Keegan: Manning opens window – a crack

By Tom Keegan     Oct 24, 2008

? A window opened Thursday at high noon on the second floor of the College Basketball Experience wing of the Sprint Center. It allowed for a rare peak inside the private personality and brilliant basketball mind of Danny Manning.

It revealed a man who is happy and humble, smart and driven, blessed and grateful.

Manning, one of the top dozen college basketball players in history, will be inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in Kansas City on Nov. 23, an event for which tickets are on sale. The announcement of Manning’s induction came during the Final Four in San Antonio, but Manning was too busy with his duties as an assistant coach on Bill Self’s staff to agree to a news conference then.

He delayed it until Thursday.

You see, Manning pushes his shopping cart the same as the rest of us. Self-importance isn’t his thing, so he always finds something more important to do than talk about himself.

He was asked to help promote the event, obliged and knew he had no choice but to talk about his career in basketball, past, present and future.

By nightfall, Manning was in the bleachers at Free State High, wearing a green shirt.

Around there, he’s known more as the father of the homecoming queen and volleyball/basketball star, Taylor, a senior, than for his accomplishments in basketball.

Danny and wife Julie also will be mainstays at boys basketball games at Free State the next few winters. Taylor’s brother, Evan, is a sophomore.

How long will the Manning family stay rooted in Lawrence?

Asked about his future and whether he wants to land a job as a head coach, Manning reached into his past.

“When I retired from the NBA, my son had not been in the same school for a whole year,” Manning said. “It just got to the point for us, my wife and children, we wanted to have more stability. Once they finish school, we’ll look out there and see what the future holds for us, but right now I’m extremely happy that we came here, and I’m looking forward to a few more years.”

Translation: You better believe he wants to become a head coach, just not quite yet. Lawrence is too perfect for the family at the moment.

He will continue tutoring KU’s big men and scouting opponents the way he broke down Memphis before the national title game.

Great players don’t always make the best coaches because they lack patience for players who don’t feel and play the game as naturally as they did.

Manning said his upbringing, as the son of a former journeyman professional, Ed Manning, taught him the value of every player embracing his responsibilities in building a winner. The knee injuries Danny suffered after leaving Kansas forced him to adapt his game. The star-to-coach transition hasn’t been a difficult one for him.

“You always have to be patient,” Manning said of coaching. “You have to find out the best way that each individual learns. There are individuals you talk to, and they understand you verbally, and there other people who are visual learners.

“You have to develop the relationship with the person you work with to where he trusts you. And once you develop that trust, you are able to do whatever you can to help them become the best they can be.”

Cole Aldrich was one of the players with whom Manning worked last season.

He looked so raw, such the freshman, during the Late Night in the Phog exhibition.

In the Final Four, he outplayed national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina.

Manning sent most of the credit for Aldrich’s rapid improvement the way of the freshman and his veteran teammates.

“Cole was in a unique situation last year,” Manning said. “He played against three very good players every day in practice: Sasha (Kaun), Darnell (Jackson) and Darrell (Arthur). Unfortunately for Cole, he was on the bad end of a lot of plays, in terms of those guys were so much more experienced and knew what we were looking for. At times, it was frustrating for Cole. But to Cole’s defense, he never gave up. Every day he came back trying to get better. To me, the Carolina game was probably the proudest I’ve been as a position coach, when I saw how he competed in that game. One of the reasons we won the championship was we had four big guys, and we were able to rotate in two and two. Memphis got in foul trouble, and they weren’t quite as deep. Cole is definitely someone who put us in a position to help us win a championship.”

After leading Kansas to a national championship in 1988, Manning twice earned NBA All-Star honors, a number that would have been much higher if he had stayed healthier.

The way Manning sees it, the injuries had a reverse effect on his coaching career.

“I’ve gone through some injuries in my career, and my game changed mentally and physically,” Manning said. “I went from being a player who always relied on my athletic ability to a player who had to think of how to try to be ahead of the game, so to speak. I had to study. I had to study reports. I had to develop a scouting report on everyone I played up against.

“… I had to play for someone like Larry Brown in college who was a very demanding coach but also teaches you all the ins and outs and all the angles of the game. That really helped me in my transition to my professional career throughout all the injuries.”

To watch Manning play the game in college was to be reminded of Magic Johnson at Michigan State.

A passer first, Manning is KU’s all-time leading scorer.

Even before his injuries, it was evident he thought the game summa cum laude.

Manning has the mind and the competitive nature to become a great college coach, but in today’s world, with the hunger of college basketball fans to know so much about the teams for which they root, the head coach’s media responsibilities can be time-consuming and tiresome.

Would Manning have the patience for that end of the job?

Based on the way he lifted the window and invited people in Thursday, the answer just might be yes.

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