Monte Johnson sat in the stands at Allen Fieldhouse not sure what to make of the disaster unfolding around him.

A team was losing badly on the floor, and it seemed as if no one cared. Only about 3,000 people were in the stands with him. The beautiful building had lost its charm.

“It’s a Saturday,” friends would tell him. “People aren’t used to games on Saturdays yet.”

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Kansas Basketball: 1988 Champs

Johnson knew that wasn’t the reason. He’d seen Allen Fieldhouse full before, back when he was a player in the 1950s and teamed up with Wilt Chamberlain to play in the Final Four, and as an employee of the Athletics Department in 1960s when he watched almost every game. Now, after making the trip from his home in Wichita, he knew something was wrong. It certainly wasn’t the Saturday afternoon game time.

It was the product.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kansas basketball slipped from perennial power to bottom of the Big 8. It took three men to help restore its tradition.

There was Johnson, the athletics director, Larry Brown, the coach, and Danny Manning, the player. Plenty of others helped, but decisions and performances by these three turned Kansas from a team that finished with two straight losing seasons in the early 1980s to national champions by 1988.

The return of Johnson

Monte Johnson was perfectly content living a low-key life in Wichita as a banker. He’d done the KU Athletics thing for a while, working nearly every job within the Athletics Department from 1961 to 1970. By then, he’d had enough. Johnson found plenty of success and more money in the banking business. He was happy.

Then, in the fall of 1982, he received some surprising news. Johnson was nominated to be the Athletics Director at his alma mater. The nomination was completely out of the blue. Johnson had spent very little time in Lawrence, only making the two-hour trip to help former teammate Bob Billings with developments in the Alvamar neighborhood or to go to the occasional basketball game.

He wasn’t seriously interested. Besides, whoever got the job had to fix an Athletics Department that was in shambles. Three directors had gone in and out of the position in the past year. The basketball team was struggling under coach Ted Owens and drawing smaller crowds than ever. Kansas had made it to the NCAA tournament only once in the past four years. The Jayhawks finished with a losing record in 1982 and were about to start another losing season.

Chuck Woodling, who covered the basketball team for the Lawrence Journal-World from 1969 to 2005, saw the decline.

“It was a low point,” Woodling said. “People were disappointed and thought the KU tradition was fading.”

Still, Johnson decided to go for an interview. His occasional trips to the Fieldhouse allowed him to see how badly the basketball program needed a change.

Johnson got the job and accepted it.

“I thought being an alum, I could help with some of the problems,” he said.

Johnson went to work quickly. When Owens and the Jayhawks finished seventh in the Big 8 with a 13-16 overall record, Johnson fired Owens in the spring of 1983.

“We would have one good year out of four,” Johnson said. “It was like a roller coaster.”

With Owens gone, Johnson needed to find a coach to help him bring the basketball team back to prominence.

Finding Larry

An unfamiliar voice greeted Johnson on the telephone in his office. At the time, he was busy preparing for a trip to Albuquerque, the site of the NCAA Championship and where he planned to interview 10 college coaches for the job at Kansas.

The voice on the phone was that of Martin “Spider” Reed. Reed was a KU graduate and acquaintance of Johnson who had been living in Denver. While there, he had developed a relationship with Larry Brown and thought that Brown, who was then coaching the New Jersey Nets, might be interested in taking the Kansas job.

This was intriguing. Johnson had never considered Brown before Reed mentioned his name. Johnson got Brown’s phone number from Reed and gave him a call. No one answered.

Oh well. There would be plenty of good candidates to interview in Albuquerque, N.M., Johnson figured. He forgot about Brown.

Until the very next day, that is. Johnson got another unusual phone call. This time, it was from CBS analyst Billy Packer. Packer told him that Brown would be a perfect fit for the job and gave him another phone number where he could reach the Nets coach.

Johnson called and this time Brown answered. They would meet at a hotel in Kansas City the next Monday to talk about the job.

Although Johnson knew Brown was interested, he still went to Albuquerque to complete the scheduled interviews. His first one was with North Carolina coach Dean Smith. Johnson said he offered him the job, but Smith said he couldn’t leave a school where they were getting ready to name a gym after him.

Johnson left Albuquerque that weekend liking a few of the candidates, but he was still interested in interviewing Brown on Monday. He had good reason. As soon as he spoke a few words to Brown, Johnson was blown away.

“He was the most mild-mannered person I’d ever met,” Johnson said. “He was not the guy I’d seen on the court. When he was on the basketball court, he was totally in charge.”

Johnson left the interview not knowing whether he should hire Brown or Eddie Sutton, who was coaching Arkansas at the time. A few days later, he called Sutton to find out how interested he was in the job. He could tell Sutton was reluctant.

Another employee in the Athletics Department, Lonnie Rose, had Brown on hold as Johnson talked to Sutton. Soon, Johnson realized Sutton wouldn’t be worth the trouble if he took too long to decide. He grabbed the phone from Rose and hired Brown on the spot.

A special recruit

Once on the job, Brown made a decision as smart as Johnson’s decision to hire him. He made a truck driver named Ed Manning an assistant coach. The hire wouldn’t have been anything special if not for Ed’s son, Danny.

Danny Manning was one of the top high school basketball players in the country. By hiring Ed, Brown developed an immediate connection to Manning and got the Manning family to move from Greensboro, N.C., to Lawrence. Not surprisingly, Manning, a McDonald’s All-American, signed with the Jayhawks.

Brown and Manning turned the program around immediately, leading the team to three straight NCAA tournament berths and a Final Four in 1986. The team appeared to take a step back in the 1987-1988 season before Manning began to carry the Jayhawks. They beat Xavier, Murray State, Vanderbilt, Kansas State and Duke to reach the championship game against Oklahoma.

But to beat the Sooners, a team that had defeated them twice already, Kansas would need a major lift not just from Manning but from Brown, too.

A halftime for champions

Mark Turgeon shuffled into the Kansas locker room at Kemper Arena behind Manning and the rest of the players at halftime of the national championship game. Like all the coaches, players and fans, Turgeon, a graduate assistant, was pleased with KU’s first-half effort. The score was tied at 50.

Turgeon really thought the Jayhawks had a good opportunity to win. His confidence went up even further as soon as Brown started addressing his team.

Brown told his players about the time he coached in the 1980 national championship when he was with UCLA. The Bruins lost to Louisville 59-54, and the Cardinals’ Darrell Griffith scored 23 points.

Brown looked at Manning.

“Darrell Griffith was the best player on the court, and he was not going to let Louisville lose that game,” he told him. “You have to do the same.”

Then Brown turned to the rest of the team. He started talking about the drive home from the same game.

“There was a long line of joyous cars driving from Indianapolis back to Louisville that night,” Brown told them. “Our fans can have the same, driving from Kansas City back to Lawrence.”

All the players got the message.

“It was just a perfect speech at a perfect time,” Turgeon said.

That was obvious from Kansas’ performance in the second half. The Jayhawks weren’t as hot as they were in the first 20 minutes, but they played well enough to hold off the Sooners and win 83-79.

Manning did just what Brown wanted. He wouldn’t let Kansas lose. He scored 31 points and grabbed 18 rebounds. Perhaps most importantly, he took the ball up the court for the Jayhawks most of the game, negating the quick hands of Sooners guard Mookie Blaylock, who was as good as anyone at stealing the ball.

Soaking it all in

Johnson watched the net-cutting ceremony from the Kemper Arena stands. He was no longer the athletics director on that April night. He had retired about a year before. In fact, Johnson was helping out Oklahoma by playing host to the team for the Big 8. It didn’t matter. The victory still tasted sweet for Johnson.

The game was a lot better than the one he remembered watching with just 3,000 other fans in the early 1980s.

That era was ancient history now. Tradition was restored.

The championship was the work of many players, coaches and other members of the Athletics Department, but three men stuck out — Johnson, Brown and Manning. Without Johnson’s decision to hire Brown, Brown’s recruitment of Manning and motivational tactics, and Manning’s ability to lead a team, the quick turnaround wouldn’t have been possible.

“I felt like we laid the groundwork for something unexpected,” Johnson said.