For a split second, he didn’t move. The ball was cradled in his hands the way a doctor might hold a newborn; the grip firm, yet soft and clearly full of love, with just a touch of wonder. Danny Manning loved this moment, perhaps more than any other in his entire life. He had fantasized it thousands of times and now, when it was real, he wasn’t quite sure whether to believe it.
But his eyes and ears told him it was true. He looked at the Kemper Arena scoreboard and there it was: Kansas–83, Oklahoma–79. And the clock said :00. The questions had all been answered. The basketball was his to keep and so was this feeling. If it had been tangible, Manning would have gripped the feeling so tightly he might have choked it. Instead, he had the ball.
When a full second passed and he still hadn’t jolted awake in bed to realize it was just another dream, when he heard the cheers of joy still ringing in his ears and understood that it was 10:09 P.M. on a warm April night in Kansas City and he, Daniel Edward Manning, had become a part of history, he reacted. His face exploded into a look of utter ecstasy and he began searching for people to hug.
He didn’t have far to go. Chris Piper was running toward him, arms in the air, his head back, screeching something that was unintelligible to Manning. It didn’t matter. Piper had been there all four years at Kansas with Manning. They had suffered together, living through all the near-misses and the key injuries, wondering often if there was such a thing as a happy ending and holding each other as if the other were a life raft when it seemed so often that their epitaph would be, “If Only …”
Now, there would be no epitaph, just a legacy—and a happy ending. And so, as was only right, Manning and Piper fell into each other’s arms, living a moment so filled with happiness that, later, it hardly seemed real. Then their teammates were climbing on them, clutching and grabbing at them, each player a part of this because no one—not even their coaches—among the thousands in the arena or the millions watching on television could understand how this felt. For that brief moment, before fans and officials and TV types and newspaper people interrupted, it was just the Jayhawks, piling on one another, sharing a feeling that was theirs and theirs alone.
They had won a national championship. They had beaten 290 other teams and they had beaten the odds. They had beaten their own self-doubts and they had beaten a season that seemed to have beaten them on a couple dozen occasions. The coaches had put in the hours too and felt the pain, but for coaches it was different. Ten years from now they would still be coaching. College basketball players have a brief lifespan. They are freshmen one minute; alumni, it seems, only seconds later.
Within minutes of Manning’s grabbing that last rebound, the rest of the world would intrude on them. Manning and Coach Larry Brown would be hustled in front of the television cameras. The others would find microphones and cameras and pencils surrounding them. They would all look into the stands for family and for friends to begin to share the joy with them. But those first few seconds belonged to them and to no one else. No one.
One of the most intelligent things the people at CBS do in those initial moments following the last game of the basketball season is shut up. Eventually, millions of words will be written and spoken about this game, this team, this night. Briefly, though, the pictures speak the most eloquent words of all.
No one needed to describe what Danny Manning had just done. No one needed to say anything about the feelings of Stacey King, the wonderful Oklahoma forward who sat on the scorer’s table sobbing. And, as the Jayhawks unpiled, there was little doubt about what Manning would do next. He headed straight for his mother. When he was a little boy and his father was away playing ball or coaching ball or driving a truck to keep food on the family table, Danny Manning’s best friend was his mother. She had shared his tears and felt his sorrow and, when his father couldn’t be there, his loneliness. More than anyone, she had convinced him to stay in college a fourth year, to pass up the mind-boggling NBA money for twelve more months. Now, she shared his joy and a feeling that millions and millions of dollars could never buy.
A few feet away, Ed Manning was being a coach. He had sat on the Kansas bench almost paralyzed during those final seconds, his heart pounding so hard he was afraid his son might hear it. Twice, Danny had gone to the foul line in the last fourteen seconds with the game in the balance. Twice, he had calmly made both free throws. When the buzzer finally went off, Ed Manning wanted to race to his son, embrace him and tell him how proud he was and how much he loved him.
But Ed Manning is an assistant basketball coach, a professional. So he did the professional thing. He went looking for the losers to shake hands, to offer condolences. Two days earlier when Kansas had beaten Duke in the semifinals, he had sought out Billy King, who, as a high school senior, had chosen to play for Duke over Kansas. When they shook hands, King had started to cry and Ed Manning knew this could easily have been his son crying those tears. He had put his arms around the losing player and comforted him.
It was a good three or four minutes into the championship celebration before father and son finally found each other. The embrace was brief, but Ed Manning said what he wanted to say: “I told you so,” he whispered, and Danny nodded because his father was one person who had never stopped believing.
On the Kansas bench, Larry Brown sat dry-eyed, surrounded by close friends and family. He had always believed Danny Manning could be this kind of basketball player, that he was good enough to carry a team to the national championship. His job, for four years, had been to convince Danny that he was that good. Brown had screamed and pleaded and cajoled. He had called Danny names and looked him in the eye as if to say, “If you were a man, you would deck me.”
Often, Manning just pressed a button inside his head and tuned the little coach out. He was sick of the yelling, to the point where he almost ignored his mother’s advice; he had wanted to get away from his last year with the intense little coach. Only at the end did he really understand what Brown had been telling him. “The best player has to be the leader, Danny. It has to be your team, not my team. You can tell them things I can’t. Don’t worry about the past or what people say or think. Just play.”
Finally, he had just played. Brown knew that for all the x’s and o’s he had drawn, for all the pep talks he had given, the one thing he had done to bring this about was get through to Manning. Often, he had thought that would never happen. As recently as February he had screamed at Manning for not breaking up a locker-room fight. “You sit there and watch like one of the guys,” he told Manning. “Goddamn it, when are you going to realize you’re not one of the guys!”
Just in time, Manning realized it. And so, this night was his. Within minutes of accepting the national championship trophy, Larry Brown would be asked where he planned to coach next year. “All I want to do,” he said, “is say the words, ‘We won the national championship.’ ”
He said them and smiled, totally happy. At least for a minute.
For every bit of elation Kansas felt, Oklahoma felt pain. While the Kansas players piled on one another, the Sooners watched. They didn’t see, of course, because each of them was, in a sense, blinded by his own thoughts. Like the Jayhawks, just like every player who has ever put on a college uniform, they had fantasized themselves in that pile. To be so close, only to end up watching, is a feeling so awful that the losers usually can’t describe it. It is a little bit like being shot. At first, the shock is so great you don’t quite understand how badly you have been hurt.
Thirty-five times, the Sooners had done their victory jig. They were the outlaws, the team so strong no one could kick sand back in their faces, even though everyone was dying to do it. This team was a bully, a big, frightening, lightning-quick bully that beat you to a pulp and then jumped on you with both feet while you lay on the floor bleeding and helpless.
But now, the bully had been transformed into a group of heartbroken kids. Too often, those who merely watch say it is only a game. When you focus your mind on one thing for 173 straight days and come up two or three plays short of achieving that one thing, it is not just a game. When your life has been devoted, first and foremost, to basketball for almost as long as you can remember being alive, there is more than just a game involved.
National championship games become part of forever, especially now when everything is on tape, when the media crush is so overwhelming. If Indiana’s Keith Smart had a dollar for every time his shot, the one that beat Syracuse in 1987, had been replayed, he could buy himself a team, an arena, and a couple of cities. Manning’s postbuzzer joy and King’s tears were now part of tournament history. Neither player would forget this night, could ever forget this night, nor could anyone else who took part.
In the front row of the arena, close enough to feel the game, to almost reach out and touch the game, sat the players from Duke and Arizona. That was as close as they would come, however. The Blue Devils, in coats and ties, and the Wildcats, in shorts and jeans, all wished desperately that they were in uniform that night. Each of them had believed two days earlier that they would be playing in this game, that they were good enough to be the ones cutting down the nets, the final act of any important championship celebration.
Now, like everyone else, they were spectators. They didn’t feel the pain the Sooners felt, just a dull ache at what might have been. “All I could think,” said Arizona’s Steve Kerr, “was that we were supposed to be out there.”
Ironically, players from the two teams had happened upon one another the previous evening in a bar. They ended up drinking together until dawn, drawn toward each other because of shared suffering. If things had been different, they would have met in front of millions of people and there would have been no room for friendship or camaraderie. Instead, while only several dozen people watched, they drank, told jokes, and clung spiritually to one another, trying to forget.
All four teams had gone through a lot to get to Kansas City. They were the last four among 291 who started. In the end, though, only one team can feel what Kansas felt. Everyone else becomes a spectator.
But in October, when the leaves are turning and the weather is just starting to get brisk, everyone is Danny Manning or Keith Smart. Some know they can’t be The One, not really, but they dream about it anyway. Others know they have a chance and they think about it more often. Others believe it to be their destiny. Often, they become obsessed by it.
Unlike any other sport, they all begin at the same time. The same day every year. No other sport is as precise. They all begin together, each of them pointing for the same night. Only two make it there. And, among approximately 3,500 college basketball players, no more than fifteen get to feel the oh-so-pure joy of being The Champion.
Kansas won in 1988, but it was not the only winner. Winning and losing is certainly very much a part of college basketball, as with any other sport. But to those who point each year to October 15 the way little children point to Christmas, the season is a companion, a way of life, a certainty you can cling to. To those who love the sport, the feeling each spring as the national champions celebrate is a mixed one: There is joy for the winners, sadness for the losers, and an empty feeling because the season is over.
But there is also a bright side: While the hopes of last October are six months removed, the fantasies of next October are only six months away.