A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  And yet, Darnelle Manning understood her son’s frustration when his father went back on the road again and again. “I know it bothered him when I was the only mother at father-son dinners,” she said. “But it couldn’t be helped.”

  During Danny’s junior year, he was targeted as one of the players in the country. He was 6–10 and he could run, pass, and shoot. It was also during that year that his father began to have heart problems.

  The doctors tried to treat him with medication, but it didn’t work. The doctors told the Mannings there was really no choice: Ed needed bypass surgery. It was dangerous, but necessary. The night before the operation, driving home from the hospital, Darnelle Manning explained to her son exactly what was involved in the surgery. “I didn’t want to hold anything back,” she said. “Danny had to understand that his daddy was sick and there were risks involved. I called a spade a spade.”

  When Darnelle Manning was finished, her son was silent for a moment. Then he began crying uncontrollably. “He was crying so bad I had to pull the car over. He was just frightened. I didn’t blame him.”

  Ed Manning came through the surgery. And, as often happens when a father and son have not been close, they became closer afterward. “Danny didn’t say a whole lot while I was in the hospital,” Ed Manning remembered. “But he was always there. I knew how much he cared.”

  That winter, as a junior, Danny led Page High School to the state championship. He was being courted heavily by both North Carolina and N.C. State. Both felt they had a great chance to sign him the following fall. They were right. Almost certainly, Danny Manning would have played for Carolina or State if Larry Brown had not become the coach at Kansas.

  Brown was coaching the New Jersey Nets in the NBA when Ted Owens, the longtime coach at Kansas, was forced to resign. One of the first people Kansas called during the search for a new coach was Dean Smith—Kansas, Class of ’53. Smith, knowing that Brown was unsure about whether he wanted to stay in the pro game, suggested the school contact him.

  If Brown was certain about one thing it was that he wasn’t certain about staying in the NBA. He had been successful everywhere he had coached—Carolina in the ABA, Denver in the NBA, UCLA in the NCAA, and New Jersey back in the NBA. But even though he won, Brown was never really happy. That had as much to do with the nature of the man as with the nature of the jobs. When he was in the pros, he wanted a college atmosphere. When he was in the colleges, he wanted the money of the pros.

  Kansas called Brown. Brown thought about it and decided he wanted to go back to college. He took the job with almost a month left in the Nets season. That created a tremendous amount of bitterness in New Jersey—but by that time Brown was in Lawrence putting together a coaching staff.

  One of the first people Brown called was Ed Manning. Did the fact that Ed had a son who was a junior in high school and perhaps the best player in the country influence him?

  “Certainly,” he said. “I never said it didn’t influence me. But what really makes me mad is when people say I hired a truck driver. They act like Ed never played or coached. He did both. They act like I never heard of Ed Manning before I came to Kansas. He played for me. He was a friend. I knew if I hired him, even if we didn’t get Danny, that he’d be my friend and work hard for me.”

  The ironic thing about Brown, who has been accused of disloyalty in so many places, is that he treasures loyalty. He knew Ed Manning would be loyal to him and he knew there was a damn good chance Danny would be loyal to his father.

  Hiring Ed was not all that easy. First, on the Kansas side there was the job description. It said “college graduate.” Ed Manning had left Jackson State three credits shy of a degree. Brown changed the job description. When that got out, the howling in North Carolina could be clearly heard in Kansas.

  Back in North Carolina, the Manning family was meeting to talk about the job. Darnelle Manning didn’t want her husband driving a truck all night after his heart surgery. Ed Manning wanted badly to get back in coaching. But then there was Danny, who was being asked to leave his home, his friends, and his teammates with one year left in high school.

  “Danny wanted to stay behind and finish up at Page,” Darnelle Manning said. “I told Ed I would stay behind with him and then move out in a year. Ed said no. If his family couldn’t go with him, then he didn’t want to go. We talked some more and finally decided this was best for Ed and for the family.”

  This was a major move, though, and Darnelle Manning wanted to be sure it was not going to be a brief one. “When we went out to see Larry,” she said, “I told him if he didn’t stay at Kansas at least five years, I’d kill him.”

  As soon as Ed Manning’s hiring and Danny Manning’s transfer from Page High School to Lawrence High School became official, the screaming intensified. Larry Brown was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first coach to hire an assistant with the recruitment of a star player in mind, but he had done it to the detriment of Dean Smith and Jim Valvano, who in addition to being big stars back home, had just won the last two national championships.

  Neither was thrilled. Valvano didn’t even bother to continue recruiting Manning. Smith went through with his home visit, telling Danny Manning, “Don’t go to school to make your father happy or to make Larry Brown happy. Go where you think you’ll be happy.”

  That was exactly the advice Darnelle Manning gave her son. When Danny worried about how it might affect his father if he didn’t go to Kansas, his mother told him, “You worry about you and no one else.”

  Darnelle Manning wasn’t certain Kansas was the best place for her son. She knew how much Ed expected from Danny and how demanding he would be coaching him.

  “You have to be sure you can deal with your daddy’s mouth for four years,” she told him.

  Danny nodded. “Mom, if I go too far away you’ll never see me play and you’ve been coming to my games since fifth grade.”

  “Danny, if you go play in West Hell I’ll see you play.”

  He thought about it some more and finally told his parents: “I want to play at Kansas.”

  The decision surprised no one. The circumstances that led to it meant that Manning would be under the microscope before he ever played a college game. He would be joining a veteran team, one that had reached the NCAA Tournament in Brown’s first season. They compared him to Magic before he ever scored a college point and predicted great things for the Jayhawks.

  “My freshman year, I worried too much about people’s expectations of me,” he said. “I kept hearing about how great I was supposed to be and when I didn’t play that way I let it bother me. It took me a while to figure out that if you try to live up to other people’s expectations of you, you’re bound to fail.”

  His team didn’t fail that year, going 26–8. Manning was the only freshman starter and tried hard to let the older players be the stars. He is not, contrary to what has been written about him, shy or quiet, but he is uncomfortable with the trappings of stardom.

  “My friends always laugh when they read about how shy and quiet I am,” he said. “When I’m comfortable, I’m not either one of those things. But when I go out in public, I’m never sure how to handle all the attention. People come up and want autographs or to talk about the game. It’s nice that they care but sometimes I just want to say, ‘You know, I didn’t come out tonight to sit around and analyze the game with you.’ But that’s rude and if I do it, people will think I’m an asshole.”

  Manning didn’t want anyone to think ill of him, so he rarely asserted himself, on or off the court. Almost from the first day he was at Kansas until the last, Brown was on him about that. Each year, he turned up the volume of his criticism, trying to make Manning understand that the best player has to be the leader whether he’s a freshman or a senior. Manning really didn’t want that role. He just wanted to play.

  “I think Danny would be happiest if he could just be the best player and have all the other players know it,” Brown said. “He would rath
er not deal with all the other things that are part of being a star. He’s got to learn that the world’s just not that way.”

  As a sophomore, Manning started to become the star everyone had thought he would become. Playing with a strong senior group led by Ron Kellogg and Calvin Thompson, he led the Jayhawks to a 35–4 record and the Final Four. Ironically, his best and worst games of the year came against schools from North Carolina.

  In December, because TV dictated it, Kansas went to Greensboro to play N.C. State. Kansas won the game, but Manning, booed unmercifully by the crowd which saw him as a traitor, had a terrible game. “He just couldn’t handle it,” Brown remembered. “He was so hurt by the booing that was all he could think about.”

  Manning got even with the Wolfpack in March. During the last ten minutes of the Midwest Regional Final, with KU trailing State by six points, he took over the game. He scored 26 points, was voted MVP of the regional, and got his team to the Final Four.

  But a week later, against Duke, Mark Alarie, a smart, experienced senior, kept pushing Manning away from his favorite shooting spots. He held Manning to 4 points and Duke beat the Jayhawks, 71–67, in a brutal, draining game. It was during that game that Archie Marshall, flying in for a lay-up, went down with the knee injury that would require surgery, keeping him out for the entire ’87 season.

  Manning was devastated by the loss. “He blamed himself,” his mother remembered. “I was concerned during that time because Larry and Ed were so tough on him. It seemed like all they could see was the negative. I kept telling Ed he needed to pat the boy on his butt more often. He would say he was just being a coach and I would say, ‘That’s our child, first, last and always. Tell him how proud you are of him.’ ”

  Ed Manning was proud of his son, but he also knew there were ways he could get better. “Mothers never see any need for improvement in their sons,” he said smiling. “Coaches do.”

  So do players. Danny understood his father’s criticisms and knew his father was proud of him without being told. “My dad just isn’t a verbal person,” he said. “That’s not his way. But I knew how much he cared and I knew he was always there to talk to if I needed him. I’ve just always talked to my mother more because she’s always been around. I’ve only been around Dad a lot during the last couple of years.”

  With the senior class of ’86 gone the next year, Manning had to step forward and be the team’s leader. Still, his way of leading was by example. Brown kept pushing him to do more, Manning just kept playing. Finally, after the Jayhawks had been blown out by a mediocre Arkansas team, Brown asked Manning to come out to his house for a talk.

  “We really got some things out in the open there,” Manning said. “I was just more comfortable because we weren’t in the office and I finally told him what I was thinking. I was sick and tired of all the yelling and I thought the other guys were too.

  “Coach Brown is always going to yell, that’s just his way, he can’t coach any differently. But I thought he needed to lighten up. He told me he wanted me to yell more and I said, ‘Why? You do enough yelling for all of us.’ ”

  The exchange was good for both men. Brown wanted Manning to be more open about his frustrations and he wanted him to be able to feel that he could come to him and tell him when he thought he was doing something wrong. Manning left happy to have blown off some steam and with a thought that he never let go of the next two years: “If the team loses, it’s the best player’s fault. He has the most to do with winning, so he must have the most to do with losing.”

  The Jayhawks finished strong that year, reaching the NCAA round of sixteen, winning twenty-five games, and losing a tough game to a good Georgetown team. When Brown signed two good junior-college guards—Otis Livingston and Lincoln Minor—and added another juco, Marvin Bradshaw, to Marshall’s return, it looked like the Jayhawks would be a Final Four contender again—if Manning stayed for his senior year and if Brown didn’t jump ship again, this time to the New York Knicks.

  As it turned out, Manning came much closer to leaving than Brown did. “I had delusions of grandeur,” he said. “The thought of making all that money just to play ball and not worry about school or anything was very tempting. I figured I could always come back and get my degree, so why not?”

  Darnelle Manning knew how her son was thinking. She wanted him to stay in school, not just for the degree but because she wasn’t sure he was mature enough yet to deal with the emotional rigors of the NBA. But she knew that to play the wailing, “don’t leave” mother would be a mistake.

  And so, when Danny said to her one afternoon in the kitchen that he thought he wanted to turn pro, she calmly answered, “Go ahead. Take the money and run.”

  Danny was shocked. “This is too easy,” he thought. He asked his mother what she really thought.

  “If you go, you’ll have the money, no doubt about it,” she said. “You’ll have money, money, and money. Now, what can you have if you stay? A degree. A championship ring, maybe. The Olympics. And the money, I suspect, will still be there.”

  Danny Manning laughed when his mother was finished. “I think I see your point,” he said. The decision was made. Darnelle Manning was relieved.

  “His father never went back for his degree and I’m sure Danny never would have either,” she said. “But more than that, I thought he had his whole life to be an adult but only one last year to enjoy being a child. I’m glad he decided to stay.”

  So was Brown, who had rejected an offer from the New York Knicks. He started the season with high hopes. Even after two losses in Hawaii, one to Iowa and one to Illinois, he wasn’t that concerned. “This time of year is for learning,” he said.

  But N.C. State, even if it was a learning game, was a big one. It was Manning’s first trip back to North Carolina to play since the booing experience of his sophomore season. And State was a very good team—one that Valvano was still tinkering with, but a very good team nonetheless.

  The game was scheduled during Christmas break. But the State students wanted to see the game, so many hung around an extra couple of days, others came back for it. This created a problem for State officials. They had sold the downstairs student seats to the public, figuring the students would be away. When the students began lining up to get in to their regular seats three hours before tip-off, it was apparent there was going to be a problem.

  The students wanted in. They were being told to stay out. Finally, Valvano, in his role as athletic director, was called out of the locker room to deal with the situation. Brown, sitting in the arena relaxing, saw him coming and asked what was going on. Valvano explained.

  “Let’s go talk to them,” Brown said.

  The two men walked to the door where the students were being held back by security. Valvano explained the seats had been sold. “But they’re our seats, we’re your best fans,” the students answered.

  “Hey, Jimmy, I agree with them, I think you should let them in,” Brown said.

  “Yeah, I probably should,” Valvano said.

  Before he could think about that for another moment, the rope was down and the students were racing into the building toward their seating section. Valvano and Brown just stood to the side watching, Brown laughing hysterically. That was enough for Valvano. He shrugged his shoulders, turned to his assistants and said, “You deal with it.” Then he headed back for his locker room.

  The assistant athletic directors tried. They pleaded with the students, now taking up the whole downstairs section behind the benches, to leave. They asked Dick Vitale, who was broadcasting the game on ABC, to make a PA announcement asking them to leave. “No way,” Vitale said. “The only person who can do that is Jim Valvano.”

  Jim Valvano wasn’t coming out of the locker room again until just before game time. The students weren’t going to leave. Finally, the State people gave up. They began racing around to find folding chairs and benches and began sticking them in aisles and anyplace else they could find. Anywhere there was an inch, a s
eat was set up. A riot was averted, but if a fire marshal had walked in, Reynolds Coliseum might have been shut down forever.

  The game began with Manning scoring 6 of the Jayhawks’ first 8 points. State dominated most of the first half, though, leading 35–26 with five minutes to play. Freshman point guard Chris Corchiani, who Valvano had started over senior Quentin Jackson, gave the Wolfpack more quickness and penetrating ability than it had had the year before. State looked tough.

  Kansas chipped back to within 41–36 at halftime, but State pushed the lead back up to 9 in the second half. Then it was as if Manning decided he was not going to be denied in this game. He went backdoor for a dunk. He posted up for a jumper, he tapped in a Kevin Pritchard miss. Finally, he made a steal and fed a gorgeous look-away pass to Marshall to tie the game at 56–56 with 9:40 left.

  It seesawed from there. Manning put Kansas ahead with two free throws, 66–65. Corchiani got overexcited and threw the ball away. Manning hit a hook for a 68–65 lead.

  It was 70–67 when State called time with 1:58 left. In the huddle, Brown called “bump-back-40,” a play that calls for the ball to go inside to Manning. Assistant Coach Alvin Gentry looked at Manning as Brown explained the play. Manning looked right back. “Just throw me the fucking ball,” he said.

  Gentry was shocked. Such talk was very un-Manninglike. First there was the matter of stopping State. Valvano wanted to get the ball inside as much as Brown did. But when the pass went to Shackleford, Manning stepped around him and intercepted. Kansas ran bump-back-40. Manning caught the pass, turned, and shot an eight-footer. It swished with 1:43 left, giving him 32 points and KU a 72–67 lead.

  That was the ball game. Manning had come a long way in the two years since he had cringed at the boos in Greensboro. “Now I look at it as sort of funny,” he said. “If I had played for State or North Carolina, I would have been cheered in this state. But, that’s the way life goes.”

  He paused. “I’m a senior now. When we were down at halftime, coach got on me. I understand that. At the end, I want the ball because I think I can make something happen.”