A Heartfelt Tribute To Former KU Basketball Head Coach Ted Owens

Ted Owens grew up on a cotton farm in Hollis, Oklahoma, where he was raised by his parents to know right from wrong, to treat people with kindness and deep respect, to always listen to others, to show great empathy, to have profound faith, to have a strong work ethic, to treat people of color on the basis of their character and performance, and to always be a good person.

Owens carried these invaluable life lessons throughout his life, reinforced to him by his Oklahoma Hall of Fame basketball coach, Bruce Drake, and then KU head basketball coach Dick Harp — a man of impeccable values and strong moral fiber —when Owens served as a loyal assistant to Harp as an assistant coach from 1960-64.

In his nearly 91 years on Earth, Owens has learned from these instrumental people in his life and touched and impacted countless people, beginning as head basketball and baseball coach of Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1956-60, and then as a KU assistant for four years before serving as KU head basketball coach for 19 years, still the second-longest tenured coach in the rich Kansas basketball tradition.

After KU, he continued impacting people’s lives as Oral Roberts head coach, Fresno Flames coach, Tel Aviv Maccabi coach, development director and basketball coach at Metro Christian Academy in Tulsa, athletic director at St. Leo University near Tampa, Florida, and all his other jobs and pursuits.

Above all, Owens has been a true loving and consummate family man, devoted to his wife, Michelle, and his children. He has also stayed in close contact with those players he coached decades ago, including many from Cameron and at KU, and those he also mentored like Joey and Stephen Graham, former Oklahoma State basketball players from 2003-05.

Owens’ daughter, Taylor Owens O’Connell, talked about her dad’s love and influence of people in his 2013 book, At The Hang-Up.

“I am beyond blessed to have a father who loves me endlessly. It’s amazing that a little boy from Hollis could grown up to have such an impact on so many lives,” Owens-O’Connell said.

Owens’ former players deeply love him, just as he loved them.

“The most important thing to my dad today is his meaningful relationships with his players. Every July 16 when 7 a.m. hits, Tommie Smith calls to wish him a happy birthday,” Owens’ son, Teddy, said. “Shortly afterward, David Magley will call, or Bud Stallworth, or Roger Morningstar, or Al Lopes. They call every year, never missing his birthday, because he loved them and believed in them. He continues to do so, and anytime they achieve something he always calls me and update me on their success off the court.” 

As soon as he became KU head coach, you knew Owens would be something special—as a person and as a coach.

After Harp resigned under pressure in 1964, the KU players petitioned for the popular Owens to take over the head-coaching job. Owens had great admiration and respect from his players and KU alumni.

“Owens is the best basketball coach I know for talking to high school boys and recruiting them,” a top KU booster said. “He and Jack Mitchell (then-KU football coach) are in a class by themselves in the field. Owens has also had a hand in recruiting most everybody now in the KU basketball program and they like him and respect him a great deal.”

Owens, who coached at Mount Oread 19 years until being fired in 1983, won six Big Eight Conference Championships, eight Big Eight Holiday Tournament titles, one Big Eight Tournament Championship, advanced to the NCAA tournament seven times, and earned Final Four berths in 1971 and 1974. He was named Big Eight Coach of the Year five times and selected as National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly.

 

Owens, who also coached five All-Americans, ranks as the fourth-winningest coach in Kansas basketball history behind Phog Allen, Bill Self and Roy Williams with a 348-182 (.657) record.

But beyond the wins is the many lives he influenced and impacted. Just listen to former star forward David Magley, who played at KU from 1978-82 and then briefly with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a rookie. Magley and his wife, Evelyn, have always been very close to Owens; they used to babysit Owens’ kids when Magley was in college.

Magley truly admired and loved Owens.

“Of all the lives that Coach Owens has touched over the years, I have to believe that I am the most fortunate,” Magley said in At The Hang-Up.

“He taught me how to compete. He encouraged me and rewarded when I earned it. He showed me how to be a champion with grace.”

Just listen to countless other Jayhawks and coaches, including Riney Lochmann, who played at KU from 1963-66 and then in the ABA.

“The bottom line is that I would run through a brick wall for Coach Owens,” Lochmann said. “I have nothing but great memories from my time there. Kansas has retired many jerseys that hang in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse. My hope is that Coach Owens will also be honored so his name can hang up in Allen Fieldhouse with the rest of his players.”

Just listen to Dave Robisch, the high-scoring forward and All-American who starred at KU from

1968-71.

“Coach Owens is more than a coach. He has been a part of my life since 1967,” Robisch said. “Our relationship has grown stronger over time. I look back now and understand so much more about what went on at KU than I did when I was going through it. He has been there through 42 years of my marriage. He has watched my kids grow up and I have watched his kids grow up. This type of thing does not happen very often. We have a very special friendship that continues to grow as we both get older.”

Just listen to Delvy Lewis, who was a star KU guard and All-Big Eight in 1966.

“I just have nothing but great words to say about Ted Owens as a coach,” Lewis told me in 2003. “He was a gentleman. I just feel badly, because I think he’s kind of gotten a bad rap, as far as perception.  He still has a tremendous winning record. I just hope he gets some credit for what he did, because I think he did a lot more than people realize. To this day, I have the greatest respect for him. He’s just a neat, neat man.”

“I think Riney and I were his favorites on that (great 1965-66 squad, which won the Big Eight title and lost to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional final) team, because he just appreciated the ‘roll up your sleeves and work,’ and that’s pretty much what Riney and I did,” Lewis added. “I hustled and gave it all I had every game. Everybody did. We had a group that pretty much got after it. We were pretty no-nonsense. “

Just listen to Bud Stallworth, who starred at KU from 1969-72 and is another of the five All-Americans (also an Academic All-American) Owens coached at Kansas.

“What I first noticed is that Coach Owens cared about his players beyond just playing sports,” Stallworth said. “He was more like a parent, wanting his players to be more than successful basketball players. He emphasized that we had to be well-rounded on the court and even better better people off the court.”

Just listen to Jo Jo White, still another KU All-American who is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

“Ted is like a second father to me, he and coach (former longtime KU assistant Sam) Miranda,” White said after his jersey retirement at Allen Fieldhouse in 2003. “They were more than just coaches. They were friends to us, they were our confidant. Our relationship continues on, far beyond the KU days.”

White also raved about Owens in www.celtic-nation.com on April 7, 2003, just hours before KU played Syracuse in the national championship game.  

“He was a very astute coach, and a great teacher of the fundamental,” White said. ”He was also politically involved within the college basketball community and well-versed when it came to the issues surrounding the game. Coach Owens contributed greatly to my growth as a basketball player. I enjoyed playing for him and I learned a lot from being a part of his program.”

And then listen to what White said about Owens in At The Hang-Up:

“Coach Owens was always open to sit and talk with individuals about how to be a better player and a better team. He wasn’t concerned about players approaching him to talk about the team. To me, he was a great coach—always sincere, honest and open with all of us. I absolutely adored the man and my time at KU.”

Owens not only had great respect from his former players, but from his peers in the coaching profession. Just ask Washington Wizards head coach Scott Brooks, who played under Owens with the WBL Fresno Flames in 1988.

“Coach Owens is a man of integrity; he is a sincere, honest person who treats everyone with a great deal of respect—which is something that I’ve carried with me throughout my life on and off the basketball floor,” Brooks said. “Coach Owens has had a great impact on me as a person and a coach. To this day, every time Coach Owens is around it seems that a memory is made.”

Just listen to Hall of Fame Kentucky coach John Calipari, who received his first coaching job under Owens as a graduate assistant at KU in 1982.

“He gave me an opportunity to coach at one of the greatest programs,” Calipari said. “Coach Owens has always handled himself with class. Whether we won or lost, he was just a classy, upstanding gentleman, and he did it at a hard place to coach, but a great place to coach. I will always be indebted to him, and Coach Owens knows that.”

Just listen to Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown, who succeeded Owens at KU for five seasons.

“(Owens) told the players he’d been here 23 years, 19 as head coach,” Brown said after the Legends of the Phog exhibition game at Allen Fieldhouse in 2011, during which he and Owens served as honorary head coaches. 

“He was in tears talking to everybody about his love for the school.”

Owens recruited players like Ron Kellogg, Calvin Thompson and Greg Dreiling (Owens coached Kellogg and Thompson for one season), who became vital senior cogs on Brown’s 1986 Final Four team.

“Ted left me with a pretty good group,” Brown said. “I was blessed with a really good team. And the values those kids have because of their relationship with him was pretty neat. He (also) left me with some good coaches. I was fortunate to have Bob Hill, Calipari ... It was a remarkable staff. Ted had a lot to do with this program, and to see his feelings about it is pretty remarkable.”

At age 82 then, Owens still had a strong competitive fire.

“He wanted to beat my (butt), I can tell you that,” Brown said in reference to the exhibition game, where Owens’ White team tied Brown’s Blue squad, 111-111.

Just listen to KU coach Bill Self, who has endless admiration for Owens.

“He comes back (to Lawrence and KU) all the time,” Self once said. “We take golf trips together every summer. We bunked together in Scotland (in 2009) for a week. I’ve gotten to know coach real well. He’s been really good to me and my family. When you’ve (coached here) 19 years, he’s kind of the coach that sometimes get lost, but he went to two Final fours and won an awful lot of games.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been around a coach that takes more pride in what his ex-players are doing than what he does,” Self added to the Lawrence Journal-World on July 16, 2019 when Owens turned 90.

“But it’s also easier to do that because he’s older and he’s seen his guys grow up to be 60-year-old grown men.”

“He’s an amazing guy,” Self said.

Even the legendary Hall of Fame UCLA coach John Wooden greatly admired Owens. Wooden won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, including a record seven straight.

Owens wrote about his friendship with Wooden in his book:

“Toward the end of John Wooden’s unparalleled career at UCLA, Wooden and I had established a strong-enough friendship that we exchanged notes at the beginning of each season. Wooden sent this note to me in his first year of his retirement.”

It was dated on March 2, 1976.

“Thanks Ted,

Keep your chin up. Our profession needs more men like you.”

Sincerely,

John Wooden

One of the highest compliments, indeed, from arguably the greatest coach in basketball history.

As the Journal-World reported in 2019, Owens has taught the “games he loves” at such faraway places as Japan, China, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the Philippines, Korea, England and Israel.

During a speech in Oklahoma around that time, which the Journal-World wrote that The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel called “one of the best speeches he had ever heard” and “refers to Owens as a American treasure,” Owens spoke about his life in basketball.

“I had some time to dream while I was hoeing cotton back on that farm in southwest Oklahoma,” Owens said. “But my dreams were never so great as to imagine what I have been privileged to do during my lifetime, playing college basketball for the great Hall of Fame coach Bruce Drake at OU, coaching at the University of Kansas, where James Naismith was the first coach and Phog Allen coached and promoted the game, and to coach in the St. Andrew’s of college basketball, Allen Fieldhouse.”

“I have learned that as a coach, your success will be measured by the productive and successful lives of those young men and women for whom you were responsible,” Owens added with great meaning. “A chaplain at the NCAA Final Four was speaking to the coaches at a Sunday church service (years ago) and he said it best: ‘You should always remember that you are not using young men and young women to win a game but that you are using the game to win young men and young women.’”

Owens, who is enshrined in the KU Athletics Hall of Fame, Cameron University Athletics Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Sports Hall of  Fame, did just that with young men in his long and storied coaching career. From humble beginnings in Hollis, to playing at OU, coaching at Cameron Junior College, to then getting the biggest break of his life as head coach at KU for 19 years, Owens has touched countless lives beyond measure.

While his KU coaching career ended on a bitter note with his firing in 1983, Owens still revels in returning to Allen Fieldhouse and seeing KU basketball games while catching up with former players and close lifelong friends. He has such fond memories of his time at Mount Oread.

“Coaching in Allen Fieldhouse is like no other experience I have ever encountered,” Owens told Jeff Bollig and Doug Vance in their 2008 book, What IT Means TO Be A Jayhawk.

“Just running out onto the court before the games — and the anticipation of a noise level unknown to most places — was electrifying. Our fans are pretty knowledgeable about basketball and pretty fair about recognizing the great plays of opponents. It isn’t just a game, but an event — the ‘Rock Chalk Chant,’ the pep band, the pompom squad, and the cheerleaders all add significantly to the game. When I go back to games, I can still sing the same songs and chant the same chants as if it were yesterday. That is tradition.

“It is something that stays with you forever. You can walk into a sports apparel store in almost any city and buy a Jayhawk cap. There aren’t any other Jayhawks. It is a unique name with a unique history. I live in Tulsa, and I see people wearing Jayhawk caps and shirts all the time. You can be proud of being a Jayhawk because it represents more than athletic victories. It represents great academics, great tradition, from Dr. Naismith and Dr. Allen and so many great achievements in politics, aerospace, and other professional areas. Being a Jayhawk fills you with pride.

“I stay as close (to the program) as I can while living in Tulsa. ... I love to come back every time I can and see my former players and coaches. It is one of the great joys of my life.”

The 1970-71 KU team had it all in reaching the Final Four

The 1970-71 KU Final Four team had it all--size, speed, quickness, chemistry and talent. Led by high-scoring forward Dave Robisch and sweet shooting guard Bud Stallworth, KU appeared in its first Final Four since the 1957 team lost the national title game to North Carolina. The Jayhawks were also the only team in school annals to sweep the Big Eight conference, going 14-0. It would be 31 years until 2002 when KU would go unbeaten again in league play.

Kansas only lost one game heading into the Final Four when UCLA (eventual national champs) beat the 'Hawks.

Here is a story I wrote for Jayhawk Illustrated in 2009 on that tremendous 1971 Final Four team, which went 27-3 and remains one of the best teams in school history.

It was head coach Ted Owens’s first Final Four at Kansas.

“We were awesome,” Stallworth told me in 1990. “I thought we were the best team in the country. We were the cockiest team I had been around in a while. We felt we had a legitimate shot to win it all. ... We thought we were one of the best teams KU had ever put on the floor.”

By David Garfield

When Ted Owens replaced Dick Harp as head basketball coach at Kansas in 1964, he aimed to rebuild the KU tradition, get fans believing in Jayhawks’ hoops again, and return KU to the Final Four.

Kansas had just suffered two out of three losing seasons and had not been to a Final Four since the Wilt Chamberlain-led team lost to North Carolina in the 1957 NCAA championship game.

In Owens’ second season (1965-66), his Jayhawks came just short of the Final Four, losing to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional Final and finishing 23-4. KU then posted 20-plus wins the next three seasons before going 17-9 in 1969-70.

Returning the next season included nine lettermen and seven players who had been starters at one point, including senior center Roger Brown, senior forwards Dave Robisch and Pierre Russell, and junior guards Bud Stallworth and Aubrey Nash.

This was their time, their chance to shine.

“It was all or nothing,” Brown said in a 2001 interview. “Four years had gone by so quick. You turn around and the last year is right here. We had the nucleus. ... I think the overall impression is everybody felt good about that year. We had a lot of confidence.

“We just went out and played.”

KU made a huge statement in its first game against No. 5 Long Beach State at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 1, running to a 32-8 lead at halftime en route to a 69-52 victory. The Jayhawks’ imposing 1-3-1 zone gave LBSU fits.

“They couldn’t even get a shot off,” the late KU assistant Sam Miranda said in 2000 about that first half. “The crowd was screaming and yelling. We just played tremendous.”

Kansas continued to play tremendous basketball, winning its next five games, including victories over Saint Joseph’s and Houston to capture the Jayhawk Classic. Brown dominated the title game against Houston, posting 23 points and 21 rebounds while blocking numerous shots.

In John Hendel’s 1991 book, “Kansas Jayhawks: History Making Basketball,” the author reported that Houston coach Guy Lewis was extremely impressed over KU after the game.

“I can only say,” Lewis said, “we’ve never been intimidated in the inside like we were tonight since we played against (UCLA’s Lew) Alcindor.”

However, two days later, KU suffered a tough loss at Louisville, 87-75.

“(We) gave them all they wanted,” Stallworth said in a 1990 interview.

KU wouldn’t lose again until the Final Four.

“I blame myself for the one loss we had that year,” Owens told Hendel. “It was just poor scheduling. We had (the Jayhawk Classic) on Friday and Saturday against really good teams. Then we traveled on Sunday to Louisville to play on Monday night.

“We full-court pressed all the time and our team was just very tired and emotionally wrung out.”

The Jayhawks rebounded from the Louisville loss to win 21 straight games. They won the Big Eight title for the first time since 1966 with a perfect 14-0 record, one of two squads (K-State in 1959) to run the table in the eight-team league schedule. Kansas would go another 31 years before the Jayhawks swept conference play in 2001-02 with a 16-0 record.

KU’s final four wins in Big 8 play in 1971 were decided by five or less points, including consecutive overtime victories against Oklahoma at home and Missouri at Columbia. In all, KU won seven regular-season games by five points or fewer.

“We were a good team because we won tough games,” Brown said. “We won on the road.”

This team had the heart of a champion which meshed together both on and off the court. Above all, each player knew their role. Brown (11.2 ppg) was the defensive-minded rebounder who could block shots with the best; Robisch (19.2 ppg) was the scoring machine inside and out; Russell (10.3 ppg) was the hustling, defensive specialist; Stallworth (16.9 ppg) was the sweet outside shooter; and Nash (6.6 ppg) the playmaking, ball-hawking point guard.

“We just jelled as a team,” Brown said. “Everyone pretty much got along with one another and we wanted to win. We all played hard. Everybody seemed to be on the same page. I think our team was about business. We knew we were going to win if we went out and did what we were supposed to do. And that’s what we did.

“Everything fell into place.”

This team was big with Brown and Robisch at 6-10, Stallworth at 6-5 and Russell at 6-4 Yet they could press and run.

“Defensively, that was our main part,” Brown said. “We were huge, but we could move.  Back then, a lot of teams that would have that type of size I don’t think would be as mobile. We could get up and down the floor and put the ball in the basket.” 

Owens said that was, indeed, a great defensive and rebounding team.

“We only had two extraordinary shooters — Dave Robisch and Bud Stallworth— but we had a great team of athletes,” Owens said. “We held our opponents to 37 percent shooting from the field. ... As a team, we only shot 44 percent ... but we dominated the boards.”

Stallworth told author Doug Vance in his and Max Falkenstien’s 1996 book, “Max and the Jayhawks: 50 Years on and off the air with KU Sports,” that the 1970-71 team had it all with “size, speed, quickness and confidence. ... just all the components.”

As the Jayhawks kept winning, they won over fans and the Lawrence and KU community in a time of great political and social unrest on campus.

“It was a campus that had a lot of disruption,” Owens told ESPN Regional TV’s “Kansas Basketball: A Century of Tradition” in 1998. “That team pulled that campus together.”

The student body was fully behind Kansas after it won the Big 8 championship and now one of 25 teams in the NCAA tournament aiming to cut down the national title nets in Houston.

 

The Jayhawks’ road to the Final Four began in Wichita, where they survived and won their rematch with Houston, 78-77, before holding off Drake, 73-71. Robisch and Stallworth led the way against Houston with 29 and 25 points, respectively, while Robisch was top scorer again vs. Drake in the Midwest Regional final with 27.

“It ranks right up there with everything,” Brown said about beating Drake to advance to the Final Four. “It was definitely a big moment.”

Stallworth said the Drake game was a battle.

“It was a lot of give and take,” Stallworth said. “We felt we were supposed to win, but they played us.”

And KU came on top.

“Everybody focused in,” Stallworth said. “To be one of the final teams out of all the teams in the country, you got to get there to understand what that accomplishment is. A lot of people don’t understand that. When a lot of people criticize Ted (for his coaching record), I know great coaches who’ve coached for 40 years and never been to the Final Four. We were there, 27-1, 21 straight victories and in the Final Four.”

Kansas next had a date with UCLA in the national semifinals, the No. 1 team in the land which had won six of the last seven NCAA titles and featured Henry Bibby, Curtis Rowe, Sidney Wicks and Steve Patterson. 

Both the Bruins and Jayhawks entered the game with 27-1 records.

Owens and his players couldn’t wait to take on Goliath. 

“I think every coach dreams about playing UCLA,” Owens said three days before the matchup, according to “The Crimson and Blue Handbook: Stories, Stats and Stuff about KU Basketball."

 

“Every time I’ve seen them on television, I’ve wondered how to play them.”

The players certainly weren’t in awe of legendary coach John Wooden’s Bruins.

“It was our belief that we could win,” Stallworth told Vance. “We thought we had the right kind of team and given the opportunity at the end, we would find a way. We had three seniors and two juniors in the lineup — guys that had been through the wars together. The mystique of UCLA didn’t bother us.”

Unfortunately, KU hit a setback when the Final Four’s opening game between Western Kentucky and Villanova went into two overtimes.

“We were ready to come out of the tunnel, the adrenaline was going,” Stallworth recalled about the first overtime. “We had to sit back down. (And then there was) another overtime. I thought we kind of lost our edge when we didn’t get to play right when that game ended and come on the court and had to sit out and get hyped and focused (again).”

KU, indeed, opened the game cold and was down by seven at halftime. While the Jayhawks rallied to tie the game, UCLA pulled away and won, 68-60. Robisch led KU with 17 points. The Bruins would go on to win the national title.

“It was an excellent team but it was a team that could be beaten,” Owens told Hendel. “We were behind and they had their famed full-court press. We full-court pressed them and tied the game. Then Dave Robisch hit a shot to put us two up but they called him for traveling, and it kind of cracked our momentum a little bit. I think we had them on the ropes.”

The questionable traveling call was definitely the turning point of the game. UCLA scored the next four points on goaltending calls by Brown.

“After that, we could never make up the difference,” Brown said. “A couple of bad calls here and there took us right out of it.”

KU’s cause was also hurt when Stallworth (12 points) suffered a leg injury just five minutes into the game.

“It just took a step away from what I wanted to do,” Stallworth said.

With their national championship dreams dashed, KU lost to Western Kentucky, 77-75, two days later in the Final Four consolation game.

Still, it was a magical season. Kansas went 27-3, winning the most regular-season games at that time in school history. Owens accomplished what he set out to do upon taking over for Harp in 1964 — restore the KU tradition and lead the Jayhawks to a Final Four.

Kansas would return again to the Final Four three years later in 1974. But it was that ‘70-71 team which put the Jayhawks back on the national map with one of the greatest teams in school history.

“That was great basketball,” Brown said. 

“We were awesome,” Stallworth added. “I thought we were the best team in the country. We were the cockiest team I had been around in a while. We felt we had a legitimate shot to win it all. ... We thought we were one of the best teams KU had ever put on the floor.”

Bud Stallworth's childhood hoop dreams and his recruitment to KU

I first wrote about Bud Stallworth on Oct. 31, 2016. Now, I revisit this all-time KU great with another blog post. Stallworth, whose No. 15 jersey was officially retired in the hallowed Allen Fieldhouse rafters on Jan. 31, 2005, is one of only three players in school history to earn All-American honors on the floor and academically. One of the finest people I’ve ever met and a former great student of my dad’s in the KU School of Social Welfare, Stallworth was named the 1972 Big Eight Conference Player of the Year, when he averaged an eye-popping 25.3 points per game.

The Alabama native was a two-time all-league selection and named Academic All-American in 1971 and All-American in 1972.

Stallworth concluded his magical career as the No. 3 all-time leading scorer in school history with 1,495 points (now No. 23). He’s No. 1 all time at KU for most points scored in conference games with 389 (27.8 ppg in 1972) and owns the fifth highest scoring average in a season with 25.3 ppg in 1972.

His 50 points against Missouri on Feb. 26, 1972 during his final home game ranks second behind Wilt Chamberlain on the KU single-game scoring list.

In my three-hour interview with Stallworth in 1990, here’s his recollection of how his childhood hoop dreams all began and his recruitment to Kansas. In his own words:

...

“I first started playing probably before I was 5 years old. My first grade teacher asked all the students what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wrote on that piece of paper that I wanted to be a professional basketball player. I was in the first grade when I was 6 years old. I was serious about playing basketball early, and I’m still petty serious about the game. It was an opportunity for me growing up. I grew up in a real small town (Hartselle, Ala.). All the kids were about the same age that lived on my street and came to the school. I was involved with it by the time I was in the first grade. At that time, my school went from one to 12. It was that small. All the students were in one little schoolhouse. Athletics was our outlet. We didn’t have videos or Nintendo games. We played seasonal sports. In the summer, it was baseball. In the fall, football. In the winter, it was basketball. Basketball to me was year round. I could do that by myself. I could do it with somebody else. It didn’t matter. I had an opportunity. I was serious about it as long as I can remember.  

“At that time, growing up in Alabama, basically the only contact that I had with the level of basketball were the high school and small colleges in the area. My parents would take me to games sometimes. It was something that I saw on television that I felt was fun. It was something I wanted to do. I liked the game, just had that image that in my lifetime, that I could do that, that I could actually play professional basketball. Some people I guess want to grow up and be doctors. Some people want to be rocket scientists, and I wanted to be a professional basketball player. The good thing about my parents, and especially my father, he wouldn’t let that be my singular achievement. For me to even think about playing basketball, I had to first of all be involved in music, be involved in school —things I had to accomplish in those areas before I could even think about playing basketball. When I look back on that now, I’m thankful that he did that. 

“I played every day that it was possible for me to sneak and get a ball in my hands. Also at that time, the first gym that we had in my community was built in ‘63. So I was 13 years old before I had an indoor court to be playing on in a regular basis. It was kind of any time the weather was OK, which is basically summer to fall. And some of the winter was OK, we would go out if it was kind of cold and wasn’t that dreary out and play in the inclement weather. It was the only way to do it at that time. When you say when did I play, I guess it was every time I had a chance to get my hands on that ball. (Laughs.)

“We’re talking about a kid that was average size, a little above average size, but I knew how to get the ball up to the basket. A lot of kids were throwing it and couldn’t touch the rim, but I could get it up and in the basket. And I liked to do that. There were some baskets outside, I’d take my little ball out there and throw it up there and get it in. That was a thrill for me. When other kids were struggling just to get the ball up in the air, I was throwing it in. Whenever my parents looked for me, I was out there doing just that. They didn’t have to worry about me going anywhere, running around town. I was out there throwing that ball into the basket. When I wasn’t in school, I probably played for a couple of hours (a day). If I could get back out and play before it got too dark, I’d play a couple of hours again. The darker it got, the more difficult your shots got. Some people couldn’t see the rim. I got so good, I could always see the vision of the rim being there. We had to entertain ourselves that way. My parents wouldn’t allow that (playing in the middle of the night). I think that would have gotten me grounded from playing doing that.

 

“I played varsity basketball when I was in the seventh grade, so I knew I could play, but I didn’t have a measuring stick to say what level I could play on. I knew that I could put the ball in the hole since I was old enough to remember because that’s what I knew I could do. I just had that inner confidence that I could do that. The finer points of the game like playing defense and rebounding just didn’t interest me. I liked to score. (Laughs.) Actually in my community, I started playing in pickup games with older guys when I was probably 10, 11 years old. When I say older guys, I’m talking about guys who were either in high school or graduates of high school. We would meet in our little park and get chosen on teams to play. When other kids that were in high school were getting picked over, I was getting picked to play.

“My only vision of other players that were better than me were the professional players like Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor. They were doing some of the same things I was doing. I think I saw Earl Monroe play when I was probably in junior high school or going into high school. He was doing some things I couldn’t do. He could do the twist and the shake, and I didn’t have that down pat. But just coming up, running up the floor, jumping in the air, shooting, I had all that. I’ve had that since I was in the seventh, eighth grade. I could run, jump, and shoot the basketball. Like Jerry West, he would come down, he’d take stutter steps and pull up and shoot a straight jump shot. I could do that. When I saw Earl Monroe take it between his legs, dribble behind his back, twist and spin, that was a new move that I hadn’t accomplished yet. I got to cut Earl out as one of my favorites because I couldn’t do his thing. His thing to me was more, he was tricking people all the time. I wanted to beat them. I didn’t want to trick them. I just wanted to take over. Elgin Baylor, I liked the way he could hang, take it to the basket. He was about my size at the time. I kind of liked to think I was Elgin Baylor. I’d go out on the playground, do the hang, take people to the hole, shoot jumpers on them, learn all the different English moves you had with the ball. Jerry West, Oscar, those were some people (I emulated). 

 

“My size limited me. I couldn’t be Wilt Chamberlain; I wasn’t 7-feet. I didn’t like Bill Russell. I wasn’t that kind of player. He couldn’t score. (Laughs.) Years later, he was my coach in Seattle (SuperSonics), and I still didn’t like him. I still had this thought, ‘This guy couldn’t score.’ (Laughs.)  When you say idolize, I kind of would have thought I had an opportunity to be as great as he (Baylor) did doing what he was doing, plus he was in Ebony magazine and doing a commercial or something.

“... After that summer (in 1967) going into my senior year in (high) school, was the beginning of desegregation in the state of Alabama. In most cases, the first thing that people look out is how it can better their program. The athletes were considered the barrier breakers in the state of Alabama.  They were being selected because of their athletic skills and if they had good academics. They were being recruited to go and be integrated into the white schools system in the state of Alabama. This brought a whole new wave of notoriety to me and other black athletes in the state of Alabama, because now there was an outlet to go to the University of Alabama, the University of Auburn, and be considered a great person, break through the race barrier, all of this. But they wanted the creme de la creme to do that. I had all the credentials for that. I had the academics, and I had the athletic skills. That brought in a new wave of notoriety for me. All of a sudden, I’m getting the exposure in papers. I’m getting the interviews, I’m getting the recruitment deals all in the span of one year. I said, ‘All of this stuff was building up on me. If everybody thinks I’m this good of a player, I must not be too bad. Hey, I got a real shot now because I got people offering me money and cars and all this to make a decision just for college.’ They’re offering my parents things. High schools in the northeast section of Alabama were starting to call and saying, ‘We would move your family if you came to school here.’ That was a big change for just two years before when we were playing in our own little crackerbox gyms with only our fans there and no press. Now, we got the press. We got radio, TV, packed houses, integrated crowds, college recruiters. That was a big deal in 1967.  

“I had made the decision to stay at the school I was at, but the notoriety level there —the press, which makes or breaks anybody—the press that was coming was seeing a kid that nobody ever heard of throwing 40-plus points a game and doing it in a fashion that they hadn’t seen. I was 6-foot-5, but I was playing outside running up and down the court handling the ball. And that was different from basically high school players, who if they were 6-5 or over, they were playing in the middle. I was a little different kind of breed there. Even when I came out here to the Big Eight, KU never had anyone under 6-8 or 6-9 lead them in scoring. Most of their players were big centers that they walked the ball up and dumped it into the post, which was boring as far as I was concerned. Our freshman team, we’d come up and jack up anytime and anywhere. I think I had some impact on the philosophy on how this school has played their basketball in my career. We had big people on the court, but I had a little freedom to put it up when I wanted to, and that was unheard of I was told until my time.

“... My recruiting trip to the University of Alabama was the night they played LSU and they had Pete Maravich. All the assistant coaches were telling me, ‘If you come to school out here, you get a chance to play against Pete.’ I’m sitting here and I’m looking at Pete, whose throwing up every kind of shot you can think about. I said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen me play, but that’s nothing. I can do that. He’s going to have a chance to play against me.’ (Laughs.) That’s just the way it was back then. My senior year in high school, I was averaging probably 45 points per game. I was the first black player to play in the consolidated all-star game at the University of Alabama, won the MVP. We lost the game, but I put on a show down there that they hadn’t seen. I wasn’t living in kind of a bubble. I had played against the best that I knew about, and just from that standpoint, I was there. This guy (Maravich) was out there just throwing up a lot of shots, and I figured if I throw up as many shots as he did, I could get 40 points a game. That’s just the way it was. You’re young and you believe in yourself that much, you just have to go with what you feel, and that’s how I felt.

“Between my junior and senior year, I came to music camp out here (KU). The varsity for KU had just gotten beat and Texas Western had won the national championship. Most of the varsity was in summer school and living in Lawrence during the summer. Against my father’s wishes and just because I guess I had to have the ball in my hands at sometime during the day, instead of taking lunch when we’d have break during rehearsals, I was over at Robinson (Gym). That’s when all the guys would come over and play —Jo Jo (White), Vernon Vanoy, (Rich) Bradshaw, everybody that had been on the team. Jo Jo at that time was an All-American. A couple of other guys were All-American high school players on KU’s team. They had the status of being a major college player, and KU’s tradition is second to none, so that summer, I said, ‘Im out here playing with these guys. I’m just a junior in high school and I’m as good as they are. I was just as good as (White) was. He couldn’t do anything that I couldn’t do, which was score, run up and down the floor and win games. That summer, I said to myself, ‘If this is the best of all players in the country and I can compete with them, then I got a chance. I got a real legitimate chance to get to that level.’ Well, I guess some of the players felt the same way about me. Toward the end of music camp, coach (Ted) Owens called my counselor and asked for me to call. He said ‘some of these players that you’ve  been playing against said you’re a tremendous basketball player and we’ve never heard of you.’ I said, ‘Well, I went to a segregated school.’ It was small. In the 60s, Alabama was known as basically a football state. They didn’t care about nothing about basketball. 

“... To me, you got to be comfortable wherever you go. If I was going to spend four years anywhere and make this sacrifice to be competitive for an institution, I felt at least I owed it to myself to go where I felt comfortable. I just felt that (KU) was the place. I had met players on the team. My older sister had attended school out here. She liked it. They’re a nationally renowned basketball school and academic school. They had all he plusses. I felt that I could come here and make a mark for myself and probably win a national championship, which is all you can ask for. That’s the reason people go to college, they want to be the best they can be and win a national championship. I felt I could do all that at this school. I don’t know whether I would have come out here if I had not come out here on the music camp. They probably wouldn’t have recruited me. At that time, there were the recruiting wars going on per say in the south. The only visits I made were to the four schools —Vanderbilt, Alabama, Auburn and KU.  Cincinnati was recruiting me, but I was there and that was a big city. I didn’t really feel that comfortable. The most intense recruiting was done in the south and KU. I was probably the easiest person to recruit at KU, but from having the opportunity to spend a little time out here during that camp, but then when I had came back out on my recruiting trip, it was just, ‘I’m sold.’ I had this impression of it being what it was like to be recruited and go to school and have the opportunity again to play for a national championship, to be recognized as being one of the better players in the country. You got the exposure there. Some of the great players in history came through KU. (Wilt) Chamberlain came here. I just felt it was good for me at that time. Alabama’s program was just starting. It was basically (legendary football coach) Bear Bryant was there. Auburn had some minor success, but nothing on the scale at what I was looking at. The powerhouse in the SEC at that time was Kentucky.

“...The reason I had heard about (KU) before, my sister had come out there. But I followed college athletics and basketball because that‘s what I wanted to do. They were among the traditionally top teams in the country. Other than UCLA, who was winning everything at that time, KU was considered a good school in basketball. They were winning the Big 8 a couple of times. When you look at what I was looking at, I was looking at some really small options. Either going to a school in the south, which were only recruiting me, or going to a school which had the opportunity to win a national championship. That kind of eliminated some things right there, other than the cars, the money, and clothes, the money, that I would have probably got at other places. I just didn’t have the comfort level to go somewhere else.”

More from Bud Stallworth on the art of shooting the basketball:

“To me, you’ve got this rim, this circle. You got a sphere, this ball, and you have become accomplished at throwing this sphere in this circle with people on you who were moving at a high rate of speed. That’s a gift, that’s an art. That is an accomplishment. People talk about the kind of skills you need to accomplish something, you don’t tell me that’s not hand-eye coordination, the ability to judge distance, to judge speed. That is something that’s an accomplishment. A lot of people can’t walk and drop a piece of paper in a trash can. To me, I had mastered the whole thing of putting it in there.”

Recalling Jayhawk legend Bud Stallworth's college and NBA career

My first memories of KU basketball growing up in Lawrence center around the 1972-73 team and the 1973-74 Final Four squad. So unfortunately, I was too young and just missed remembering Bud Stallworth's senior season in 1971-72, when he scored 50 points against Missouri in his final home game in Allen Fieldhouse en route to averaging a whopping 25.3 points per game and becoming an All-American.

But I've always felt a connection to Bud since he was a former student of my dad in the School of Social Welfare. My dad would see Bud over the years when I was growing up, and he'd bring home a prized autograph of him on a yellow sheet of paper. One day, my dad gave me an autograph of Bud and Aubrey Nash, a teammate of Bud's on the 1971 Final Four team. I cherished those autographs, even though I never saw Bud play a game or shoot a basket at Kansas.

My dad would tell me what a great player and student he was, and kept a paper Bud wrote for one of his classes. As I recall, Bud wrote the paper while he was with the Seattle SuperSonics his rookie season, the team which selected him No. 7 overall in the 1972 NBA Draft.

On the paper, Bud penned the instructor's name as G. Goodrich, not G. Garfield (my dad), whose first name is Goodwin ("Goody"). Bud must have been subconsciously thinking of Gail Goodrich, an NBA star at the time and future Hall of Famer who later played with Stallworth for the New Orleans Jazz during the 1976-77 season, Bud's last year in the league.

My dad and Bud, who have stayed in contact all these years, have joked and shared some laughs about the KU legend referring to him as G. Goodrich. 

My dad, a distinguished professor who taught 34 years at KU and was honored with a scholarship award in his name after retirement in 2003, gave up his season tickets to Jayhawk games many years ago. However, he made sure to be in the Phog the night Bud had his jersey retired at halftime of the KU-Missouri game on Jan. 31, 2005. I was sitting on press row that game behind the goal at the south end of the fieldhouse, and reveled in seeing Bud's jersey being unfurled from the rafters. I know my dad was also overjoyed and proud to see one of his former students receive one of his greatest honors.

A few days later, my dad wrote an email to Bud congratulating him on having his No. 15 jersey retired and great halftime speech. Bud immediately wrote back, praising my dad and all his professors as being one of the reasons he was able to achieve such an honor.

What a class act.

But I already knew Bud was a true class act many years before that. In 1990, I decided to interview him for my Reporting I class at KU. I did exhaustive research on Bud's college and NBA career in preparation for our interview. I even borrowed my friend's tape recorder so his words could stay with me a lifetime.

But then my alarm never came on and I overslept for our 9 a.m. interview. Bud had called my parents' house, where I was living at the time, and I immediately got on the phone and deeply apologized. Bud was so nice and caring and asked in an uplifting voice, "Do you still want to do it?” I said, "Yes, I'll be right over."

So I arrived at his office at Hall-Kimbrell in Lawrence. The first thing I did was give Bud the paper he wrote for my dad's social welfare class in 1972. He flashed a huge smile and I think that helped break the ice, not that any ice needed to be broken with the friendly and personable Stallworth. After about 30 minutes to an hour, Bud received a few calls from his secretary, and told her he was still in an interview. Finally, after yet another call to his office, Bud told his secretary to "hold all calls."

For a naive 24-year-old who was conducting one of the first interviews of my life and didn't really know what I was doing, Bud made me feel very special by telling his secretary to hold his calls and giving me undivided attention. Looking back and hearing the tape, I asked repetitive questions, but Bud didn't seem to mind. In fact, the interview lasted three hours, and I felt Bud was enjoying his time just as much as me and could have talked for three additional hours.

It was a wonderful experience talking to Bud about such topics as his recruitment to KU, his college and NBA career, work, his time living in Los Angeles and Hawaii, his unsuccessful professional comeback with the CBA’s Kansas City Sizzlers, and also race issues, etc.

I'll always be grateful to him for giving this aspiring journalist so much time. It's been said the greatest gift you can give someone is your time and knowledge.

All these years later, whenever Bud sees me around town or at a KU basketball game, the first thing he always asks is, "How is your dad?” After I tell Bud how my dad is doing, then he'll always say, "Tell him I said hi."

Bud has special memories of my dad, has always been so gracious to me, and is simply one of the nicest people I've ever met.

So in tribute to Bud, here is a portion and update of the long article I wrote about him for my Reporting I class back in 1990. And yes, while my professor wrote on my report at the time that "no daily newspaper editor wants that many words on Bud Stallworth," I did get an A on the paper.

Thanks Bud!

…

Bud Stallworth knew his destiny at an early age growing up in Hartselle, Ala. When his first-grade teacher asked him and his classmates what they wanted to be when they grew up, Stallworth didn’t hesitate.

“I wrote that I wanted to be a professional basketball player,” KU’s former All-American said during an exclusive three-hour interview in 1990 in Lawrence at his office with Hall-Kimbrell Environmental Services, where Stallworth served as director of client relations and marketing.

“I was pretty serious about playing basketball early. I liked the game. I just had that image that at one point in my lifetime, I could actually play professional basketball. Some people I guess growing up wanting to be doctors or rocket scientists, and I wanted to be a professional basketball player.”

Stallworth began playing basketball when he was age 5, and at 10 years old, he was being chosen over high school players to play in the local pick-up games. Stallworth, who has always had a strong inner drive and ambition, took great pride in shooting the basketball.

“I grew up at one time they didn’t have any backboards, and I wasn’t shooting at straight rims sticking on a pole,” Stallworth said. “(But) I knew how to get the ball up to the basket. A lot of kids were throwing it and couldn’t touch the rim. I liked to do it. I’d go to the little basket outside and throw it up and get it in. That was a big thrill to me.”

As his game grew, so did his reputation. Stallworth began attracting national attention just before his senior year of high school. The Alabama schools had desegregated in 1967, causing high schools across the state to recruit this rising phenom.

“The athletes were considered the barrier breakers in the state of Alabama,” said Stallworth, who is currently a pre- and post-game KU basketball television analyst for Time Warner Metro Cable. 

“They were being selected because of their athletic skills and if they had good academics, they were being recruited to go and be integrated into the white schools system in the state of Alabama. This brought a whole new wave of notoriety to me and other black athletes in the state of Alabama, because now there was an outlet to go to the University of Alabama, the University of Auburn, and be considered a great person, break through the race barrier, all of this. But they wanted the creme de la creme to do that. I had all the credentials for that. I had the academics and I had the athletic skills. All of a sudden, I’m getting the exposure in papers. I’m getting the interviews, I’m getting the recruitment deals all in the span of one year.”

Instead of transferring, Stallworth decided to stay in his old high school. He said he felt loyalty to the school with his dad being the principal and his mom a teacher.

Stallworth, who averaged about 45 points per game his senior year, eventually chose KU over Alabama, Auburn, Vanderbilt and Cincinnati. He’ll never forget his first trip to Lawrence for music camp during the summer after his junior year of high school.

Against his father’s wishes, Stallworth skipped lunch and headed over to Robinson Gym and scrimmaged against the Jayhawks, who included All-American Jo Jo White. For Stallworth, those games were a defining moment where he first realized he could play with the best players in the country.

The KU players immediately told Kansas head coach Ted Owens about this high school prospect, and the coaching staff began recruiting him. Stallworth had already followed KU hoops because his sister, Eunice, was a student there.

“I was probably the easiest person to recruit at KU, from having the opportunity to spend a little time out here during that camp, but then when I had came back out on my recruiting trip, it was just, ‘I’m sold,’" Stallworth said. "I had this impression of it being what it was like to be recruited and go to school and have the opportunity to play for a national championship and be recognized as one of the better players in the country. You got the exposure there. Some of the great players in history came through KU.  (Wilt) Chamberlain came here. I just felt it was good for me at that time.” 

All Stallworth did in his first varsity game was score 27 points against Marshall, the second-highest in KU history at the time in a debut game behind Chamberlain. The 6-5 small forward had a legendary career and improved each season, averaging 12.7 points as a sophomore in 1969-70, 16.9 points during the 1970-71 Final Four season, which went 27-3 and 14-0 in the Big Eight, and then culminated his career in 1971-72 by averaging 25.3 points and becoming an All-American.

Stallworth has special memories of his career, especially that tight-knit ‘71 Final Four team. KU won thrillers over Houston (78-77) and Drake (73-71) in the NCAA Midwest Regional in Wichita before falling to John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins in the Final Four in Houston, 68-60.

“We were awesome,” Stallworth said about that squad, which featured a starting lineup of leading scorer Dave Robisch, defensive wizard Pierre Russell, Stallworth, point guard Aubrey Nash and pivot Roger Brown. The team had size, defense, scoring punch, and balance with four players averaging in double figures.

 “I thought we were the best team in the country,” Stallworth said. “We were the cockiest team that I had been around. Everybody got along. We felt we had a legitimate shot to win it all. That year we played some tough teams.”

With Stallworth and Nash the only returning starters the next season in 1971-72, KU stumbled to a dismal 11-15 record.

“We had marginal talent my senior year at best,” Stallworth said. “Our starting lineup, (the) tallest guy was 6-6, Wilson Barrow. I didn’t carry them too far.”

Stallworth, though, carried the Jayhawks quite far during his final home game against Missouri on Feb. 26, 1972 (KU won, 90-83), a contest he will never forget when the sweet shooter scored a career-high 50 points, the second-highest output on the KU single-game list behind Chamberlain.

While the Jayhawks had a losing season, senior night was a festive event. Immediately after he was introduced, Stallworth threw a frisbee into the stands as a gesture to give something back for the great fan support that season. He added that a woman later told him that she made sure she got the rights to that frisbee as part of her divorce agreement.

Stallworth was also extra hyped that game since the flamboyant Missouri coach Norm Stewart remarked before the contest that his star, John Brown, was a better player than Stallworth. Stallworth’s mother was also seeing her son play the first time in Allen Fieldhouse, while the 1952 NCAA champions were in attendance celebrating their 20-year reunion.

“I had 50 points before in high school,” Stallworth said. “You know when the hoop is big, it’s just huge. The juices were incredible. This was a frenzy type thing, and it just built and it kept going. The first half I knew I was on. I knew I could get it in whenever I wanted to. It was just scary.

“You dream of having those every night when you walk out in the arena and throw it in. Everything came together at the right time and they were the victim.”

Stallworth left Kansas as the third-leading scorer in school history, a two-time all-league selection, the 1972 Big Eight Conference Player of the Year, and remains one of only three players in KU annals to earn All-American honors on the floor (1972) and academically (1971). His No. 15 jersey was retired in Allen Fieldhouse at halftime of the Kansas-Missouri game on Jan. 31, 2005. 

The scoring machine, who has a bachelor’s degree from KU in social welfare, was then drafted by the Denver Rockets in the first round of the ABA Draft before the Seattle SuperSonics selected him with the seventh overall pick in the NBA Draft, five spots ahead of future Hall of Famer Julius Erving.

Stallworth remembers his nerves sitting by the phone in his Jayhawk Towers apartment waiting for his agent to call and tell him which NBA team selected him in the draft. When he finally heard word, his agent told him to grab a flight to Seattle.

“I was just on cloud nine for a couple of weeks,” Stallworth said. “Number one, you got it done. Most people don’t ever get drafted. I was a 6-5 swing player from a little town that a lot of people said was going to get lost in the numbers and not be able to cut it at that level. That’s what it’s all about.”

With his first-grade dream now a reality, Stallworth entered his rookie year with high hopes. But coach Lenny Wilkins, who had originally drafted Stallworth to Seattle, was no longer with the team. Stallworth played two seasons with Seattle and three years with the expansion New Orleans Jazz, who selected him in the dispersal draft in 1974.

Stallworth didn’t want to play in New Orleans with superstar and scoring sensation Pete Maravich, though he made the best of the situation.

“It was nothing that I had wanted to do with my career than to go to an expansion team and play with somebody I know wanted to shoot the ball everytime he touched it,” Stallworth said. “I played against him for two years and no one on that team touched the ball.

“He shot 50 times more than anybody else a game. It was obscene. It was sick. We’d be getting blown out and he’d have three people hanging on him with his arm in a cast because he had been shooting too much, and he’s still putting it up.”

Stallworth lamented the fact he played five seasons with no winning years for seven or eight different coaches, who each had a different philosophy on how to maximize his talents. The pieces just never fit and had Stallworth feeling unsatisfied after a car accident injury ended his career.

“It just wasn’t successfully done the way I envisioned it being done,” Stallworth said. “I didn’t get the juices going every night. I had this vision of the NBA being the epitome of what it’s all about. It didn’t happen that way, and it became more of a job than a game.”

He even didn’t like playing for Bill Russell in Seattle, the Hall of Famer who had a prized career with the Boston Celtics.

“He couldn’t score,” Stallworth said with a smile. “You put him in the gym alone, and he still couldn’t score.”

Despite the adversity, Stallworth remained proud he was one of the chosen few to realize his longtime NBA dream. He enjoyed the camaraderie with his teammates and playing against the best players in the world each night, including 27 of the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all time.

“I got a chance of doing what I dreamed of doing,” Stallworth said. “I survived and that’s it. A lot of people dream about doing something all their lives and never get a chance. Not only did I do it, I did it for a couple of years,” he added with a laugh.

Stallworth posted career averages of 7.7 points (2,403 points in 313 games) and 2.8 rebounds in 17.5 minutes per game while shooting 41.4 percent from the field and 68.6 percent from the free throw line. He had his best year in 1974-75 with the Jazz when he averaged a career-high 9.9 points and 3.4 rebounds in 22.8 minutes per game.

A great long-distance bomber, Stallworth believes he was born too early, prior to the three-point shot being implemented.

“I’ve always believed that it didn’t matter how close you got to the basket as long as the ball went in,” Stallworth said. “I was taking 30-foot jump shots when coaches were jumping and screaming, ‘You’re too far from the basket!’

“Today, that’s part of their offense, and I was doing it in the early 1970s. It just took them a while to understand that. They just added another point for those shots that I was taking.”

This Jayhawk legend talked about the science of shooting the ball.

“To me, you’ve got this rim, this circle,” he said. “You got a sphere, this ball, and you have become accomplished at throwing this sphere in this circle with people on you who were moving at a high rate of speed. That’s a gift, that’s an art. That’s an accomplishment. People talk about the kind of skills you need to accomplish something, you don’t tell me that’s not hand-eye coordination, the ability to judge distance, to judge speed. ... A lot of people can’t walk and drop a piece of paper in a trash can. To me, I had mastered the whole thing of putting it in there.”

Indeed, he did.

Now, instead of shooting jump shots, Stallworth analyzes games for Metro Sports and is a frequent guest on national radio and television. He is also the co-founder of “Can We Talk,” where he uses his skills and lifetime experiences to mentor kids in Lawrence.

After all these years since leaving Kansas in 1972, Stallworth said in 1990 he loved his collegiate experience and proud of the indelible mark he left on KU hoops.

“It meant and it still does mean that it’s a measuring stick I can use to say that I went to a university that had everything I wanted and I believe I’m part of that tradition,” Stallworth said.

 “That means a lot to me, because I have kids (and now grandchildren) that can come see what (my) legacy has left them.”

More From Bud Stallworth

Stallworth had several basketball heroes growing up in Hartselle. He talked about some of them to me.

 “My only vision of other players that were better than me were the professional players like Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor,” Stallworth said. “They were doing some of the same things I was doing. I think I saw Earl Monroe play when I was probably in junior high school or going into high school. He was doing some things I couldn’t do. He could do the twist and the shake, and I didn’t have that down pat. But just coming up, running up the floor, jumping in the air, shooting, I had all that. I’ve had that since I was in the seventh, eighth grade. I could run, jump, and shoot the basketball.

               

“Like Jerry West, he would come down, he’d take stutter steps and pull up and shoot a straight jump shot. I could do that. When I saw Earl Monroe take it between his legs, dribble behind his back, twist and spin, that was a new move that I hadn’t accomplished yet. I got to cut Earl out as one of my favorites because I couldn’t do his thing. His thing to me was more, he was tricking people all the time. I wanted to beat them. I didn’t want to trick them. I just wanted to take over. Elgin Baylor, I liked the way he could hang, take it to the basket. He was about my size at the time. I kind of liked to think I was Elgin Baylor. I’d go out on the playground, do the hang, take people to the hole, shoot jumpers on them, learn all the different English moves you had with the ball. Jerry West, Oscar, those were some people (I emulated). 

               

 “My size limited me,” Stallworth added. “I couldn’t be Wilt Chamberlain; I wasn’t 7-feet. I didn’t like Bill Russell. I wasn’t that kind of player. He couldn’t score,” Stallworth said with a laugh. 

"When you say idolize, I kind of would have thought I had an opportunity to be as great as he (Baylor) did doing what he was doing, plus he was in Ebony magazine and doing a commercial or something.”