T H I R T E E N : Boone, North Carolina

Michael Jordan and Buzz Peterson came out of the same high-school class of 1981. North Carolinians both—Michael is from Wilmington, on the coast; Buzz calls the hills of Asheville home—they wound up together at Chapel Hill, where they formed a close and lasting bond.

With Peterson being the easier to track down, and having the less well-told story, I made my way to Boone, where he was coaching at Appalachian State. Through Buzz I learned more than a few things about Michael. Most of all I learned about a friendship that had survived, even flourished, through Jordan’s extravagant success.

When Jordan decided in the fall of 2001 to return to the court, Buzz was among the few people whose counsel he sought. "You’d better make sure the veterans are in place so you win," he told him. "You know as well as anyone that if you don’t win, you’ll be miserable."

While Michael has put his reputation on the line once again, Buzz has kept testing himself with more and more challenging coaching assignments. Twice in 17 months he relocated, from Appalachian State to Tulsa, and then to Tennessee. But true to his subject of concentration in college—like Jordan, Peterson was a geography major—he never did stray from the same 36 or so degrees of latitude.

FOURTEEN: IRELAND