Is this title clickbait? Possibly. Do I care, seeing as it’s the dead of the offseason and not much basketball-wise is going on? Definitely not.
One of the things we most missed (I’m using “we” both to mean “us fans” and “UNC Basketball) this time last year was the alumni pickup games, which are an opportunity not just for a young team to play against a bevy of professionals with more developed bodies and basketball minds, but also a way for coaches to gauge their team against unfamiliar competition without any stakes. Coby White, for example, wasn’t really on the NBA Draft radar leading up to the 2018-19 season even in Roy Williams’ eyes, but the story goes that his domination of alumni pickup games convinced the coach, along with a lot of the alumni, that he’d only be seeing the point guard for one season.