Prepare like a Pro with Danny Manning

Danny Manning is known for his passion, honesty, character, positivity and work ethic in helping young people succeed on the court in the game of basketball and off the court in the game of life. He is one of the premier names in the world of basketball.

Danny is an American college/professional basketball coach in transition and retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player who spent 15 years in the league. Most recently, Danny served as the men's head coach at Wake Forest University. After being born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and attending high school at Page High School (Greensboro, NC), and later Lawrence High School (Lawrence, KS), Danny went on to play basketball at the University of Kansas, where has was a part of four final four teams.

At Kansas, he won an NCAA national championship with the Jayhawks in 1988 as a player, and again as an assistant in 2008. Additionally, Danny is the all-time leading scorer in Kansas basketball history with 2,951 points. He was inducted to the college basketball hall of fame in 2008. As a college head basketball coach, Danny took two different programs to the NCAA Tournament in four years (2014 - Tulsa, 2017 - Wake Forest). He was the 2014 Conference USA Coach of the Year and 2017 Skip Prosser Man of the Year. He has coached 15 NBA draft picks, including 10 first-round selections and nine current NBA players. NBA draft picks who played for Danny include big men Wayne Simien, Julian Wright, Darrell Arthur, Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun, Cole Aldrich, twins Marcus and Markieff Morris, Jeff Withey and Thomas Robinson at Kansas, in addition to John Collins at Wake Forest. 

In this episode, we discuss Danny’s life and upbringing as a kid in a basketball town with a basketball family (4:59), whether or not moving around a lot in his childhood helped him to better navigate the world (6:15), the values his parents passed down to him and his sister (7:40), what he loved about basketball growing up (9:27), his other hobbies outside of basketball (10:30), where he considers “home” to be (11:10), if he knew he wanted to play college basketball at Kansas (12:10), what it was like playing in an intense and pressure-filled environment at Kansas (17:19), the similarities between the championship teams he was a part of in 1988 and 2008 (20:07), his thoughts and feelings during both of those championship runs (21:33), how he was able to interpret the pressure he faced during his career in a positive light (24:30), his mindset as a coach before, during, and after the 2008 championship (26:50), coaching with joy (30:40), how coaching is like parenting (33:25), why he chose to coach in college as opposed to the NBA (36:13), what it’s like navigating Lawrence, Kansas as such a recognizable figure (38:58), the mindset of sticking out as an all-star vs. being a role-player off the bench (41:00), whether he faced pressure to become more “selfish” as a player in the NBA (44:00),  how he navigated recovering from 3 torn ACLs (45:57), what he learned from being coached by legends (49:56), what his coaching philosophy is and the importance of education (52:30), his thoughts on the one-and-done era (55:39), how he would get his mind set on game day as a player (58:00) vs. as a coach (59:50), what it was like for him emotionally to have his jersey retired at Kansas (1:02:20), and the importance of being kind, understanding, and empathetic during these times (1:05:50).

Thank you to Danny for coming on the podcast. We encourage you to follow him on twitter @CoachDManning

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that will be coming out in October 2020, and you can pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian