Background and career
Daniel Ricardo Manning (born May 17, 1966) is an American college basketball coach and former professional basketball player who is an assistant men's basketball coach at the University of Colorado. Manning played high-school basketball at Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas. He played college basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks, and played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 14 years. After retiring from professional basketball Manning became an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of Kansas. He won the national championship with the Jayhawks in 1988 as a player, and again as an assistant in 2008. He is the all-time leading scorer in Kansas basketball history with 2,951 points. The next closest player to his point total is Nick Collison, who is 854 points behind Manning.
Manning is the son of Ed Manning, who was a longtime NBA and ABA player and professional and college coach. As a junior at Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, Manning averaged 18.8 points and nine rebounds per game, leading the Pirates to a 26–0 record and the state title. When Ed Manning became an assistant coach at the University of Kansas prior to Manning's senior year, the family moved to Lawrence, Kansas and Manning attended Lawrence High School, where as a senior he was named Kansas Player of the Year. While in Lawrence High, Manning was in the same high school class as Alibaba's Joe Tsai's wife - Clara Wu and played alongside future United States D.C. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan.
Manning led the Jayhawks to the 1988 NCAA title as a senior, leaving KU as its all-time leading scorer and rebounder. He was also the all-time leading scorer in Big Eight Conference history with 2,951 career points. He won the Wooden, Naismith, and NABC awards as the college player of the year in 1988. In Kansas's 83–79 victory over Oklahoma in the 1988 NCAA Championship Game, Manning recorded 31 points, 18 rebounds, 5 steals, and 2 blocked shots. For his seemingly single-handed performance in propelling the underdog Jayhawks to the title, as well as KU's unremarkable record going into the NCAA tournament (21–11, most losses of any NCAA champion), the 1988 Kansas team was nicknamed "Danny and the Miracles" and Manning was honored as Most Outstanding Player in the tournament. A two-time All-American while at KU, Manning was later named the Big Eight Player of the Decade. Kansas retired his famous #25 in February 1992. He is the twelfth all-time leading scorer in NCAA Basketball history, behind Oscar Robertson. Manning was selected to the last all-collegiate USA national basketball team in 1988, which competed at the Summer Olympics against all-professional Soviet and Yugoslavian teams in Seoul, South Korea. The team won the bronze medal but was viewed as a disappointment. Manning failed to score even a single point in that game, and afterward called it "one of the biggest disappointments of my life." On April 2, 2020, The Sporting News deemed Manning the second-best player all-time since the NCAA bracket expanded.
Manning was drafted with the first overall pick by the Los Angeles Clippers in the 1988 NBA draft. He played only 26 games as a rookie after a torn anterior cruciate ligament required him to undergo arthroscopic knee surgery, but he returned for the 1989–1990 season. His most productive NBA season was 1992–1993, when he averaged 22.8 points a game for the Clippers and was selected to play in the All-Star Game. He also was selected as an All-Star the following season. On February 24, 1994, Manning was traded to the Atlanta Hawks for Dominique Wilkins and a first-round draft pick. In Los Angeles, he played for head coaches Gene Shue, Don Casey, Mike Schuler, Mack Calvin, Larry Brown and Bob Weiss. In Atlanta, he played for Lenny Wilkens. He won the 1997–1998 Sixth Man Award, while playing for the Phoenix Suns, as the best reserve player in the NBA, averaging 13.5 points while playing about 26 minutes a game. Manning holds the distinction of being the first NBA player to have returned to play after reconstructive surgeries on both knees (a feat since duplicated by Kenyon Martin, Amar'e Stoudemire, Greg Oden and Derrick Rose). In Phoenix, he played for head coaches Paul Westphal, Cotton Fitzsimmons, Danny Ainge, and Scott Skiles. Manning was traded to the Orlando Magic along with Pat Garrity and a conditional first-round draft pick for Penny Hardaway in 1999, and was subsequently traded to the Milwaukee Bucks with Dale Ellis in exchange for Armen Gilliam and Chris Gatling prior to the start of the 1999–2000 season. He played for George Karl. He spent the final three years of his career with the Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks, and Detroit Pistons. In Utah, he provided valuable scoring off the bench, as the Jazz were on the lookout for veteran role players to surround stars John Stockton and Karl Malone. He would average 7.4 points per game and 2.6 rebounds during the 2001 season as the Jazz qualified for the NBA Playoffs, where they faced a young and talented Dallas Mavericks team. He would average 10.6 points in the series. In 2001, Manning headed to Dallas to play for Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson. He finished his NBA career in Detroit (2003) playing for head coach Rick Carlisle.
He announced his retirement from professional basketball in 2003 and served for four years at the University of Kansas as director of student-athlete development and team manager under KU basketball coach Bill Self. Manning was promoted to assistant coach at the end of the 2006–07 season as a replacement for Tim Jankovich who left the Kansas staff to take the position of head coach at Illinois State University. Manning became a key component of the Jayhawks coaching staff, filling vital roles in both recruiting and his work training the team's big men. In his role as KU assistant coach, Manning worked with the Jayhawk big men and earned a reputation as one of the best coaches of big men in the country. He coached 12 NBA draft picks, including eight first-round selections. Kansas bigs among those NBA draft picks during his tenure included Darrell Arthur, Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun, Cole Aldrich, twins Marcus Morris and Markieff Morris, Thomas Robinson and Jeff Withey. Manning recruited two McDonald's High School All-Americans, including the 2010 NBA first-round draft pick and Oklahoman Xavier Henry. He also coached two Academic All-Americans – Cole Aldrich and Tyrel Reed. Aldrich was selected as the 2010 Academic All-America of the Year for men's basketball. He spent a total of nine years on the staff at Kansas and was part of one NCAA national title, two Final Fours, five NCAA Elite Eight appearances, eight Big 12 regular-season conference titles, five Big 12 tournament championships, and 269 career victories.
On April 4, 2012, Manning was officially announced as Tulsa's head coach. In his first year, the Golden Hurricane posted a 17–16 overall record and an 8–8 mark in Conference USA play, finishing fifth in the league's regular season. With the fifth-least-experienced team in the nation in 2012–13 and battling injuries all season, TU advanced to the semifinals of the Conference USA Championship and played in the CBI postseason tournament. Two Hurricane players, James Woodard and D'Andre Wright, were selected to the C-USA All-Freshman Team. Tulsa improved their record to 21–13 in Manning's 2nd year, while going 13 – 3 in Conference play. Tulsa subsequently emerged as the C-USA regular-season leader and won the Conference tournament to advance onto an NCAA tournament berth for the first time since 2003. The Golden Hurricane lost in the second round to the UCLA Bruins 76–59. Manning was named the 2014 Conference USA Coach of the Year. He was also a finalist for two national Coach of the Year awards including the Jim Phelan Award and the Ben Jobe Award. Seven players moved on to play professional basketball once their careers concluded at Tulsa.
