Every year around this time, it’s unusual when the brain synapses don’t engender a few memories of Danny Manning.
You remember Manning, don’t you? Sure, you do, although you may have lost track of him now that he’s toiling in obscurity as a reserve forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, an NBA team hovering around the .500 mark.
Manning, who’ll turn 34 next month, is averaging about 17 minutes and about five points a game.
That’s a far cry, of course, from Monday night a dozen years ago when Manning scored 31 points and snatched 18 rebounds in Kansas’ stunning 83-79 victory over Oklahoma in the NCAA championship game in Kemper Arena.
A couple of months after Manning fit the slipper on the Jayhawks, he was the first player selected in the NBA Draft – by the hapless Los Angeles Clippers – and immediately pegged for stardom.
Twice Manning made the NBA All-Star game, but he never did become a star in large part because the 6-foot-10 former Jayhawk reached an unusual, unwanted benchmark. Manning has bounced back three times from anterior cruciate ligament surgery. No other player has ever come back from three damaged ACLs.
Injury No. 3 – the second on his right knee – occurred two years ago this month and forced Manning to miss the entire strike-shortened 1998-99 season. Then last August, with Manning coming off rehab for the third time, the Phoenix Suns shipped him to Orlando. Less than two weeks later, Orlando sent Manning to Milwaukee in another swap.
For the most part, his thrice-rehabbed knees have been OK this season, although Manning missed about 10 days last month after spraining, yes, that twice-damaged right knee.
Manning has since returned to duty, but you have to wonder how much longer the two-time All-American can continue running the NBA gauntlet, even if he strictly is a role player now. In Sunday’s 117-113 win over the woeful Golden State Warriors, for example, Manning played just five minutes.
Not that he needs the money.
Prior to the 1995-96 season, Manning put his signature on a six-year contract worth about $6.6 million per annum. This is the fifth year of that pact so he is guaranteed one more huge bundle of greenbacks next year regardless of whether he plays a 13th season in the NBA.
Not all of that $40 million or so went into Manning’s pocket, incidentally. An eighth of the 40 grand made him a limited partner in the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. Little known fact: Manning played first base for the Breakfast Optimists baseball team the summer after he graduated from Lawrence High.
Every school kids knows Manning is Kansas University’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, but not many people realize he played in more games and logged more minutes than any KU player in history.
Those of us who saw Manning play during his four seasons with the Jayhawks came to believe he was indestructible. Not once did he miss a game with an injury, but also consistently spent 35 minutes or more on the floor.
When Manning suffered his first serious knee injury about midway through his rookie season with the L.A. Clippers, Kansas fans were stunned. Manning injured??? It was like trying to make us believe the moon was square, or that it took brains to play Bingo. We couldn’t believe it.
Now, with Manning clearly in the twilight of his basketball career, those of us who saw him perform so efficiently and so splendidly in a Kansas uniform are forced to compare sadly his decline to our own.
