Times have been tough on Danny Manning since he was named Wake Forest head basketball coach on April 4, 2014. While he won at Tulsa in his first head-coaching job and led the Golden Hurricane to the NCAA Tournament in his second year in 2014 for the first time since 2003 (21-13, 13-3 in league play, tied for first), where they lost to UCLA in the second round, the Jayhawk legend hasn’t been very competitive in the monster ACC. He’s coming off back-to-back 11-20 seasons, and there was speculation he might be fired after this season. Manning, who also went 11-20 in 2015-16, has posted just a 65–93 (.411) record at Wake in five seasons, including a dismal 24-66 record (.267) in conference play.
Manning has only had one winning season at Wake in 2016-17 with future NBA lottery pick John Collins the team’s star. Wake went 19-14 that year and lost in the NCAA First Four to K-State. That’s when Wake AD Mike Wellman gave Manning a big contract extension.
In March, Wellman, the outgoing Wake AD, gave Manning a vote of confidence and said he would be back for another season. John Currie took over as new athletic director in May, so if Manning doesn’t show significant improvement next year, Currie could let him go. Manning’s contract reportedly runs through 2025 with a reported 18 million buyout, one reason sources say Wellman was reluctant to fire Manning.
Both Wellman and Manning spoke at their March press conference knowing the Wake basketball program needed to improve.
According to the Winston Salem-Journal, Wellman said the future with Manning is “bright with him at the helm.”
“Our fans and everyone associated with this program expects us to have a championship-caliber program and we believe we are capable of doing that, we have done that in the past and we will do it in the future,” Wellman said.
Wellman was encouraged how more competitive the Demon Deacons were at the end of the season.
“So often, in a situation like that, you can lose a team. You don’t have their attention, you don’t have their full commitment,” Wellman said. “When I would go to practice, I never saw that. I saw them working hard, I saw them absorbing what the coaches were saying and trying to execute it.
“And that carried over into the games. The grit and the determination and the chemistry, I thought, was evident during the games, even though we didn’t win some of the games.”
Like Wellman, Manning was also optimistic.
“I’m excited about this team. I think the young men that we have in this program represent us well on the court and off the court,” Manning said. “I think we — in a challenging situation, they did some really good things in terms of competing and battling and improving and wanting to improve and continuing to stay the course and be supportive of the whole program, especially of each other.”
Before his struggles at Wake, Manning was set to begin his first head-coaching job at Tulsa in 2012 after nine years on staff at Kansas, serving as an assistant coach his last five years. He was seen as a rising coaching star and expectations were high at Tulsa with his hiring. I wrote this article on Manning’s new job at Tulsa in Jayhawk Illustrated'a 2012 summer issue. I also included information on my former Lawrence High School classmate’s career at LHS and his loyalty to his high school coach Ted Juneau, and how he wanted to bring a family atmosphere to Tulsa and win championships.
Here is that story.
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By David Garfield
Flash back to Dec. 13, 1983. It was my senior year at Lawrence High School, and the ballyhooed star senior on the LHS basketball team was playing his second game of the season in a highly anticipated battle against powerhouse Wyandotte High after transferring from Page High School in Greensboro, N.C., where he led his team to a state championship the previous season as a pivotal force on one of the greatest teams in North Carolina prep history.
Danny Manning, the 6-10 do-it-all forward who scouts were already comparing to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, dribbled the ball upcourt on the game’s first possession, stopped on a dime just behind the free-throw line and released the jumper.
It hit nothing but net as the LHS gym rocked like never before.
On Lawrence High’s next possession, Manning dribbled the ball upcourt, pulled up at the same spot behind the free-throw line and shot the ball.
Swish. The crowd came to their feet again and roared even louder.
Those were some of my first memories of Daniel Ricardo Manning.
Now, after leading LHS to one of its best seasons in school history, carving an All-American career at Kansas and spearheading the Jayhawks to the 1988 NCAA title, playing 15 years in the NBA (two-time All-Star) and then serving the past nine seasons on the KU basketball staff (the last five as as assistant coach), where he received due credit as one of the best big man coaches in the college game, Manning is looking to bring crowds to their feet once more as the new head coach of the Tulsa Golden Hurricane.
This once bright-eyed Lawrence High teenager can’t wait to begin the next chapter in his life as a wise 45-year-old Basketball Jones who could be the best thing to happen to Tulsa basketball since Bill Self led the Golden Hurricane to the Elite Eight in 2000.
Manning, who was introduced as head coach on April 4, is ready to get started at a job he calls a “tremendous opportunity.”
“We look forward to becoming a part of the fabric of the TU family. I'm so excited,” Manning said. “It's going to be a lot of fun. It will be a lot of hard work. We're willing to put in the hard work and we will put in the hard work. (At the) end of the day we'll stack up the wins and losses, but more importantly we want to make sure when people leave here they're quality young men ready to take the world on and make someone else's life better. That's how we're going to build our foundation, from the ground up. “
After failing to make the NCAA tournament since 2003 and seeing a 35-percent decrease in season ticket sales since 2005, TU athletics director Ross Parmley believes Manning is the man to take the program to the next level. He replaces the fired Doug Wojcik, who spent seven seasons at Tulsa and guided the Golden Hurricane to a 17-14 record this past year.
"We are extremely excited to have Danny join The University of Tulsa as our new head basketball coach,” Parmley said. “He epitomizes everything our university stands for. His impact on young people will extend far beyond the TU basketball program and reach well into our campus and community. His 15 years in the NBA combined with the last nine years under one of the best coaches (Self) in the country, have helped mold him into a great teacher and coach of basketball. He most definitely brings the excitement, the style of basketball, and character that we were looking for in our head coach."
It had to be a special job to lure Manning away from Kansas, and the former Jayhawk star said Tulsa was the perfect fit. He was blown away by the “beautiful campus,” outstanding facilities and rich basketball history. Three former Tulsa coaches (Self, Nolan Richardson and Tubby Smith) had great success with the Golden Hurricane before moving on to win a national championship at other schools.
“We were comfortable there (at KU),” Manning said. “But the more I spoke with coach Self, the more I spoke with coach (Larry) Brown about the opportunity of coming to TU and being a part of this rich tradition, it became a no-brainer. To get a job of this magnitude as my first job is unbelievable.”
Manning said he got great feedback from Self about the Tulsa job. Self was head coach at TU from 1997-2000.
“Coach Self and his wife rave about Tulsa,” Manning said. “They rave about TU, the athletic side of it, the community, the university. They had nothing but love. That has really made the transition easier mentally for me and I think for my wife and our kids, as well.”
While Self knows losing Manning is a great blow for KU, he couldn’t be happier for him landing his first head-coaching gig.
"Danny Manning is one of the most accomplished, humble people you'll ever meet,” Self said. “He's done more in his life through the athletic world than just about anybody, but you would never know it in visiting with him as he never ever talks about himself. His focus on deciding to be a basketball coach was to try to share some of his knowledge and make others better. He's certainly done that at a very high level with us here at Kansas. He's been around basketball his whole life, played for so many coaches, been able to steal from everybody and has developed a vast knowledge that will certainly play a huge role in his success as a head coach.
"Although 45 years old, he's well beyond those in basketball years as far as experience. The University of Tulsa has not only hired a great person and a great ambassador, but also a man that will lead Tulsa to great heights athletically and be competing for championships in a very short amount of time."
Manning has already assembled a quality coaching staff, hiring former Jayhawk players Brett Ballard and Steve Woodberry as his assistants, as well as former KU manager and student assistant Justin Bauman as director of basketball operations. Wendell Moore, who served the last four years as an assistant at UMKC, will also be joining Manning’s staff as a full-time assistant coach.
Manning, who’s been around basketball his entire life, said he always knew he wanted to coach. After all, he grew up being mentored by his dad, who was a former NBA and ABA player and an assistant under Brown during Danny’s collegiate career. Even at age 4 or 5, Manning could be seen dribbling the ball on the sidelines during Ed’s practices with the Brown-coached ABA’s Carolina Cougars.
Manning spoke glowingly of his late father at his introductory press conference. Ed died in March 2011.
“I believe he'd be proud,” Manning said. “He got me into the game, showed me how to do things. He was someone in his professional career that was a journeyman, played on a lot of different teams. He had to do the dirty work, play the defense, dive on the floor, do all those small things that make teams work. I learned to appreciate that at a very early age. That's one of the biggest compliments I ever heard given a player was someone told my dad, ‘I enjoy playing with you because you made the game easier for me.’ I think that's a wonderful compliment. That's something we want to have as a team.”
You can bet Manning’s Tulsa teams will play unselfish, team basketball. Manning certainly was the consummate team player and learned from his dad and Brown about the importance of team ball. Brown preached the mantra: “Good ones do for themselves. Great ones do for others.”
“There’s not a day that goes by in practice that I don’t think of coach Brown,” Manning said at his induction into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008. “Coach Brown always used to tell us, ‘Go out and play hard. You play together and you play unselfishly.’ Those are the big things that I’ve always carried with me.”
Manning’s coaching style will also include playing “up-tempo” basketball.
“We want to be a team that plays pressure man-to-man defense without giving up easy buckets, scores in transition, gets down the court, gets into some type of motion offense where the ball goes from one side of the court to the other, give the defenses a chance to break down, then attack,” Manning said. "We'll incorporate a lot of ball screens and give our ball handlers a chance of getting into the paint and create.”
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After first arriving in Lawrence at age 17, Manning leaves the city and KU as an institution, the best player in Lawrence High School history and one of the top two players in Jayhawk annals who made an indelible impact on and off the court.
It all began after Brown hired Ed Manning as his assistant coach and the family moved to Lawrence after Labor Day in 1983. Juneau fondly remembers visiting the Holidome with senior captain Jeff Johnson to introduce themselves to Danny and his family.
After knocking on the door, Ed answered.
“Danny was lying on the bed watching TV and he got up, and it was just like seeing all legs come up,” Juneau once recalled to me. “He didn’t weigh a lot. He was pretty skinny. But boy, you looked up and said, ‘Oh, my god, this is for real. So the ride began.”
It was a great ride with Manning leading the Lions to a 22-2 record and a berth in the state championship game against Wyandotte in Allen Fieldhouse, the same team which had defeated LHS in the second game of the season. Manning, who could dominate when needed all season, hit two big free throws to put LHS up by one point in the final minute.
“There was no hesitation (by me) or thought he was going to miss those free throws,” Juneau said. “He’s such a competitor.”
Then, with LHS down by one point (50-49), it was Manning who heaved up a shot near midcourt at the buzzer. The ball hit the back of the rim, rattled around the goal and bounced harmlessly to the floor.
While it was a painful loss for Manning and the Lions, Danny’s career was about to begin at Kansas, where he would make a lifetime of magical memories in Allen Fieldhouse.
Juneau remembers when Manning first decided to become a Jayhawk in the fall of 1983. While everybody in the college hoops world believed Manning would soon become a Jayhawk and join his dad at KU after arriving in Lawrence for his senior year of high school — that it was a “package deal” — Juneau said Manning wavered at first.
“He told me he didn’t think he was going to sign early (in November), that there were five or six places he thought he wanted to visit even though his dad was an assistant at KU,” Juneau recalled. “Obviously, North Carolina had been on him since he was young (and living in Greensboro, N.C.). Dean Smith (then-head coach at UNC) was from Topeka (and came to visit Danny at LHS).
“I remember telling (Smith), ‘Danny tells me that he doesn’t think he’ll sign early.’ One of the great lines, Dean looked at me and said, ‘Well, he better not because his dad might be a head coach by the end of the season.’
“Quite honestly, after he (Smith) left, Danny told me the next Monday he was going to KU.
Evidently, he thought he needed to talk to Dean Smith and let him know what was going on.”
While Juneau said he and Manning had never talked about where he would have attended college had Ed not been hired at KU, the former Lawrence High School head coach said he heard “some speculation that N.C. State had the inside track and that Dean pushed him to go to KU because he knew he wasn’t going to get him. I heard that story, but I don’t know.”
North Carolina’s and N.C. State’s loss was KU’s gain as Manning would blossom the next four years at Kansas under Brown’s tutelage and demanding presence. Manning saved his best season for last as a senior in 1987-88. He was a consensus first-team All-American, led KU to the national championship, and left KU as the school’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, which still stands.
Manning not only carved his name in KU basketball history, but is recognized as one of the best college players to ever play the game.
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Everyone knows about Manning’s greatness on the court. But Juneau is one of those unique people who knows how special his former player is off the court and what kind of true ambassador and loyal person Tulsa is getting to run its program.
Juneau recalls the story of what happened after Manning was selected as the top overall pick in the 1988 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers and ready to compete in the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
Juneau said Manning had helped him run his summer basketball camp at Lawrence High School while he was a at KU, but with his hectic schedule that summer of 1988, had no intention of asking Manning to assist with his camp again.
But after flying to Boston the previous night to sign a Reebok contract, Manning showed up unannounced at the LHS gym on the first day of camp around 9 a.m. ready to work with the campers.
“Here comes Danny from the parking lot,” Juneau said. “He said, ‘Coach, you didn’t even call me to let me know camp was starting.’ Here’s a kid who had been Player of the Year, first-round draft choice, going to the Olympics, the last thing I want to do is say, ‘Hey, Danny, my is camp is coming, aren’t you going to come up and work?’
“He calls my wife that morning and says, ‘Isn’t camp pretty soon.” She said, ‘Yes, it’s today.’ That’s the kind of man he is, that’s the kind of loyalty he has. He had to fly that Thursday night to Boston to sign a huge Reebok contract, but here he was to work the Lions basketball camp for his coach in the midst of all this stuff. That says something about him and maybe the relationship we have.”
Stardom at Lawrence High, KU and in the NBA never changed him, it only made him more giving, more appreciative of his roots, and more humble.
Manning’s former agent, the late Ron Grinker, said in January 1996 that he gave more to charity than he received in salary (after taxes) the previous year.
“Some people think that’s weird,” Grinker said. “He’s very modest, maybe to a fault.”
Juneau elaborates more on Manning’s giving nature.
“The next year (after he signed the Reebok contract), he makes sure the Lions’ basketball teams has Reebok shoes,” Juneau said. “The first year he’s an NBA All-Star (with the Los Angeles Clippers in 1993), he flies me out, all expense paid. I’m hanging out with Magic Johnson and everybody else. (Manning’s) ‘entourage’ is the ball boy from the Clippers, two college roommates, the trainer of the Clippers. Those are the people he’s taking care of, that he wants to experience that. ... Those are the kind of things he does. He’s a very loyal person and obviously very thoughtful.
“He’s always asking about the other kids (from the 1984 Lions’ team), where they are, if I’ve seen them. I think there will always be a special place for (him) with all those kids he played with.”
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Twenty-eight years after graduating from Lawrence High School, Manning wants to build that same kind of family community with the Tulsa program.
Manning, who basketball experts once predicted would revolutionize the forward position, now looks to revolutionize Tulsa hoops, where he’ll continue to fulfill his life’s work and help shape young men into leaders.
“I enjoy the game of college basketball. It's a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, a lot of fun,” he said. "I also enjoy the off-the-court side of it, spending time with the young men in terms of helping them grow up, sharing experiences. I think that's pretty much what life is all about. I've been very fortunate and blessed to have the experiences that I have. A lot of people helped me out along the way. I feel I need to share some of my experiences, the different things I've learned with the next generation. Hopefully they can do that and it just moves on down the road.”
Manning, who was on the road many times during his 15-year NBA career playing for seven different teams, said he hopes Tulsa is his last stop.
He dreams of making it a very memorable one and win national championships like former Tulsa coaches Richardson, Smith and Self did at Arkansas, Kentucky and Kansas, respectively.
“We look forward to hanging some banners of our own,” Manning said.
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