The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill men's basketball program honors fifty-one former players by hanging their jerseys in the rafters of the Dean E. Smith Center, the home to the men's basketball team on the university's campus. Of these, eight are both honored and retired. However, only seven jersey numbers are retired, as honoree Jack Cobb played before jersey numbers were the norm, meaning he had no number to retire. Justin Jackson and Joel Berry are the most recent players to be honored, following the 2016–17 season. Jackson qualified by being named the ACC Player of the Year and a first-team All-American. Berry was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2017 Final Four.

The North Carolina Tar Heels Men's basketball program is a college basketball team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels have won six NCAA championships in addition to a 1924 Helms Athletic Foundation title (retroactive). North Carolina has won a record 133 NCAA tournament matchups while advancing to 31 Sweet Sixteen berths, a record 21 Final Fours, and 12 title games. It is the only school to have an active streak of reaching the National Championship game for nine straight decades and at least two Final Fours for six straight decades, all while averaging more wins per season played (20.7) than any other program in college basketball. In 2012, ESPN ranked North Carolina No. 1 on its list of the 50 most successful programs of the past fifty years.