A Season Inside (21 page)

In December, because TV dictated it, Kansas went to Greensboro to play N.C. State. Kansas won the game, but Manning, booed unmercifully by the crowd which saw him as a traitor, had a terrible game. “He just couldn’t handle it,” Brown remembered. “He was so hurt by the booing that was all he could think about.”

Manning got even with the Wolfpack in March. During the last ten minutes of the Midwest Regional Final, with KU trailing State by six points, he took over the game. He scored 26 points, was voted MVP of the regional, and got his team to the Final Four.

But a week later, against Duke, Mark Alarie, a smart, experienced senior, kept pushing Manning away from his favorite shooting spots. He held Manning to 4 points and Duke beat the Jayhawks, 71–67, in a brutal, draining game. It was during that game that Archie Marshall, flying in for a lay-up, went down with the knee injury that would require surgery, keeping him out for the entire ’87 season.

Manning was devastated by the loss. “He blamed himself,” his mother remembered. “I was concerned during that time because Larry and Ed were so tough on him. It seemed like all they could see was the negative. I kept telling Ed he needed to pat the boy on his butt more often. He would say he was just being a coach and I would say, ‘That’s our child, first, last and always. Tell him how proud you are of him.’ ”

Ed Manning was proud of his son, but he also knew there were ways he could get better. “Mothers never see any need for improvement in their sons,” he said smiling. “Coaches do.”

So do players. Danny understood his father’s criticisms and knew his father was proud of him without being told. “My dad just isn’t a verbal person,” he said. “That’s not his way. But I knew how much he cared
and I knew he was always there to talk to if I needed him. I’ve just always talked to my mother more because she’s always been around. I’ve only been around Dad a lot during the last couple of years.”

With the senior class of ’86 gone the next year, Manning had to step forward and be the team’s leader. Still, his way of leading was by example. Brown kept pushing him to do more, Manning just kept playing. Finally, after the Jayhawks had been blown out by a mediocre Arkansas team, Brown asked Manning to come out to his house for a talk.

“We really got some things out in the open there,” Manning said. “I was just more comfortable because we weren’t in the office and I finally told him what I was thinking. I was sick and tired of all the yelling and I thought the other guys were too.

“Coach Brown is always going to yell, that’s just his way, he can’t coach any differently. But I thought he needed to lighten up. He told me he wanted me to yell more and I said, ‘Why? You do enough yelling for all of us.’ ”

The exchange was good for both men. Brown wanted Manning to be more open about his frustrations and he wanted him to be able to feel that he could come to him and tell him when he thought he was doing something wrong. Manning left happy to have blown off some steam and with a thought that he never let go of the next two years: “If the team loses, it’s the best player’s fault. He has the most to do with winning, so he must have the most to do with losing.”

The Jayhawks finished strong that year, reaching the NCAA round of sixteen, winning twenty-five games, and losing a tough game to a good Georgetown team. When Brown signed two good junior-college guards—Otis Livingston and Lincoln Minor—and added another juco, Marvin Bradshaw, to Marshall’s return, it looked like the Jayhawks would be a Final Four contender again—
if
Manning stayed for his senior year and
if
Brown didn’t jump ship again, this time to the New York Knicks.

As it turned out, Manning came much closer to leaving than Brown did. “I had delusions of grandeur,” he said. “The thought of making all that money just to play ball and not worry about school or anything was very tempting. I figured I could always come back and get my degree, so why not?”

Darnelle Manning knew how her son was thinking. She wanted him to stay in school, not just for the degree but because she wasn’t sure
he was mature enough yet to deal with the emotional rigors of the NBA. But she knew that to play the wailing, “don’t leave” mother would be a mistake.

And so, when Danny said to her one afternoon in the kitchen that he thought he wanted to turn pro, she calmly answered, “Go ahead. Take the money and run.”

Danny was shocked. “This is too easy,” he thought. He asked his mother what she really thought.

“If you go, you’ll have the money, no doubt about it,” she said. “You’ll have money, money, and money. Now, what can you have if you stay? A degree. A championship ring, maybe. The Olympics. And the money, I suspect, will still be there.”

Danny Manning laughed when his mother was finished. “I think I see your point,” he said. The decision was made. Darnelle Manning was relieved.

“His father never went back for his degree and I’m sure Danny never would have either,” she said. “But more than that, I thought he had his whole life to be an adult but only one last year to enjoy being a child. I’m glad he decided to stay.”

So was Brown, who had rejected an offer from the New York Knicks. He started the season with high hopes. Even after two losses in Hawaii, one to Iowa and one to Illinois, he wasn’t that concerned. “This time of year is for learning,” he said.

But N.C. State, even if it was a learning game, was a big one. It was Manning’s first trip back to North Carolina to play since the booing experience of his sophomore season. And State was a very good team—one that Valvano was still tinkering with, but a very good team nonetheless.

The game was scheduled during Christmas break. But the State students wanted to see the game, so many hung around an extra couple of days, others came back for it. This created a problem for State officials. They had sold the downstairs student seats to the public, figuring the students would be away. When the students began lining up to get in to their regular seats three hours before tip-off, it was apparent there was going to be a problem.

The students wanted in. They were being told to stay out. Finally, Valvano, in his role as athletic director, was called out of the locker room to deal with the situation. Brown, sitting in the arena relaxing, saw him coming and asked what was going on. Valvano explained.

“Let’s go talk to them,” Brown said.

The two men walked to the door where the students were being held back by security. Valvano explained the seats had been sold. “But they’re our seats, we’re your best fans,” the students answered.

“Hey, Jimmy, I agree with them, I think you should let them in,” Brown said.

“Yeah, I probably should,” Valvano said.

Before he could think about that for another moment, the rope was down and the students were racing into the building toward their seating section. Valvano and Brown just stood to the side watching, Brown laughing hysterically. That was enough for Valvano. He shrugged his shoulders, turned to his assistants and said, “You deal with it.” Then he headed back for his locker room.

The assistant athletic directors tried. They pleaded with the students, now taking up the whole downstairs section behind the benches, to leave. They asked Dick Vitale, who was broadcasting the game on ABC, to make a PA announcement asking them to leave. “No way,” Vitale said. “The only person who can do that is Jim Valvano.”

Jim Valvano wasn’t coming out of the locker room again until just before game time. The students weren’t going to leave. Finally, the State people gave up. They began racing around to find folding chairs and benches and began sticking them in aisles and anyplace else they could find. Anywhere there was an inch, a seat was set up. A riot was averted, but if a fire marshal had walked in, Reynolds Coliseum might have been shut down forever.

The game began with Manning scoring 6 of the Jayhawks’ first 8 points. State dominated most of the first half, though, leading 35–26 with five minutes to play. Freshman point guard Chris Corchiani, who Valvano had started over senior Quentin Jackson, gave the Wolfpack more quickness and penetrating ability than it had had the year before. State looked tough.

Kansas chipped back to within 41–36 at halftime, but State pushed the lead back up to 9 in the second half. Then it was as if Manning decided he was not going to be denied in this game. He went backdoor for a dunk. He posted up for a jumper, he tapped in a Kevin Pritchard miss. Finally, he made a steal and fed a gorgeous look-away pass to Marshall to tie the game at 56–56 with 9:40 left.

It seesawed from there. Manning put Kansas ahead with two free throws, 66–65. Corchiani got overexcited and threw the ball away. Manning hit a hook for a 68–65 lead.

It was 70–67 when State called time with 1:58 left. In the huddle, Brown called “bump-back-40,” a play that calls for the ball to go inside to Manning. Assistant Coach Alvin Gentry looked at Manning as Brown explained the play. Manning looked right back. “Just throw me the fucking ball,” he said.

Gentry was shocked. Such talk was very un-Manninglike. First there was the matter of stopping State. Valvano wanted to get the ball inside as much as Brown did. But when the pass went to Shackleford, Manning stepped around him and intercepted. Kansas ran bump-back-40. Manning caught the pass, turned, and shot an eight-footer. It swished with 1:43 left, giving him 32 points and KU a 72–67 lead.

That was the ball game. Manning had come a long way in the two years since he had cringed at the boos in Greensboro. “Now I look at it as sort of funny,” he said. “If I had played for State or North Carolina, I would have been cheered in this state. But, that’s the way life goes.”

He paused. “I’m a senior now. When we were down at halftime, coach got on me. I understand that. At the end, I want the ball because I think I can make something happen.”

He wanted the ball. He dealt with the boos. He handled getting yelled at. Danny Manning had come a long way. But he still had a long way to go.

The memorable moments have been few and far between for the basketball program at the University of California during the past twenty-eight years. In 1959, the Golden Bears won the national championship. In 1960, they reached the championship game again before losing to Ohio State.

Then Pete Newell retired. And Cal basketball seemed to retire right along with him. During the next twenty-five years, Cal had seven winning seasons. Newell had won his last eight games against UCLA. The year after he stepped down, Cal split with the Bruins. After that, it took twenty-five years—fifty-two games—before they won again.

Newell, who was only forty-four when he got out of coaching, stayed on as athletic director for eight years before moving on to the NBA, first as a general manager, then as a superscout. But his legacy lived on at Cal, where they never quite figured out why he gave up doing something he did so well.

“I had
done
coaching,” he said simply. “Plus, my doctor said I needed to give up cigarettes and coffee because they were messing up my lungs. I couldn’t coach without cigarettes and coffee.”

Almost twenty-eight years later, looking back at what Cal basketball was before Newell and what it became after Newell, Cal decided to
name its basketball floor for the man who did the most winning on it. On December 21, 1987, the floor of venerable old Harmon Gym became, officially, “Newell Court.”

Exactly what people would call the 6,450-seat place where Cal plays its home games in the future was uncertain. Once, it had just been the men’s gym. Twenty-six years after it opened, in 1959, it was renamed Harmon Gym in honor of the man who had given the funds to build the original Cal gym in 1878. When Lou Campanelli became the coach in 1985, he insisted that college teams didn’t play in gyms and demanded it be called Harmon Arena. Ray Ratto of the
San Francisco Chronicle
began referring to it as Harmon Gym/Arena/Stop ’N Shop and Drive-Thru Bank.

Whatever it was called, Harmon/Newell is a wonderful anachronism. There are no chair backs, just bleachers, and to get 6,450 in, everyone has to squeeze together real tight. Only here does the pep band have the best seats in the place, right at center court across from the scorer’s table.

But this is no ordinary band. It is “the Straw Hat Band,” so named for the very obvious reason that its members all wear straw hats. Steve Kerr would get in trouble later in the season for commenting in a guest column in the Cal student newspaper that the band looked like a bunch of Shakey’s Pizza countermen.

The Straw Hat Band makes its entrance by marching onto the court—usually right through the visitors’ warmup—and across the floor to its seats. It is joined there at game time by Oski the Bear, a truly homely and fantastic mascot. When the Straw Hat Band plays “Fight On Golden Bears,” and Oski leads the crowd in finishing the song by yelling, “GRRRRAAAH,” Harmon/Newell/Stop ’N Shop is about as much fun as it gets.

The night of the dedication will be a special one. Newell, looking tan and fit at seventy-two, has just flown back from Japan. There, he received the Japanese Sacred Order of the Treasury, as thanks for the work he has done with basketball in Japan during the last twenty-eight years. After Newell had led the U.S. Olympic team to the 1960 gold medal in Rome in his last game as a coach, the Japanese approached him about working with their team to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics.

As the host country, the Japanese were concerned about embarrassing themselves in basketball. Newell worked with the coaches and the team and in 1964, Japan finished fifth—the highest finish for the
country in Olympic basketball—losing to the Soviet Union by 4 points. Since then, Newell has gone back every year. He has spent so much time in Japan that Tommy, the second of his four sons, calls him “Papa-san.”

For Papa-san, this will be an emotional night. All four of his sons, Pete, Tom, Roger, and Greg, are here. The opponent for Cal is—who else?—UCLA. In 1986, during Campanelli’s first season, Cal broke the fifty-two-game losing streak. The record since Newell retired is now 2–56. But the Bruins are not exactly the Bruins of old.