Wooden Award Flashback: Antwan Jamison joins list of UNC immortals

The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it's 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.

Before Antwan Jamison became an All-Star in the NBA, he established himself as one of the best college basketball players of the late 1990s with a consensus National Player of the Year Season in 1998 that included Wooden Award honors.

Jamison led the Tar Heels to one of their best seasons in program history in ‘98, winning 34 games en route to Final Four berth while spending much of the season ranked atop the national polls. Alongside Jamison was future NBA superstar Vince Carter, but even still, there was little debate about who the alpha on that ‘98 team was.

As a junior that season, Jamison averaged collegiate career highs of 22.2 points and 10.4 rebounds per game. In 1996, he was the first freshman to ever be awarded first-team All-ACC honors before doing the same as a sophomore in 1997 in addition to  a consensus second-team All-American selection. Still, the steps he made the next season are what made him one of the most memorable players in modern college basketball history.

Upon declaring for the 1998 NBA Draft, Jamison explained what he loved the most about playing for one of the quintessential programs in all of American sports.

"Any time you put on that North Carolina jersey, whether we're on the road or at home, putting on that jersey and representing the history of Carolina and going out there with a target. A lot of teams pull all their punches,” Jamison said. “Night in and night out, every team we played gave us their best, and for myself and my teammates to have that unity, and for me to play three years with the guys I played with, that's something I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Jamison received the highest honor a former Tar Heels basketball player can receive at the University of North Carolina in 2000, as his No. 33 jersey was hoisted into the rafters of the Dean Smith Center.

After Jamison’s collegiate career came to against Utah in the 1998 Final Four, the nation’s best player was selected fourth overall by the Toronto Raptors. In a strange twist of fate, the Raptors would promptly trade Jamison to Golden State Warriors on draft night for the player Golden State selected with the very next pick at fifth overall. That player just so happened to be Carter.

Jamison spent 16 solid years in the NBA, earning All-Star nods in 2005 and 2008 in addition to being named the 2004 Sixth Man of the Year. Jamison ranks 56th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 20,042 career points, ahead of players such as Dwight Howard and Scottie Pippen.