Ex-Kansas star, Wake Forest coach Danny Manning joins Louisville basketball staff

Kenny Payne remembers meeting Danny Manning when they were teenagers. He remembers seeing him at Pan-Am Games practices when Denny Crum was Manning’s coach.

Payne doesn’t so much remember squaring off with Manning in the NBA when Payne was a 76er and Manning a Clipper.

“I probably was sitting watching Charles Barkley and Danny,” Payne said Friday.

These days, Payne’s bound to the bench as the new Louisville head coach. And Manning will join him there. On Friday, he was introduced as the second and most recent addition to Payne’s first Cardinals coaching staff.

The two Mississippians — Payne was born in Laurel, Manning in Hattiesburg — have known each other for decades, and when Louisville hired first-team head coach Payne, Manning reached out for congratulations.

That turned into a conversation that led Manning — the leading scorer in the history of Kansas basketball — to a spot on Payne’s staff, joining former Duke assistant Nolan Smith, introduced earlier this week.

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“There’s not too many times you get a chance to work for and be around people in this profession that you really, really care for and you enjoy being around,” Manning said at a news conference Friday. “For me, when the opportunity came about, I discussed it with my wife and my family and knew it was something I wanted to do.”

Manning, 55, is best known for his playing career at Kansas, where he scored 2,951 career points, the most in Jayhawks history. As a senior, he led KU to the 1988 NCAA title.

Though his pro career was marred by injury, he spent 15 seasons in the NBA, including six-plus years with the L.A. Clippers. He averaged 14 points in 883 games.

Manning began his coaching career at Kansas, where he first worked for four seasons under Bill Self as director of student-athlete development. Self promoted him to assistant coach in 2006, and Manning left in 2012 for the head coaching job at Tulsa.

Manning went 38-29 in two seasons with the Golden Hurricane and, after a 21-13 season in 2013-14, left to become head coach at Wake Forest. He was fired in 2020 after coaching the Demon Deacons to a 78-111 record in six seasons. Manning coached Wake Forest to one NCAA Tournament appearance, in 2017.

Last April, Manning joined Mark Turgeon's staff at Maryland. When Turgeon stepped down in December, Manning took over as the Terrapins' interim head coach. Maryland went 10-14 while he was in the head coaching role.

Manning’s head coaching experience is “invaluable,” Payne said. But it wasn’t a significant vacate in the hire. Payne’s longstanding relationship with Manning — and Manning’s reputation for player development on the court and off — were the big draws.

“More than the X’s and O’s and the basketball knowledge, I need good people,” Payne said. “I need to surround young people with good people. The fact that he’s a great basketball mind is a major plus, but more important than any of that (is) who he is as a man.”

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And Payne knows Manning the man. They met in high school and have kept in touch through the years. Manning remembers not only watching the Louisville program at Metro Conference tournaments, but visiting the campus and playing pickup games against the Cardinals in the 1980s.

According to Payne, when Manning left Tulsa for Wake Forest, he called Payne — then an assistant at Kentucky — and told him he’d recommended Tulsa hire Payne as his replacement.

Both men have won NCAA titles as a player and a coach. Payne won playing for Louisville in 1986 and as an assistant coach at Kentucky in 2012. As a player, Manning led Kansas to the 1988 title — those Jayhawks famously known as “Danny and The Miracles” — and he was on the staff of KU’s 2008 national champs.

Smith won an NCAA championship as a player at Duke, giving the Cards’ coaches so far a combined five titles as players or coaches.

“What better culture than to have coaches that have done what (players are) trying to do?” Payne said. “To build a championship culture, to build a championship team (with) guys that have done it, that can talk about it — talk about the sacrifices it took to get there. That’s vital. I don’t know another staff that has that.”

That shared achievement bonds Payne and Manning, but their relationship runs further back than that. And that connection, Manning said, is what made it an “easy decision” to return to a role as an assistant coach.

Manning noted that he knew Self before joining his staff, that he was college teammates with Turgeon years before working for him at Maryland. He’s known Payne even longer.

“I’ve always been blessed in the sense of working for people that I’ve had a great relationship with, some people that I’ve cared for,” Manning said. “This business, this job is 24/7. It really helps, it’s a lot more enjoyable, when you’re around people that you love and you care for, everybody moving in the same direction.”

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ex-Kansas star Danny Manning joins Louisville basketball coaching staff