Ricky Ross: A shooting star who flamed out way too soon

This article was published in Jayhawk Illustrated.

By David Garfield

It was one of the happiest days of my life.  

Flash back to April 1979 when high school phenom Ricky Ross from Wichita South signed with Kansas. He chose the Jayhawks over North Carolina, Arkansas and Wichita State.

Ross, who verbally committed to KU twice before “wavering” and ultimately signing with the Jayhawks, told the Lawrence Journal-World at the time “that there was very big pressure” to choose KU, with his high school coach Bill Himebaugh, his mother, and KU backers in Wichita all favoring Kansas.

But now that his decision was finally made, he was looking forward to starting his collegiate career in Lawrence.

“I’m excited about playing with Darnell (Valentine, KU junior-to-be point guard and All-American candidate),” Ross said. “With all the pro coaches and scouts that will be watching him the next two years, that has to be a plus for me, too.”

Himebaugh was elated his franchise player was going to be a Jayhawk.

“I think he had KU in his mind all along,” Himebaugh said. “He’s the type of player who can turn a program around. And that guard tandem of KU now has to be one of the best around.”

I was 12 years old growing up in Lawrence, and recall going to our preseason baseball meeting at coach Bill Platz’s house that night after learning Ross had signed with Kansas.

As soon as I arrived, my buddy asked me, “Did you see we got Ricky Ross?”

I smiled and said I did.

For someone whose life revolved around KU basketball 365 days a year, the thought of Ross teaming with Valentine in the KU backcourt had me salivating. They would be the best guard tandem in college basketball, I predicted. With Valentine one of the best penetrators in college hoops and Ross a deadly pure shooter, I believed they could revolutionize Kansas basketball.

As I sat happily during our baseball meeting looking forward to my final season with the Merchants, my mind couldn’t help but dance with images of Ross raining jump shots throughout Allen Fieldhouse. The fans would come to their feet and roar. KU would win the Big Eight title. And then the Jayhawks would make a deep run in March and win the national championship. 

I had this all figured out. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

***

With Wichita Heights standout and KU signee Perry Ellis concluding a memorable high school career (he led his team to four consecutive state championships and a 97-3 record while Heights set a state record with 62 straight victories), the 6-8 forward has been compared to some of the greatest players in Wichita City League history.

Including Ricky Ross.

Longtime Wichita Eagle columnist Bob Lutz penned in his February blog that Ross ranks as the greatest player to come out of Wichita that he’s seen since the early-1960s. High praise, indeed, considering Wichita City League hoops has produced the likes of NBA players Valentine, Antoine Carr, and former Jayhawk star Greg Dreiling. 

With Ross in the news, I’ve been thinking of him more often these days, not that he’s ever drifted far from my thoughts since that magical day in 1979 when I read he was going to be a Jayhawk, the next superstar to don the crimson and blue.

He was a ballyhooed McDonald’s All-American and part of arguably the greatest high school senior class of all time, which also included Ralph Sampson, Dominique Wilkins, Isiah Thomas, James Worthy and Jon Paxson. Ross led Wichita South to consecutive state championships and broke Valentine’s City League career scoring record while averaging 32.1 points his senior season.

He once scored 47 points in a game (before the three-point shot), a City League record which stood for 32 years before Jayhawk-to-be and Wichita North standout Conner Frankamp broke it with 52 points in December 2010.

Ross, along with fellow McDonald’s All-Americans Valentine and Tony Guy, was a key reason why KU still had high hopes for the 1979-80 season despite losing starters Paul Mokeski and Wilmore Fowler (he transferred to Georgia after his sophomore season) from the 1978-1979 team, which went 18-11 and won the Big Eight Holiday Tournament.

The Jayhawks, though, stumbled out of the gate, losing five of their first nine games. After next winning three straight, KU finished the season losing nine of its final 17 games to finish just 15-14.

The parts just never fit, and Ross never found his way, despite finishing second on the team with 11.7 points per game. He pouted when he was on the bench and pouted when he didn’t get the ball.

What was supposed to be a dream season and a dream backcourt never materialized. My thoughts of winning the national championship dashed early in the season, although I still looked forward to watching Ross play in the Phog. He had one of the most beautiful shots I had ever seen, picture-perfect form with a feathery touch that he released so effortlessly, the kind of jumper that former superscout Howard Garfinkel might describe as “soft as drifting fog.”

And he had all the confidence in the world. My dad, who was a professor of social welfare at KU for 34 years (his most famous student was KU legend Bud Stallworth), once spoke to Ross on campus. He said Ricky told him that he believed all his shots would hit nothing but net.

He ended up shooting 44.4 percent from the field and 73.3 percent at the free-throw line, while chipping in 1.7 assists, 1.0 steals, and 2.5 rebounds per game. Along with his 11.7 point average, these certainly weren’t All-American stats. And he and Valentine certainly didn’t revolutionize Kansas basketball as I had hoped.

Still, I was hopeful he would blossom at Kansas the next three seasons. But then word came out prior to his sophomore season that Ross had decided to transfer after being caught with two other KU teammates using an assistant coach’s credit card for long-distance phone calls. I was stunned and saddened that Ross would leave. While I didn’t think Ricky seemed too happy at KU, I saw Kansas basketball through rose-colored classes and believed everything would work out.

So I decided to write a petition imploring Ricky to stay at KU. I would get all my friends and classmates to sign it, deliver it to Ricky, and surely he would see how much he was still loved by Jayhawk fans and decide to stay.

That was my plan at age 13, when I still believed in miracles, I still believed in the unlimited possibilities of the mind, and I still believed everything was possible after watching my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series a year before after trailing Baltimore three games to one.

My hero Willie Stargell was the Pirates’ savior who rallied his team and hit the game-winning home run in Game 7 to lift Pittsburgh to the sweetest victory of my life. Now, as events and circumstances suggested otherwise, I held on to faint hope that Ricky was still KU’s savior who could find happiness in Lawrence.

One day in Spanish class at South Junior High, I was working on my petition (instead of paying attention to the teacher) when my classmate Amy Lienhard, who sat next to me, asked me what I was doing. I told her my mission and asked if she would sign my petition and help keep Ricky in Kansas.

“Oh no,” she said. “We don’t want him.”

Amy, the daughter of Bill Lienhard, a starter on the 1952 KU national championship team, was one of the nicest and most popular people in school. I respected her opinion, and I believed if she wouldn’t sign my petition, who else would? Maybe Amy was right, I thought. Maybe Ricky wasn’t a good fit for KU.

Just like that, I dropped my petition. Later, I heard stories of how assistant coach Lafayette Norwood used to walk Ricky to class, and he’d typically walk out the back door. I also heard whispers he didn’t get along with Valentine.

Guy relayed an anecdote to me several years ago about Ross’ selfishness. The story goes that Ross scored over 20 points one night, but KU lost. Afterwards, all the Jayhawks were feeling down in the locker room, except Ross. He was upbeat since he had a good game and wondered why his teammates were so depressed.

Looking back, it was indeed best that Ricky left KU. Kansas basketball moved on without him, bouncing back from that disastrous 15-14 year and advancing to the Sweet 16 the following season in 1980-81. Guy emerged as a star and the team’s leading scorer after being moved back to his natural position at shooting guard, where Ross had played the previous season. Valentine and Guy became one of the best backcourts in college hoops, and there was great team chemistry, unlike in Ross’ freshman season, where dissension and egos ruled KU hoops.

***

But whatever happened to my hero Ricky Ross? Did he ever live up to the hype? Did he ever find stardom in college and the NBA?

After finishing his lone season at KU, Ross was a lost soul trying to find himself. He made brief stops at Wichita State (left school after failing to qualify academically) and Santa Ana (Calif.) College (he never actually enrolled) before landing at the College of Marin in California, where he averaged a nation-leading 30.5 points while achieving — get this — a 3.0 GPA.

Ross finally realized if he wanted to play hoops, he had to crack the books. In a 1982 interview with Sports Illustrated , Ross credited College of Marin head coach John Johnson for getting his life back on track. 

“Coach Johnson was a big influence in turning me around," Ross told SI. "I needed somebody like that, and fortunately I ran into a great guy."

Ross ran into another “great guy” and strong authority figure in head coach Nolan Richardson, when he next transferred to Tulsa. He found great success there in two seasons (1982-84), averaging 17.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, while becoming the player everybody expected out of high school.

I ran into Richardson in November 2008 after his press conference leading up to his induction into the College Basketball Hall of Fame that night in Kansas City. Richardson smiled when I mentioned Ross’ name.

“Ricky Ross, my man,” Richardson said. “Let me tell you what, Ricky played for me for two years. That kid could shoot the basketball. He was a player. I always thought he could have been a very, very, very super point guard because he was 6-7, he was rangy. The thing that Ricky didn’t play when he got there, is he wouldn’t play (any) defense because he was such an offensive threat. But in his senior year, he became a very good defensive player in our style.”

I thought surely Ross would make the NBA after his experience at Tulsa and follow the lead of his fellow high school class members of 1979 who excelled in the pros like Sampson, Wilkins and Thomas.

I was puzzled that he didn’t get selected until the third round (53rd pick overall) in the 1984 NBA Draft by the Washington Bullets, and even more confused when I didn’t see Ross on the opening day NBA roster.

And he wasn’t on a roster the next year. Or the next. Or the next.

You see, Ricky Ross — this once can’t miss superstar — never made the NBA, and to my knowledge, never found basketball success outside the NBA like in Europe or the minor leagues. I asked Richardson that November day in Kansas City what happened.

“I’ve had several players (play in the NBA), but Ricky to me should have been one of those guys that spent 10 or 12 years in the NBA,” Richardson said. “I think sometimes he listened to the wrong people, and the wrong people kept (telling) him the wrong things. It’s a combination of many things, but Ricky had so many other people in his life telling him what to do. Sometimes, those people were more concerned about themselves than about Ricky Ross.”

I always had a curiosity and affinity for Richardson’s “man.” That’s what drove me to pick up the phone and call then-KU coach Larry Brown 20 years earlier on his Hawk Talk radio show during the 1987-88 season and ask his thoughts on why Ross never found his way to the NBA.

“Ricky Ross’ problem was with his head more than his ability,” Brown said. “He didn’t like school, he wasn’t the hardest worker, and I think he got himself into a rut. He had a great year at Tulsa his senior year. I just don’t think he gave himself enough chance to be prepared for four years, and that’s why he didn’t make it.”

That fact saddens Brian Martin, the former Jayhawk forward who played against Ross in high school at Wichita Northwest. Martin said Ross was the bomb in high school.

“I just thought he was one of the most pure shooters I ever saw,” Martin told me. “He would dribble across the court, one dribble, look at his high school coach, his high school coach would give him the nod, he’d pull up and shoot. Nothing but net. He did that to us twice in one game in high school. He was amazing. Unfortunately, he had some of the greatest talent I think any guard had, too bad it was a waste. He was a phenomenal shooter.”

Richardson, too, thought Ross was all the rage at Wichita South.

“Out of high school, whew, Ricky was high, high profile,” Richardson gushed. “He was so high we didn’t even try (to recruit him) because we knew he’d probably end up going to Kansas. And then when he went off to junior college and when things changed, we started recruiting him.”

While Martin said he wasn’t around Ross when he traveled on his basketball odyssey after high school, he had his doubts that Ricky possessed the mental makeup to be an NBA player or have success playing in other professional leagues.

“I just don’t think he was disciplined enough to be able to handle the structure and life because in pro ball, it’s tough,” said Martin, who played briefly in the NBA and several years in the minor leagues and overseas. “Your lifestyle outside the game, nobody cares what you do as long as you show up for the games. I saw a lot guys when I was playing that couldn’t hack the responsibilities. Great talents, but couldn’t make it because they were on their own.”

Martin added that Ross was very close to his mom.

“I think he had a hard time being that far away from family,” Martin said.

***

Far away — both literally and figuratively — from the bright lights of the NBA — I watched Ricky Ross play an AAU game in Topeka in the early-to-mid 1990s. When I first heard he’d be in Topeka, despite knowing Ross was past his prime and in his mid-30s, I was overjoyed and thrilled to get another glimpse at the player I once worshipped.

So I sat in Lee Arena on the Washburn campus with about 100 other fans and watched Ross play a virtually meaningless basketball game. Armed with a notebook and pen, I wanted to write down everything I saw, every move Ross made, every shot that swished through the net. I wanted to rediscover the great talent who moved me so much that day I read he had signed with Kansas, the one who had initially inspired me to write a petition asking Ricky to stay at Kansas.

I was soon disappointed in what I saw. I was no longer an impressionable 13-year-old boy, but a young man trying to find my way who was about to turn 30. Maybe that was part of the reason I was not awed by Ricky’s jump shot this night. But with my wiser eyes, the older and aging Ricky didn’t move as well, didn’t shoot as well, didn’t have that same magic that I once remembered.

He didn’t stand out during the game, and he certainly wasn’t the Second Coming headed to the League. Ricky, who had surely given up that dream years ago, was just a former shooting star who had flamed out way too soon, now trying to seemingly feed his hoops fix and maybe hold on to part of his past when he was the baddest baller ever out of Wichita. 

From an outsider’s perspective, he seemed inexpressive, maybe even solemn that day, and I truly wondered if he ever found peace or if life was just filled with memories and yesterday’s hoop dreams.

Memories when he lit up Tulsa basketball for two years, memories of when he was the bringing crowds to their feet in Wichita, memories that were surely brought to life if he read Lutz’s words about him in February when he ranked him the No. 1 all-time City League player in Wichita. (Ross, a mystery man who’s kept out of the public eye all these years and been extremely difficult for media to track down, is reportedly still living and working in Wichita.)

“Go down the list of basketball attributes, and Ross gets an ‘A’ in all,” Lutz wrote in his blog. “He was a prolific scorer, but his mentality was the pass first, shoot second. He didn’t shy away from rebounding, despite a spindly frame on a 6-6 body. And Ross played defense because his coach, Bill Himebaugh, wouldn’t allow him not to.”

For a moment, Ricky Ross was a young, McDonald’s All-American again, back on top where he belonged. But after reading Lutz’s remarks, I soon became saddened.

I just couldn’t help wonder and ask myself: What might have been?