‘Walking together’: Leaky Black of UNC finds confidant in Jackie Manuel to combat anxiety
CHAPEL HILL — It has become their routine before North Carolina basketball practices and games, Leaky Black and Jackie Manuel finding each other during the buzz of anticipatory commotion to spend a quiet moment together in thought and prayer.
Manuel, the former Tar Heels player now a member of coach Hubert Davis’s staff, imparts the message. Black, the senior swingman, focuses on his breathing and soaks in the blessings, another sacred piece of shelter in navigating the forces just beneath the surface.
Light and darkness, dreams and nightmares, angels and demons all are there, whether at peace or in conflict, the churning undercurrent of anxiety.
“It’s different every time,” Black told the Burlington Times-News. “He’s not quoting anything, and he never says the same thing twice. It’s never like the same prayer. He’s just speaking from the heart.”
Clear your mind. Breathe and let it happen. Stay in the flow.
Heart to heart and arm in arm along the same path, their uniquely shared journey has reached the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament, as eighth-seeded North Carolina (25-9) of the Atlantic Coast Conference meets top-seeded Baylor (27-6) from the Big 12 Conference on Saturday in an East Regional matchup.
The three-year starter Black, an accomplished defender whose offense has improved across the second half of this season, has gained a mental guide, kindred spirit, big brother and confidant in Manuel, the program’s director of team and player development, who was a starter and defensive specialist on the Tar Heels team that claimed the 2005 NCAA title under the legendary Roy Williams.
Manuel only had watched Black from afar until joining North Carolina’s new staff when Davis was promoted to the head coaching post last April, appreciating the versatile package of skills the stretchy 6-foot-8 Black wields, with length capable of applying the clamps to a range of opponents from point guards to power forwards, while also contributing to a number of complementary categories.
They’re members of an exclusive club in the pages of school history as two of six Tar Heels to compile 500 points, 400 rebounds, 200 assists, 100 steals and 50 blocked shots during their college careers. Danny Green, George Lynch, David Noel and James Worthy are the others. So Manuel, himself an athletic wing during his playing days in Chapel Hill, had felt a certain connection with Black before they ever met.
“I’m like, maybe I can give Leaky some pointers, some tips that can benefit him,” Manuel told the Burlington Times-News. “I was thinking more about the basketball side initially. But then once we started discussing some of the things that he was dealing with, some of the anxiety things that he was dealing with, it became a different relationship. It became more than just the game of basketball for the two of us.”
More: UNC draws No. 8 seed in loaded East, matchup with Marquette for NCAA Tournament opener
A breakthrough conversation happened unexpectedly one summer morning, after a shooting session in the Smith Center that included graduate assistant coach Brandon Robinson, one of Black’s former North Carolina teammates, and a team manager. Black and Manuel stayed behind in the empty 21,750-seat arena, the All-ACC defenders talking and sharing stories surrounded by a silent sea of baby blue.
In that unscripted setting, Black began to find a release valve for the perfectionist’s tension he has carried. His arms had gone entirely numb at times, the anxiety crippling some workouts in the past. But the realization dawned that he wasn’t alone. Manuel told Black of nightmares that haunted him two decades ago as a Tar Heels player, the dread of air-balling shots on meaningful stages preying upon his sleep.
“My first encounter with him, he talked to me the first time like he knew me forever,” Black said. “Honestly from the day he stepped into my life, he really changed my life. It’s kind of hard to put into words. He told me how when he was a player he was like the exact same way as me. It was just like looking into a mirror when I was talking to him. We really opened up to each other.”
‘I just couldn’t feel my arms’
The 22-year-old Black, an in-state product from Concord, will participate in his sixth NCAA Tournament game when North Carolina meets Baylor on Saturday. He played sparingly in three NCAA games when the Tar Heels advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2019, at the end of a freshman season interrupted by an ankle injury.
It shelved him for 13 games that season, while classmates Coby White and Nassir Little developed into one-and-done NBA Draft picks, and ultimately the cost became more detrimental. That summer, during shooting drills with former assistant coach Steve Robinson putting him through the workout, Black went numb.
“Out of nowhere, I just couldn’t feel my arms,” he said. “When I say I couldn’t feel my arms, I literally could not feel my arms at all. It was just the weirdest thing ever. And there’s nothing you can really do about it, because once it happens, it takes over your body.
“I wasn’t scared or anything, I just want to do so well and I hold myself to high expectations. I just wanted to make every shot. And then you start thinking about the future, thinking about the next shot, it’s like, ‘I’ve got to make this one, I’ve got to make this one.’ And then you don’t make it. You start getting anxious and you start tensing up, and that’s where it really took over.”
Black considers the tingling episode, which recurred on occasion, the beginning of a descent. North Carolina peaked at No. 5 nationally early on in November of the next season, as Black moved into Williams’ starting lineup, alongside the likes of freshman star Cole Anthony and bruisers Garrison Brooks and Armando Bacot.
But injuries to Anthony and Robinson in the backcourt, talent deficiencies in other areas and rotten luck in the form of piercing losses in the dying seconds of games, plummeted the Tar Heels to a 14-19 final record, the proud program’s first losing season in 58 years.
That team’s failures hit Black in a personal place. He was hobbled to an extent, playing in all but one of the 33 games despite the lingering effects of the ankle issue from the season prior that eventually required surgery. A self-described introvert, he said he didn’t necessarily feel sadness, but more a burdening disappointment about the way things unraveled.
“You have people rooting for you and you just want them to be proud of something you’re a part of,” Black said. “I feel like I just wanted to make everyone proud and having that weight on my shoulders, that’s where it started.
“We had that horrible year, battling injuries and stuff. When we started losing, I didn’t want to just leave my guys out there alone. I’m not making excuses for anything, but I think I should’ve just sat that year out, got my ankle surgery then. That really triggered my anxiety that entire year. I really backed away from the social media, I really didn’t feel like doing interviews. I’m obviously fine with doing them now, but back then, I don’t know, I can’t really put it into words.”
Black took up meeting with a therapist, an arrangement facilitated by Doug Halverson, the head athletic trainer for North Carolina’s basketball team.
“I was searching for what was really going on,” Black said. “I feel like I’ve been at the bottom of the bottom. I feel like these last few years, I’ve had my highs and had my lows, and my lows have been very low. And fast forward to meeting Jackie, it changed my life in a good way. He really kind of got it under control for me.”
Armor and sword for each other
Eight or nine years ago, when Manuel was starting out as an assistant coach at UNC Greensboro, he arrived upon an unanticipated moment of enlightenment. All of a sudden, the college and professional playing career that had been dependent on dogged defense behind him, his shots were connecting with precision.
North Carolina’s 2005 national title team featured five scorers who averaged double figures — the Tar Heels were the highest-scoring team in college basketball then — and four first-round picks in the NBA Draft.
Manuel didn’t miss a starting assignment that season as a valuable contributor yet inconsistent scorer, and visions of air-balled shots and unsuccessful outcomes, not championship banners, tormented his dreams. It wasn’t until after his playing days were done that the nightmares subsided.
“I stopped having that anxiety, because it was like, ‘Well, I don’t play anymore,’ ” Manuel said. “But it reared its head in a different form, so you always have to work through it. So I became intentional about certain things I was doing and reading.”
Manuel recently finished “The Inner Game of Tennis” and has dispensed the book’s wisdom for overcoming self-doubt barriers, along with podcasts to which he might be listening or other readings that resonate, to Black in bite-sized nuggets. The two have found both armor and sword in one another.
“That’s where our relationship is going every single day,” Manuel said. “The thing we’ve been talking about recently is staying within the flow, the flow of what you’re doing. It’s easy to get distracted by so many different things. When you do, when all these thoughts come to your head, breathe. Focus on your breathing. More mindfulness, focus on your breathing, and get back to the flow of what you’re doing and trying to accomplish.
“We’re working on that skill set, and the beautiful thing about the journey is, we’re walking together. So the same time he’s going through it, and I’m practicing the same skill sets on my journey.”
Black’s 47.9-percent shooting from the field and 88.2-percent shooting on free throws this season mark the best clips of his career in those categories. After averaging 3.3 points through his first 17 games of the season, and going scoreless four times, he has supplied four double-digit efforts and averaged 6.8 points across the last 16 games.
Meanwhile, the defense delivered by Black has been unwavering, with lock-down performances turned in against Georgia Tech’s Michael Devoe, North Carolina State’s Dereon Seabron and Virginia Tech’s Hunter Cattoor, as per the task of guarding the opposing team’s top perimeter threat.
Duke’s AJ Griffin poured in 27 points against various Tar Heels defenders last month in Chapel Hill, before Black drew the assignment and erased him earlier this month during Mike Krzyzewski’s farewell game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Griffin had just five points in 34 minutes of action. In North Carolina’s NCAA Tournament opener on Thursday, Black put the clamps on Marquette standout Justin Lewis, the All-Big East first-teamer, who entered averaging 17.1 points per game, and scored just six points on 2-for-15 shooting from the field.
Black said he has heeded Manuel’s counsel about playing this season to recapture the joy of basketball, about accentuating the use of the gifts and tools he possesses, about taking the court in peace and having fun in the spirit of competition, about losing himself in the game. No outside expectations to appease or people to please.
“That’s the gist of our prayers, really,” Manuel said.
Clear your mind. Breathe and let it happen. Stay in the flow.
“We hug a lot,” Black said. “I’m not even like a hugger or anything, but that’s my guy, man. That’s really my guy.”
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Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Times-News: UNC basketball: Leaky Black leans on Jackie Manuel in battling anxiety
