Former KU player, assistant and head coach Dick Harp was a complex man who never received much respect, despite his longtime and lasting contributions to the University of Kansas and to basketball history.
Harp is one of my true heroes whom I’ve put on a pedestal for many years, a person I greatly admire and first researched as I was writing my honors thesis at KU in 1988 on racial participation and integration in Kansas Basketball history: 1952-1975. I read about Harp in Sports Illustrated and in Jack Olsen’s 1968 breakthrough book, “The Black Athlete.” I came away with a lasting impression of him as a kind, genuine, good-hearted man who was a pioneer in recruiting black athletes to Kansas and as an idealist coach who wanted to use basketball as a vehicle to bring his white and black athletes closer together.
I’ve thought of Harp often since writing my thesis, and regret that I never interviewed him before he died in 2000.
After college and during my years covering KU basketball since 1998, I also learned that Harp was a giant in his profession who played or coached in four Final Fours at the same school, and was instrumental in helping lead KU to the 1952 NCAA title with his pressing and innovative defense as Phog Allen’s astute assistant. It was a defense which many coaches copied, including UCLA’s John Wooden, who ran off 10 NCAA titles in 12 seasons, including seven straight.
Nolen Ellison, one of Harp’s players in the early 1960s, spent about three hours with me talking about Harp and his experiences at KU in 2007 at a restaurant near his home in Kansas City. I asked to meet with Nolen that summer day since I wanted to learn more about Harp and Nolen’s experiences on an integrated team, especially the 1960-61 squad which featured seven African-Americans. Nolen’s older brother Butch, who also played at KU and was a member of the 1961 team, was there as well for a good portion of our talk and offered great insights about KU basketball history.
Nolen again told me what he said during my Where Are They Now? interview with him in 2003 — that Dick Harp needs to be vindicated in Lawrence, Kan., in large part, since he recruited many black athletes at a time when few coaches in America were doing so. Not only did Harp recruit those athletes, he did everything possible to make sure they succeeded off the court at KU. He was deeply committed to his players, loved them, and wanted to see his white players “walk the extra mile” for their black teammates.
Of course, with any basketball coach and person, Harp was not without his flaws (as the late Wilt Chamberlain would attest), but to me, the real Dick Harp was a remarkable human being and a respected coach.
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Thirty years after Dick Harp resigned as KU head basketball coach in 1964 and disillusioned about what the game had become, his former players who served under him as an assistant and head man honored his contributions to Jayhawk basketball and society during an early January reunion weekend in 1994.
It was a fitting tribute to a man who had done so much for Kansas basketball during his lifetime.
“Such an honor is long overdue for an intelligent, intense, low-profile man of 75 who is as loyal to KU as anyone who ever graced this earth,” longtime Lawrence Journal-World writer Bill Mayer commented on Jan. 7, 1994.
“He's not the flamboyant, flashy type, yet he has one of the sharpest senses of humor I've been fortunate enough to encounter. He loves to laugh and to make people laugh with his unlimited supply of stories and anecdotes. He and ‘Mar'Sue’ have retired here and Kansas University has never been represented with more dedication and dignity than it has been and is by these two.
“Dick is still sought out by coaches, including former student Dean Smith and Roy Williams, for advice and counsel. He long has had one of the keenest basketball minds extant and is recognized for that. But like most of the great ones, Harp's best contribution to society is as a strong moral and ethical citizen.”
The reunion was a resounding success with over 100 former players honoring Harp at a luncheon at the Adams Alumni Center. Then-KU coach Williams and athletic director Bob Frederick presented Harp a “framed piece of the original Allen Fieldhouse floor with his name, coaching years and championships embedded around a Jayhawk.”
Also, former player and member of the 1952 national championship team Bill Lienhard, who was then a Lawrence banker, announced creation of the Dick Harp Scholarship Fund, which will “provide an annual grant to a student athlete of the former coach's choice. The grant will be funded by ex-players and friends of Harp.”
Broadcaster Max Falkenstien was master of ceremonies at the roast-style event, while others spoke, including Jerry Waugh, former player and assistant to Harp, Jerry Gardner, a player in the early 1960s under Harp, Frederick, Williams and Mayer.
The Lawrence Journal-World reported that Williams said a principal reason behind his decision to leave his job as assistant coach for the University of North Carolina (in 1988) was the reverence and love of KU he gained from Harp during Harp's years as an administrative aide to UNC coach Smith, who also played on the 1952 national title team.
Harp was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support. While he said he enjoyed many events surrounding his association of KU basketball, this tribute was "one of the greatest experiences I've had -- something Martha Sue and I will remember forever.”
Everyone at the luncheon had great reason to celebrate this former coach and humble humanitarian. After all, the accomplishments are rich, poignant and lasting for Dick Harp. The ex-KU basketball coach, who died six years later in 2000 at age 81, is the only man ever to be with four Final Four teams (1940, 1952, 1953, 1957) as a player, assistant and head coach at the same school.
He is also the only person to appear as a player, assistant coach and head coach in the NCAA basketball finals. Harp, too, is one of just five men who were involved in the national championship game as both a player and head coach.
He is the unsung hero who propelled KU to the national championship games in 1952 as head coach Phog Allen’s brilliant assistant, instituting an innovative pressing defense which would revolutionize basketball.
Harp is also the pioneer who helped integrate Kansas basketball and was a firm believer in racial justice and equality.
And Harp, as an assistant to North Carolina head coach Dean Smith from 1986-89, played an instrumental role in luring an unknown ‘Carolina assistant named Roy Williams to become head coach at Kansas in 1988, where Williams enjoyed a magical 15-year ride as KU head man, leading KU to four Final Fours and two national title games.
Williams affectionately described Harp as the closest thing to “Mr. Kansas Basketball.”
Smith has called Harp “one of the greatest basketball minds I have ever encountered, and one of the finest citizens this country has ever produced.” Smith said that Harp’s contributions as his administrative aide in the 1980s were “at great benefit to me. There’s never never been anybody I respect and admire more than Dick.”
However, such praise by Williams and Smith have been minimized over the years by Harp’s critics. He’s never really been given the credit for his accomplishments and unique gifts he bestowed upon his beloved alma mater.
Why?
Harp was actually put in position to fail when he first accepted the KU job after Allen’s mandatory retirement in 1956 at age 70. Allen, who never get the chance to coach Wilt Chamberlain (he became eligible the following year after Allen’s retirement), said KU could win the national title with “The Big Dipper, two aggressive cheerleaders, and two Phi Beta Kappas.”
“He had great misfortune to follow Dr. Allen, and then you give him the greatest player to come along in the game of basketball and he’s expected to succeed at the highest level. Although he was capable of performing at the highest level, he had no chance,” Waugh said in 1998.
Monte Johnson, who played under Harp and later became KU’s athletic director told Doug Vance and Max Falkenstien in their 1996 book, “Max and the Jayhawks,” that “Dick’s role, to me, was near impossible. If he didn’t win the national championship, he would be considered a failure. If he did win it, it was Doc’s players, Doc’s recruiting, all of Doc’s influence. It was a no-win deal.”
KU lost the national championship game in 1957 in triple overtime to North Carolina, and Harp’s strategy to slow the game down in the second half and overtimes came into question afterwards.
A poor lob pass by Ron Loneski to Chamberlain in the final seconds was intercepted, sealing KU’s doom and Harp’s fate.
“Dick Harp took over as coach in 1957 to find that everyone in the state expected him and sophomore Wilt Chamberlain to win the national championship. The Jayhawkers finished second, and it was considered a disgrace,” Sports Illustrated wrote on Dec. 7, 1964.
Lienhard wonders what might have been.
“If Wilt Chamberlain would have made that goal, he would have been one of our all-time great coaches, but he didn’t so everybody’s forgotten about Dick Harp now because of that. They blame him for not winning a national championship,” Lienhard said.
It is a “blame” he certainly doesn’t deserve.
Harp’s Jayhawks went 18-5 and finished second in the Big Seven during Chamberlain's junior season and final year at KU in 1957-58. With Chamberlain joining the Harlem Globetrotters, Kansas suffered an 11-14 record the next season.
Behind sophomore Wayne Hightower and junior Bill Bridges, KU rebounded in 1959-60 and shared a tie for the Big Eight title. The Jayhawks, who went 19-8 and 10-4 in conference play, lost to Cincinnati in the NCAA Midwest Regional Championship game.
After recording a 17-8 record in 1960-61, Kansas went into a tailspin during Harp’s final three seasons with records of 7-18, 12-13 and 13-12.
When KU suffered a 70-46 defeat to Kansas State in February of his final year in 1964, Harp was hanged and burned in effigy on the KU campus. Kansas, though, closed the season winning its last three games and five of its final eight.
Harp, who had openly discussed the possibility of retirement earlier in the season, finally called it quits on March 25, ending his eight-year head coaching career with a 121-82 record. Just the fourth head coach in KU’s storied history, Harp led KU to two conference titles and two NCAA tournament berths, including that magical run to the national championship game in 1957.
Mayer commended Harp for his fine work at Kansas after succeeding the legendary Allen.
“Suppose you followed Knute Rockne as football coach at Notre Dame, Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma, John Wooden in basketball at UCLA and Red Auerbach with the Boston Celtics,” Mayer wrote on Jan. 7, 1994, the weekend when Harp’s former players had honored him.
“And started off your very first year with a player expected to make an even bigger impact on basketball than Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. That's as tough as my trying to take over for Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post, even without Woodward and Bernstein to add to the pressure.
“Dick Harp entered the equivalent of that scenario when he succeeded the immortal Phog Allen at Kansas for the 1956-57 season -- and inherited a promising sophomore named Wilt Chamberlain. The guys who followed Rockne, Wilkinson, Wooden and Auerbach didn't last as long or handle the post-legend challenge as well as Harp did in his eight years as head coach at KU.”
Unfortunately for Harp and KU, attendance and fan interest widely decreased since the Wilt years.
With a 32-43 record his last three years, SI wrote in 1964 that “home attendance, which averaged 15,500 in 1957, was down to less than 5,000 a game last year.”
“I have determined that it time for me to retire from coaching,” Harp said. “My association with the University of Kansas has been a wonderful experience.”
While it was a difficult decision to resign, Harp was comforted that he lived out a childhood dream.
“From the time I was a little boy, the biggest thing in my life was the University of Kansas,” Harp told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “If I had to draw a pattern, I would draw it again. I was at Kansas as a player and coach. What more could I ask?
“The fact that it’s time to change jobs doesn’t alter that.”
Waugh told me during a three-hour interview in 2015 that Harp always wanted to play for KU.
“He talked fondly about coming to KU and play basketball. That was his dream,” Waugh said. “The opportunity to do that was a fulfillment of what he wanted in his life to play basketball for Doc Allen. Doc was such a prominent person at the time. Doc was known in the field. To be able to come here was a fulfillment to him as a student. He lived in a fraternity. He took advantage of the experiences that he had. The fraternity system was a big social deal, and to be a part of that was great.”
After playing on the national championship runner-up team in 1940, eight years later in 1948, Harp served as Allen’s assistant for eight years before fulfilling another dream he had in high school by serving as head coach at his alma mater for eight years.
Harp told “Max and the Jayhawks” that he made his decision to resign after that loss to K-State.
“We were having some guests to the house after the game, and I called my wife, Martha Sue, and told her I would be late. I went up and sat down on the grass under the Campanile Memorial. I was looking around and praying a little bit and probably crying a little when it started to rain. I thought, ‘OK Lord, I recognized what you want me to do now.’ So I got up and went home and told Martha Sue that I’d decided to resign. She wasn’t particularly happy with that decision, but it was my decision. That’s the way it went.”
Harp, though, actually made his decision to eventually resign a few years before his official announcement.
“The winning and losing, that’s why you play,” Harp told John Hendel in his 1991 book, “Kansas Jayhawks: History Making Basketball.”
“I enjoyed the play to see who was going to win and lose, but there came a point in my time here that I realized that I needed to do this other thing. So we made a decision a couple years before I did resign that that was what I was going to do. By then I recognized that for many different reasons, and there were a number of reasons, that I probably shouldn’t continue.”
After officially resigning that March day, Harp made it clear he would never coach again.
“Once you’ve coached at Kansas, there could be no other place to be happy,” Harp told the Lawrence Journal-World.
Mayer praised Harp for being a class act and stepping “out in style.”
“One of his big problems as a coach was that he too often tried to do too much for his players, to the point they didn’t do enough for themselves,” Mayer wrote. “But if a coach is to be condemned for something, that’s not bad to have on the record.”
Harp had grown disillusioned by the win-at-all costs environment of college athletics and the influence of alumni and boosters in recruiting. He was also troubled by the quota system in the number of black athletes he could play at the same time and the insults fans and alumni directed at his black players. A deeply religious man with strong moral values and ethics, Harp said he had “lost my way in life.”
“I probably did change when I became head coach (at Kansas),” Harp told “Max and the Jayhawks.”
“After the experience with (coaching) Wilt, I was a different person. I was really upset with some of the things (outside the program among boosters) that were done with recruiting. I reached a certain point and decided that I needed to give up the job because I had lost — not my enthusiasm — but my way in life.”
Retiring athletic director Dutch Lonborg was not caught off guard by Harp’s resignation.
“This comes as no big surprise since we realize Dick has been contemplating the move for sometime,” Lonborg said. “I personally want to express my thanks to him for his contribution to our athletic program and wish him well in whatever future endeavor he follows.”
Waugh told Ken Davis in his 2013 book, “100 things KU fans should know and do before they die,” that “after he became (Kansas) coach, he was never happy."
Waugh elaborated about Harp’s feelings to Doug Vance and Jeff Bollig in their 2007 book, “What it Means to be a Jayhawk.”
“To be a part of Kansas basketball was the heart of him,” Waugh said. “He was so proud of being at Kansas, to be a Jayhawk and be a part of all of this. I don’t think there has ever been anyone who felt it as deeply as Dick Harp did.
“There is no doubt in my mind that that Dick had all the ingredients to be a great coach. He was presented with the opportunity he had wanted all of his life: to come back to the University of Kansas and be the head basketball coach. If anyone had a dream, Dick had that one and saw it fulfilled. Then when he got that dream, he didn’t enjoy it.”
