According to a statement sent by the athletic department on Monday, former Tar Heel basketball player Lawrence “Larry” Miller, 68, passed away in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Miller was seventy-nine. Miller was a key contributor to Dean Smith’s early success at Carolina and the only Tar Heel to earn both ACC Player of the Year and ACC Tournament MVP.
Miller, who started at small forward on Smith’s first two Final Four teams in 1967 and 1968 and was named to the first team All-America each year, was born in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, a little town about an hour north of Philadelphia. He set a school record by scoring in double figures in 64 straight games.
Miller finished with the fifth-highest point total in Carolina history, scoring 1,982 points across three seasons at an average of 21.8 points per game.
“Miller is truly one of the greatest players in college basketball,” Smith told The Daily Tar Heel after Miller, with 32 points, led the Tar Heels past Duke 82-73 in the 1967 ACC championship game. Duke, coming off two consecutive ACC titles, also recruited Miller, but Miller was impressed by the attention he received from Tar Heel greats such as Billy Cunningham ’65 and from Smith.
The News of Orange County reported in 2020 that Miller was “Smith’s first big catch and a springboard for Tar Heel basketball’s popularity.”
Smith recalled in a 2001 documentary called Jerseys in the Rafters: Carolina’s Greatest Stars, “For Larry to come here, maybe he wanted to start something, and he did.” UNC had a 70–21 record during Miller’s Carolina career. His jersey, No. 44, hangs from the rafters in the Smith Center.
He played professionally in the American Basketball Association for six seasons, setting the ABA’s single-game scoring record with 67 points as a member of the Carolina Cougars.
Former head coach Roy Williams ’72 (’73 MAT) said Monday that Miller was the player who sparked his interest in Carolina, according to a statement from Senior Associate Athletics Director Steve Kirschner.
Williams said his high school coach would listen to Carolina games on the radio, and the next morning he’d tell Williams how Miller did. Miller, who earned his degree in business administration, was inducted alongside Williams into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Miller was a blue-eyed campus icon. The Daily Tar Heel reported in 1968 that the athletics department’s public information office received at least 500 fan letters each of his last two seasons. One girl wrote, “I watch Larry Miller on television, but I can’t tell what color his eyes are. Could you tell me please?” Jack Williams, the sports information director at the time, said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.
The fans love him, especially the girls.” During his pro basketball career, Miller took acting classes in Hollywood and won an episode of ABC’s “The Dating Game.”
After his basketball career, he was rarely in the public eye.
He worked in real estate and construction in Raleigh and Virginia Beach before retiring and moving back to Pennsylvania.