get ripped one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's throw. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing. Wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One. McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm London Arts.
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B
They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in.
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A
They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 back at base. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
Well, Brendan, there was a silver lining to UNC's crushing loss to Kansas for Armando Bacot personally, he suddenly became pretty famous and very marketable. Can you tell us about Bacot's rise in the NIL world?
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A
Absolutely. So name, image and likeness goes into effect essentially in July of 2021, July 1, and on July 2, Armando's on a zoom with his mom and with an advisor saying, okay, what do we do with this thing? What is nil? How do I make this work for me? And at first, as with many athletes, it's a pretty minor deal. It's a local burger shop, it's signing some autographs. It's a basketball camp back in Richmond. Nothing major, just enough to get some dollars in his pocket. And then North Carolina goes on this run. They go to the Final Four. He's a legend. He ties David Robinson's single season double double record. And in the course of the NCAA tournament, Armando texts his advisor at one point and goes, I think I'm going to be a little more marketable now. His advisor text backs, yeah, yeah, you are going to be marketable now. And so after the season ends, this dude has more deals than he can even imagine. He's swimming in them, drowning almost. And he ends up getting a part on Outer Banks, the Netflix show.
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D
I was actually supposed to be shooting today and tomorrow. We had practice and it was like another time too. I was supposed to be shooting. So I don't know, they might be mad at me right now, Netflix, because I keep having to cancel because of practice. But, I mean, it's been a great experience.
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A
He buys a stake and a horse at the Kentucky Derby. He's there dressed to the nines. He's flying around the country for all these product deals and endorsements.
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D
Once he got to March Madness, really, everything changed. I started to see those huge brands that I never really have a chance to be a part of, like, want to partner with me and things like that. And, I mean, it was really cool.
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A
He becomes one of the early faces of the NIL movement. And as his mother would tell Sports Illustrated, that year, essentially, in the course of a summer, he made upwards of $500,000. That's not a bad chunk of change to stay in college for. So the fact that he has this gregarious personality, the fact that he is 6 foot 10 and this huge dude and he's hilarious, and the fact that he does have the national pedigree that he has from playing in North Carolina, but also from that Final Four national championship run. It kind of comes together to create this perfect storm. And he's not afraid to be in the public space. You know, after a game they had against Virginia, he had a double double. I think he set a career high for rebounds. And he texted his business manager, tell Windex what's up. Because he was thinking about how he cleaned the glass. You know, he's told me that he's upset there's no In N Out burger in North Carolina because he would like to have a double, double deal. And so the NIL factor for him certainly has been a key reason why he has ended up being in school for so long. He's one of the most successful and marketable athletes in America. And again, without that, I would say there is a next to zero percent chance that he is still at North Carolina for his fifth season right now.
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B
Well, Brandon, as you wrote, there was also a downside to Bacot's NIL success story when it came to his basketball career. What did you learn about that?
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A
Yeah, so after North Carolina goes on that Final Four run, he's having all this success and everybody wants to partner with him, and that's great. He goes, he does all the deals, makes a ton of money, creates some lasting connections. You know what he doesn't do? He doesn't rest at all. He doesn't plan any time into his schedule to just get healthy.
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D
Basketball wise, I worked my tail off, but like, I think health wise, I did a terrible job of rehabbing and getting back fully healthy. And it just carried on even to the start of practice last year. I just wasn't all the way right.
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A
And, you know, this cantaloupe of an ankle that he had, it's not going anywhere quickly. You know, you need to give that thing some time to heal. And it's not like he was missing workouts. He was at everything he was supposed to. He's doing his skills training, but just no rest. And that was the effect that you saw early in the season. Last year, he started to break down. He hurt his ankle almost immediately. As soon as the season started, he hurt his shoulder. As a result, he hurt his other ankle. He just gave his body no time to recover, in part because he was trying to make the most of this window of opportunity that he thought he had with nil. And so they start the season as number one in the country.
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C
Hubert Davis and the Tar Heels went on a surprising run to the national title game last season with four starters back, including Big Matt Armando Baycott. And the tar heels earned 47 of 62 first place votes easily.
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A
And these expectations are everywhere. They're on the COVID of Sports Illustrated. He's preseason All American. You know, he was considered a front runner for national Player of the year coming off that performance, and it didn't happen. They lose a couple of games they probably shouldn't, and by December, they've lost four in a row, gone from number one to completely out of the top 25, and never really figured it out from there. And basically it got to the point where UNC needed to win the ACC Tournament to even make the NCAA Tournament again, and they lost that game.
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And Carolina fans seem to understand their
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fate, and this might not be the
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year for them to get an NCAA Tournament bid, and they might be looking at a trip to the nit.
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A
And that is how North Carolina became, with Armando Bacot as its face, the only preseason number one team since the NCAA. The tournament expanded in 1985 to miss the field altogether.
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B
Well, after the disappointment of not making the NCAA Tournament, it seems like Armando Bacot found himself at a crossroads again in his college career after four years at uncle. Can you tell us about the decision he was facing and what he ultimately
- [22:14]
A
decided to do after going through all he had been through, quite literally the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I mean, this man has been the hero of America in the NCAA Tournament. He, you know, vanquished Coach K for good, slayed the dragon, however you want to say it. And he had also been the face of a historically bad collapse. He had both, but he still didn't necessarily have that legacy that he had always kind of wanted for himself.
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D
Like, I really care about, like, leaving this place at a good point. And, you know, I really care about, like, how the fans perceive me. And I think last year I didn't want to, like, be remembered. Like, that was the last thing I left.
- [22:52]
A
You know, he hadn't done enough to earn having his jersey honored at North Carolina. So when he was looking up in those rafters and seeing all those legendary players, he's seeing Jordan and Worthy and Perkins. He's seeing all these guys. And for as much as he had done, he's not up there yet. And basically the way he conveyed it to me is he walked into the practice gym one day after the season, he looks up, he looks to his left, sees, okay, no title banner, looks to the right, says, okay, I'm not up there either. He goes in and sits down with his assistant coach. And his assistant coach says, hey, you know, you're going to get drafted. If you go, you'll be a second round pick, you'll be able to carve out a role. And he basically cut off his assistant coach and said, no, I'm not done yet. I got to unfinish Benis still. And he decides to come back for his fifth year and cement what is going to be one of the more fascinating UNC legacies of all time, regardless of what happens this year. But certainly again was, I think considering leaving very strongly. But that legacy piece, man, it just keeps tugging at him.
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B
How has Bakehot played the season and looking past this year? What are his NBA prospects? Is it fair to say that this year could potentially be his last big chance in the national basketball spotlight?
- [23:59]
A
It's definitely fair to say, you know, he is a guy who, like many conventional big men is going to have to prove that he is, is good enough at one particular skill to be able to make it to the NBA. And for him it's rebounding. He's North Carolina's all time leading rebounder. He's passed all of the legends to ever play at North Carolina. Tyler Hansbrough, Mitch Kupchak, Antoine Jameson, Rasheed Wallace, legends in the NBA too. And he's now atop that list. And he's played well this year. North Carolina's having, I think you could argue, its best regular season. Since he's been there, he's been a double, double fixture again. And he's one of the reasons why they are back in the national conversation essentially for the first time since before he was in school there. And so yeah, if he continues playing the way he's playing now, if he continues making North Carolina a fixture in the top 10, top 15, if he's able to go on another one of those runs and if he is able to finally put either a national title banner or his own jersey banner up in the Smith center rafters. Yeah, he's going to get a shot in the NBA. He's going to be a second round pick. But he's told me he looks at guys like Kevin Looney and says, you know, I can do that, I can be that guy. And so if he plays to his potential this year, he's going to have that opportunity. But obviously so much of his legacy at North Carolina, his long term basketball legacy, what he becomes in the NBA, it all hinges on these next four months. And so that's why I thought it was, you know, fascinating in the first place to kind of look at this long winding journey and how now these are essentially the Most important, four months of this guy's career.
- [25:31]
B
And finally, Brendan, what would Armando Bakeh consider a success this year? Is a national title, the only thing in his mind and the minds of fans that would cement his UNC legacy?
- [25:46]
A
I think it's that or getting his individual jersey hung up in the rafters. And to do that, it's a very specific set of criteria. You either have to be a first or a second team all American. You have to be the ACC player of the year or you have to be the most outstanding player of a national championship team, which is what he would have been had North Carolina beaten Kansas in that game two years ago. And so I, I think he has that opportunity. He was one of the front runners for ACC player of the year in the preseason. If he doesn't get either of those, I don't know that he's going to consider this year a success. I don't know that he'll consider his career success if he doesn't get that. And so, you know, we, we are told not to root for players, but for somebody who is as good a guy as he is, who's been through as much as he has, I think it's just really easy to empathize with Armando's journey and sort of to hope that he gets what really he's wanted his entire life.
- [26:32]
B
Well, thank you so much for telling the story, Brendan. Fascinated to see how the rest of the season plays out.
- [26:37]
A
Absolutely. I appreciate you guys letting me share it.
- [26:40]
B
You can find a link to Brendon Marks full story about Armando Bacott in our show notes and follow his coverage of UNC and Duke@theathletics.com okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Matt Stroup and edited by Anders Kelto. Audio editing by Adrian Tapia. Sound design and mixing by Erin May. Fact checking by Ian Hurley. The rest of our team includes Joe Richardson, Matt Beagle and Daniel Gonzalez. Our executive producer is Anders Kelto. The lead is executive produced by Dave Eason Marshall, Louie and Erin o'. Flaherty. For Wondery from Wondery, I'm Tiffany Oshinsky. We'll talk to you next week.