Danny Manning and Larry Brown's "tradeoff" led Jayhawks to national title in 1988

This story talks about a “tradeoff” Danny Manning and KU coach Larry Brown made, which former voice of the Jayhawks Tom Hedrick once told me about. Hedrick said this was a defining moment of the 1988 championship season and led KU to the title. Tom, as nice, genuine and positive a person as you’ll ever meet, always has great stories to share with me. This was one I had never heard, and am very surprised that Manning or his ‘88 teammates have never publicly talked about it. I wrote about this in an article in 2007 regarding a story on Brandon Rush.

I also go into detail about another defining moment that season involving a fight between Manning’s teammates Clint Normore and Mike Masucci in the locker room and Manning failing to break it up, as reported by John Feinstein in his New York Times bestselling 1988 book,  A Season Inside.

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For Daniel Ricardo Manning, his College Basketball Hall of Fame induction in 2008 was a long time coming since he first arrived on the KU campus in fall of 1984. A great deal had changed since then. He was still the quiet, humble and genuine person he had always been, but now much more confident and at ease with the media.

Manning never asked for fame or adulation. But he’s handled it gracefully his entire basketball career. Not that being the star was ever simple.

“If Danny had his way, he would be able to play the way he does but no one but the other guys (players) would know about it,” his father and then-KU assistant coach Ed Manning told the Washington Post in 1988.

“But that’s not the way life is. Being the best isn’t always easy and it isn’t just playing the game. Danny has to learn that.”

For four years at KU, Brown and Ed Manning pushed him to be the best, to take responsibility for greatness, to live up to his potential, to believe in himself, to become a true leader and dominant player.

The fiery Brown constantly harped and yelled at Manning in practice.

“Danny and Larry probably had pretty much a love, hate relationship,” said Ted Juneau, Manning’s high school coach, one of his best friends, and godfather to his son, Evan.

“Danny’s a pretty sensitive kid, and Larry’s kind of in your face. I think in some ways, that was tough on Danny.”

But like Manning, Brown wanted to be liked. He had a soft side off the hardwood.

“You can be scared of Coach Brown for a while,” Manning told Kansas City Magazine in 1985. “I know I was. But then, you talk to him in his office and you feel like you’re part of his family.

“It’s a special feeling.”

“Special” was a word Brown and other hoops experts used frequently to describe Manning’s game. He was a multidimensional 6-10 forward who could dribble the ball like a point guard, lead the fast break, make wispy passes like Magic Johnson, while kill you in the post with his patented and soft jump hook.

Manning was expected to change the game and revolutionize the forward position.

“He does more than anybody since Bird and Magic,” then-Indiana Pacers scout Tom Newell told Sports Illustrated during Manning’s sophomore year in 1986.

"When he's 24, 25, people will just sit back and marvel at this guy. He's a whole new concept in basketball."

In his first college game against Maryland, Manning showed he could bang with All-American Len Bias and recorded a double-double (12 points and 12 rebounds). Manning finished second on the team in scoring that 1984-85 season at 14.6 points and led the team in rebounding with 7.6 boards per game. He was named Freshman of the Year by Basketball Times and NBC-TV.

As a sophomore, he still didn’t want to step on the toes of KU’s three star seniors — Ron Kellogg, Calvin Thompson and Greg Dreiling — but finally came alive in Big Eight play. Manning averaged 20 points per game in the conference and was selected as a consensus second-team All-American.

His play was making scouts, opposing coaches and writers shake their heads in wonder. The Dallas Morning News wrote this glowing assessment just before Manning played in his first Final Four in March of 1986:

“The game has gotten too good for its own good, one senses. If the sun always shines, then what makes a good day? If everyone can play this game, then where do we find our stars? Thankfully the game has been rescued from its drift toward a conformed excellence. It happens when one attends a Kansas basketball game and beholds an original. It happens when a 6-foot-11, 19-year-old catches the ball, turns towards the basket and shoots. It happens in the basketball world of Danny Manning.”

Unfortunately, in Manning’s worst game of his college career, he scored just four points and fouled out in KU’s loss to Duke in the national semifinals.

Still, it was a magical season for Manning (16.7 ppg, 6.3 rpg), who became the first Jayhawk ever to score more than 1,000 points after his sophomore season.

With Dreiling, Thompson and Kellogg completing their collegiate careers, Manning became KU’s go-to player his junior season, albeit a reluctant star and averaged 23.9 points per game. He was named a consensus first-team All-American and scored 30 points or more nine times, including a career-high 42 versus Southwest Missouri State in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

While KU lost in the Sweet 16 to Georgetown, many Jayhawk fans thought KU could win the national title in Manning’s senior year in 1987-88 with the addition of highly touted junior college transfer Marvin Branch, in addition to talented juco guards Otis Livingston and Lincoln Minor. Basketball Times predicted KU would win it all.

However, Manning’s farewell season began like a nightmare as Kansas struggled with chemistry, injuries and academic problems. KU was 12-8 and seemed headed towards the NIT instead of a national championship. 

Manning and the Jayhawks made a remarkable turnaround with the insertion of sophomore guard Jeff Gueldner in the starting lineup at shooting guard and Kevin Pritchard at point guard after Livingston and Minor didn’t cut it at the point. After losing four straight in late January and early February, KU won nine of its next 11 games entering the NCAA Tournament. 

But the defining moment in KU’s road to the national championship truly happened when former voice of the Jayhawks Tom Hedrick saw Manning at a barbershop in Lawrence on Feb. 1, 1988.

 “Danny didn’t go to the hole until the last 10 games of his senior year,” Hedrick told me. “He did that with a tradeoff. The Jayhawks were 12-8 and 1-5 (1-4) in the conference, and I only said two things to him. I said, ‘How are you coming?’ He said, ‘I can’t wait for the season to end.’ I started to laugh. Then I said, ‘Does it bother Kevin Pritchard that Larry Brown yells at him a lot?’ He said, ‘It bothers him a lot. But I’m going to take care of that.’ So he went to see coach Brown that afternoon and made a tradeoff. He said, ‘OK coach, you quit yelling at Kevin and I’ll go to the hole. I’ll score more. That’s what you want. This is what I want.’ That’s again what a team leader Danny Manning was. Well, it made them a championship team.”

Hedrick calls Manning and Jo Jo White the “two best team players I ever saw here (KU).”  He said Manning put the team first when he had that pivotal conversation with Brown.

Manning could be dominant, but Brown wanted more. After Manning burned Iowa State for 39 points in KU’s 82-72 victory at Allen Fieldhouse on Feb. 13, 1988, the perfectionist Brown wasn’t exactly satisfied.

“A great player would have had 50,” Brown said.

 

John Feinstein, the New York Times bestselling author of his 1988 book, A Season Inside, had full access to Manning and the KU basketball program during the 1987-88 season. He either didn’t know about the “tradeoff” between Manning and Brown regarding Pritchard, or ignorantly failed to mention it.

However, Feinstein wrote about another defining moment that season, which happened when Brown became “furious” at Manning for failing to break up a fight with punches thrown in the locker room after practice between teammates Clint Normore and Mike Masucci, a rumble which came before KU’s crucial 64-63 victory at Kansas State on Feb. 18.

Feinstein wrote that Brown “felt he should have broken the fight up, that his sitting by and just being one of the guys was exactly the reason why he had never become the leader Brown insisted he had to be.”

“You are not one of the guys!” Brown screamed at Manning in his office. “How many godamm times do I have to tell you that?!”

Manning had, indeed, heard that stern message from Brown many times, but the KU coach’s mood soon mellowed as he emotionally talked to Manning about David Thompson, his superstar player when he coached him with the Denver Nuggets.

“He never wanted the responsibility of being the best player,” Brown said. “David wanted to be one of the guys and people protected him. They made things easy for him. Whatever David wanted, he got. Everyone wanted to keep David happy.”

Thompson, who Feinstein wrote that “many who saw him play at North Carolina State still insist that ... (he was) the most gifted basketball player ever, “became a cocaine addict, hurt a knee, and was out of basketball before he turned thirty.”

Feinstein continued: “Brown wasn’t really trying to tell Manning that he was going to end up like David Thompson. The analogy went only so far as the refusal to take responsibility for being the best player."

“The best player has to be the leader, Danny,” Brown said. “It isn’t a matter of choice. By the time you’ve been in the NBA for two years, you’re going to have to be the leader. You won’t have any choice.”

Feinstein reported that “Manning and Brown talked for a while that day. Brown told him not to worry about his statistics, that if he was only the second player chosen in the NBA draft instead of the first he would still be a very wealthy young man. Manning told Brown that he thought a little less yelling would be positive for the team. Each listened to each other. When it was over, each felt better.”

“I’ll tell you what, Danny,” Brown said. “I don’t want to yell so much. You get on the guys sometimes when they mess up in practice and I won’t have to do it. Do it your own way, but do it.”

Manning heeded Brown’s call after that conversation and the one about the “tradeoff” regarding Pritchard. The KU star refused to let his team lose. When the Jayhawks entered the Big Dance, Manning and his teammates were on a mission with help and divine guidance from Fellowship of Christian Athletes president John Erickson.

“We had different people come speak to our team throughout the year,” Manning said. “Coach Erickson would speak (and) coined a little motto for us, ‘Life by an inch is a cinch. Life by the yard is hard.’ That is kind of what we took in the tournament. 

“Survive and advance.”

The Jayhawks kept advancing with Manning leading KU to victories over Xavier, Murray State, Vanderbilt, Kansas State, Duke, and then Oklahoma in the national championship game. Manning averaged 27.2 points during that magical six-game run and finally became the true leader Brown always envisioned.

Brown couldn’t have been more thrilled with Manning’s evolution.

“Danny was a skinny kid the last time we played in the Final Four,” Brown said after the championship game. “He was a man tonight.”

Of course, Manning has great memories of his college swan song against OU, when he had one of the best national title games in history with 31 points and a career-high 18 rebounds. But he has even fonder memories of what transpired afterwards.

“It was just sitting in the locker room and enjoying each other’s company knowing for us seniors it was going to be the last time we were going to be able to hang out with these guys,” Manning said. “You know, give each other a hard time just one last time. That was the best part of the championship for me. It was a good time and a great run for us.”

Aside from the national title, Manning said not one game in particular stands out from his college career.

“I just remember running out from the tunnel,” he said about Allen Fieldhouse. “That’s probably the biggest thing that sticks out, the chills you got and how excited you were to play in the fieldhouse.”

KU’s 1989-90 team took Jayhawk fans on a memorable ride

The 1989-90 KU basketball team was a very memorable one, entering the season unranked and picked last in the Big Eight in two preseason publications, to winning the preseason NIT and bouncing in and out of the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the national polls for 13 consecutive weeks.

I’ve followed KU basketball since 1973 when I had season tickets with my dad until I covered the program for 20 years starting in 1998. I can say, without a doubt, this 1989-90 team was by far the best passing KU team I have ever seen. They cut up opponents with their crisp passing and screens, scoring countless back-door layups.

“We probably set the world record for back-door layups on that team,” Kevin Pritchard, a senior point guard and team leader on that squad, told me in a 2000 interview.

And they had talent. Pritchard, Rick Calloway, Adonis Jordan and Mark Randall all had stints in the NBA. Randall, who played on the 1991 Final Four team which lost to Duke in the national championship game, can certainly attest to that.

“Talent wise, that was the best team I played on,” Randall said of his three years with KU coach Roy Williams.

In just his second year as KU head coach, Williams emerged as one of the best coaches and one of the most brilliant coaching minds in America. He was named National Coach of the Year by USBWA and Molten/Billy Packer, while selected as AP and UPI Big Eight Coach of the Year.

“As the architect of (Kansas’) success, Williams is starting to receive accolades proclaiming him to be one the country’s most talented young coaches, said Clifton Brown of the New York Times. “He is not comfortable with that image, but if he keeps winning, he will have to get used to it.”

Williams’ 1990 team was a pure joy to watch play. John Wooden, the legendary former UCLA coach, said during that memorable season that Kansas played the game the right way. And other basketball observers certainly agreed. 

“John Rhode, columnist with the Daily Oklahoman, wrote “it’s a joy to watch Kansas play basketball. The Jayhawks bring back the days of UCLA (no, they’re not THAT good).”

No, the Jayhawks certainly weren’t as good as Wooden’s great Bruins’ teams, but KU left its mark that year as the second-winningest team in school history. It was also a very unselfish team. Four players -- a school record -- recorded more than 100 assists. Kansas also finished with the highest field percentage (53.3) in the country. The ‘Hawks set a school record with averaging 92.0 points per game and beat its foes by an average of nearly 20 points per contest.

In a 150-95 blowout over Kentucky on Dec. 9, 1989, KU broke or tied six school records, including most points, most points in one half (80), and most assists (36).

While KU’s season came to an abrupt end with an NCAA second-round loss to UCLA (71-70) in Atlanta, that team will never be forgotten.

Randall, who was working as a Denver Nuggets scout at the time I interviewed him in 2000, spoke about that team’s legacy.

“The comments I get from not only alumni, but also people who are my colleagues now, that’s their memory of Kansas basketball and of Mark Randall and Kansas basketball — the team that we had that went through the NIT and beat all the teams...and bounced in and out of the No. 1 and 2 spot all year,” Randall said. “That team was obviously special.”

Indeed, it most certainly was.

Here is the 10-year anniversary story I wrote on that team in 2000 for Jayhawk Insider.

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By David Garfield

It’s been 10 years and four months, but Kevin Pritchard recalls the incident as if was yesterday.

The 1989-90 Jayhawks, who had just shocked Shaquille O’ Neal and No. 2 LSU (Kansas second- year coach Roy Williams later said that was the “first big-time win” of his coaching career) in the second round of the preseason NIT on Nov. 17, arrived in New York for a matchup with top-ranked UNLV. As guests of the tournament at a banquet at Tavern On The Green, Williams was prepared to make a brief speech about his team.

And then the unthinkable happened. The master of ceremonies introduced the KU mentor as Ron Williams.

“I remember the team looking around and we were VERY angry,” said Pritchard, the point guard and senior leader that season. “We definitely from then out said, ‘Maybe we don’t need any motivation, but thank you very much.’ We took that very personal. They can’t even get our coach’s name right. I love coach Williams and I loved everyone on that team, so when that happens, it’s like someone calling your best buddy or girlfriend a bad name. You tend to get a little angry about that.”

 

Pritchard (now the assistant vice president of The Trust Company of Kansas) and his teammates responded by taking their anger out against the No. 1 mighty Rebels (eventual NCAA champions). KU won easily, 91-77, on Nov. 22, and then beat St. John’s two days later to “spoil the party” and win the NIT tournament. In the waning seconds of the championship game, Pritchard had a few words for announcer Dick Vitale:

“It was something like, ‘Maybe now we’ll get some respect.’ Of course, he was like (before the UNLV game) ‘Kansas shouldn’t be here, but they’re here and they’re going to bow out early, and it’s going to be UNLV and St. John’s in the finals.’”

After winning the NIT, Kansas had suddenly gone from being Rodney Dangerfield to the talk of the basketball world. The Dec. 3, 1989 issue of Sports Illustrated featured KU and a picture of Mark Randall (NIT MVP) floating gracefully through the air for a layup against two helpless UNLV defenders. The headline on page 32 read: 

“The Jayhawks Take Flight: By stunningly upsetting No. 1 UNLV and No. 2 LSU and winning the NIT, unflappable Kansas poleaxed the pollsters.”

   

For Randall (he averaged 13.3 ppg and 6.2 rebounds during the year) and KU, it was a perfect beginning for one of the most memorable and successful seasons at Mount Oread. Unranked Kansas jumped to No. 4 in the polls and won its first 19 games of the season. The Jayhawks, who were actually ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the polls for 13 consecutive weeks, concluded the year at 30-5 (second winningest team at the time in school history).

This was definitely not a season Inside Sports and Basketball Digest had predicted. The two publications actually picked Kansas to finish last in the Big Eight conference.

“We didn’t pin it up or anything like that,” Pritchard said of the Inside Sports clipping. “But everyone was aware of it. It kind of circulated from locker to locker, and we knew that the so called quote-un-quote media didn’t think too highly of us.”

The Jayhawks believed in themselves from day one. With an experienced cast led by Pritchard and three other seniors (Freeman West, Rick Calloway, and Jeff Gueldner), not to mention rising junior stars Randall and Mike Maddox, as well as newcomers “Downtown” Terry Brown, Pekka Markkanen, and freshman Adonis Jordan, KU wound up the season leading the country in field goal percentage (53.3 percent) and breaking several school scoring records, including eight 100-point games and most points in a single game. Kansas also won at Iowa State for the first time since 1983.

While KU didn’t have the raw talent like Vegas or LSU, four Jayhawks eventually had stints in the NBA (Randall, Calloway, Pritchard and Jordan).

“Talent wise, that was the best team I played on,” Randall said of his three years with Williams.

Williams, who established himself as one of the premier coaches in the country in just his second season at KU (he was Big Eight and national coach of the year),  believed KU maximized its talent each game.

“I’ve been around basketball many years and I can’t ever remember a team that played to its potential as well as last year’s team did,” Williams said at the beginning of the 1990-91 season.  “It was a fun group to watch. You had to admire how unselfish they played.”

The chemistry was superb. The Jayhawks, who had five players in double figures (Pritchard led the squad at 14.5 ppg), often resembled a team of poetry in motion, cutting and dicing opponents up with screens, pin-point passes and back-door layups. 

“The most unique thing about that team was that we were all good passers and good shooters, even the big guys,” Pritchard said. “When we ran our motion offense, we felt we were unstoppable. We didn’t out-athletic anybody. We just knew how to play basketball. We were kind of the old Hoosier type of basketball team. Any time you relaxed at all, we knew we were going to get an easy shot. We were so confident in each other. When a team played zone, we knew exactly how to beat a zone. When a team pressured man to man....we probably set the world record for back-door layups on that team.”

Much of that credits belongs to Maddox and Randall — two key big men who defenders had to cover on the perimeter. They also worked the high-low passing game to perfection.

“Mark and I developed a real feel for each other, and really took the offense and kind of adapted it to our own games,” said Maddox, KU’s Super Sub (8.7 ppg) and now the new community president for Intrust Bank in Lawrence. “I probably went to the high post 70 percent of the time, and he went to the low post. ... I was a decent high outside shooter, and Mark was good down on the block. It was hard for defenses to defend both of us.”

Defenses like Kentucky had plenty of problems stopping Kansas the whole season. KU set a school record for points scored in its blowout victory over the Wildcats (150-95) on Dec. 9, 1989. Brown came off the bench and led KU with 31 points.

“Paying Kentucky was pretty fun,” Pritchard said. “I remember they pressed us the whole game.  They pressed with guys (talent-wise) that probably didn’t need to be pressing. We knew we were such a good passing team and ball-handling team that every time they pressed us, ‘OK, here’s a layup, or let’s get a three-pointer.’ We like dictated what we wanted.”

After winning 19 straight games and climbing to No. 1 in the polls, KU suffered its first loss of the season at No. 4 ranked Missouri (95-87) on Jan. 25. Kansas, which won its next five games and regained the No. 1 ranking over the Tigers, lost again to MU (77-71) at home on Feb. 13.

“There were some wars,” Maddox said.

Then, after three more consecutive wins, KU was blown out by No. 3 ranked Oklahoma at Norman (100-78). Two games later in the second round of the Big Eight tournament, Kansas fell once more to the Sooners (95-77). While KU still gained a No. 2 seed in the East Regional in Atlanta, fatigue had taken its toll. KU barely got by Robert Morris (77-71) in the first round, and then ended its season with a devastating loss to UCLA (71-70) on March 18.

“OU and MU were awfully good,” Maddox said. “We had five pretty good losses to good teams.  We didn’t get beat by any patsies. ... We just were physically worn out. We just ran out of gas that year. I’ve talked to several of the guys, and I just remember we were tired. It was a long season. We had a long preseason.”

Pritchard agreed: “We pushed ourselves so hard. No one wanted to say, ‘Hey we need to rest,’ so we didn’t. It was a team so self motivated. We all had something to prove very single day in practice. No one let up, and if you did, there were six other guys on the team that would say, ‘What are you doing? We got to play harder.’”

And then there was the pressure. As the wins mounted, so did the expectations from the media and loyal crimson and blue followers.  

“I think there was so much pride that when we put on the Jayhawk uniform, we felt like we represented so many things — our family, ourselves, and more importantly, everybody who believed in us when nobody believed,” Pritchard said. “We didn’t want to let anyone down.”

Pritchard, who started at point guard on KU’s 1988 championship team, said the 1990 squad went into the tournament with a completely different attitude.

“In ‘88, we’re like, ‘All right. We’re here. Let’s try to play well.’ In ‘90, it was like, ‘We got to get this done. This was something we got to do for our fans again.’ That’s the difference between winning and losing.”

But Pritchard adds, he enjoyed that year even more than the 1988 championship season.  

“It’s amazing when no one cares nothing but winning,” he said. “There was just a lot of leadership on that team, more than any other team I’ve ever been on — NBA or anything. In that locker room, you didn’t have to get on people very hard. They’d know what they were supposed to do. If they did something wrong, it came to a point where a look would be all it would take. It resolved itself.”

The consummate team player, Pritchard was also one of the most fiery competitors and clutch shooters in Jayhawk history. The senior leader admits now that he felt a personal responsibility in KU’s final loss to UCLA. While he doesn’t have nightmares about the game, he says the final seconds “does enter my thoughts.”

“It was the hardest loss I’ve ever had to take,” said Pritchard, who was first-team All-Big Eight that year. “I’m the kind of person who likes to take the last shot. I still replay it in my mind to this day. They double teamed me on the in-bounds and I should have tried harder to get the ball. I’m not saying I would have made it  I just would have liked that opportunity.”

Calloway ended up with the ball and missing a baseline 15 footer.

“He took a great shot,” Pritchard said. “It was just a little short.”

Former UCLA coaching wizard John Wooden certainly observed the game very closely. He said during the year that KU was a joy to watch and played the game the way it’s supposed to be played.

These words definitely did not go unnoticed by Maddox and company.

“It makes you feel great to get that kind of compliment from such a great coach and a great basketball mind,” Maddox said. “You can’t get a higher compliment. And I think we did do it the right way. We were very efficient, and we executed well offensively. We were a really good defensive team. I would put that team up defensively against any team KU’s had. We really got after people.”

And the people in Kansas adored Williams’ Jayhawks. One elderly lady from Wichita called the KU coach’s Hawk Talk radio show just before the Big Eight tournament in March, 1990 and gushed:

“I just want to say that we got a real gem when you accepted the position. I think you are super, and an excellent role model for the players and students. You just never cease to amaze me these things I read about you. You’re way up on the pedestal, and I don’t think you’re ever going to fall,” she said fighting back the tears.

Williams never has. Not only did this “unknown” coach, once referred to as Ron Williams 10 years ago, put his signature on Kansas basketball (KU wound up as the winningest team in the 1990s), his 1989-90 squad left a lasting legacy for Jayhawk fans and basketball aficionados alike.

Just ask Randall, who travels the country as a scout for the Denver Nuggets.

“As I go from city to city, it’s amazing how many Kansas alumni are out there,” Randall said.   “Kansas people are very knowledgeable about basketball and they’re very fanatical about it. I’m still recognized when I go from state to state as a Kansas alum. ... The comments I get from not only alumni, but also people who are my colleagues now, that’s their memory of Kansas basketball and of Mark Randall and Kansas basketball — the team that we had that went through the NIT and beat all the teams...and bounced in and out of the No. 1 and 2 spot all year. That team was obviously special.”

More about the 1989-90 team from Kevin Pritchard:

On Jeff Gueldner (10.7 ppg/ 48.6 percent 3-pointers), the sharp shooting senior. “He was really hurt most of 88-89. He had some back problems and didn’t play a whole lot. He is a great player, obviously. He started on the national championship team. He was healthy the whole year (89-90).”

On Adonis Jordan (3.0 ppg), the freshman point guard from Reseda, Calif. “He really learned the system very quickly.”

On Rick Calloway (13.1 ppg), the senior transfer from Indiana who sat out the 1988-89 season. “He was a great defender, a great team player.”

On Pekka Markkanen (6.9 ppg), the 6-10 center whom Roy Williams recruited from Finland without ever seeing him play in person (scouted him on videotape). “He was a big plus, because we were without a big man — a center.”

On Freeman West (6.0 ppg/59.5 FG percentage), the senior forward from Paris Junior College in Texas. “He was fantastic. He was 6-5 and played inside. And I’ll tell you what, I’d put him up against any 6-5 guy in the United States. He was strong, athletic, knew his role and did it very well. He was another workmanlike player.”