Maurice Manning returns to court after 5-year hiatus

He was able to ignore them at first. The snippety little comments made in passing. What did they know, anyway? Had they ever been in his situation? Had they ever been the Man?

Maurice Manning had been the Man. For three years, he was the best high school boys basketball player on the East End of Long Island. Thre times he was named to Newsday's All-Long Island team. In three years at tiny Bridgehampton, a school with fewer opportunities than pupils, he won state titles and in 1997, his senior year, he was named the best player in Suffolk by Newsday.

A world of possibilities stared at Manning. But he blinked. He dropped out of high school before graduating to attend St. Thomas More Academy, a prep school in Connecticut, on full scholarship. Bad advice, he said, from some trusted adults. He lasted only a few months there - never played a game for the school - and came home for good during Thanksgiving break.

That's when the comments started. Didn't you play ball? What happened to you? The explosive player who had shredded every defense in the state was suddenly defending himself.

"Kids would come up to me and say 'Man, you only played basketball and now you're not doing nothing,'" Manning said. "It definitely hurt. These were the kids who used to look up to me, and now they were talking back to me."

They can't say those things about Manning any longer. At age 22, five seasons removed from his glory days in high school, he is a freshman on the Suffolk CC-Selden team. He is a full- time student and has a part-time job in the campus mail room. Despite an absence for as long as most players' entire college careers, he was averaging 14.1 points, 9.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists through Thursday. Selden is 23-1, ranked No. 7 in NJCAA Division III.

Selden coach Rich Wrase knew about Manning's ability in high school. He coached Westhampton at the time. "He had always seemed like a good kid," Wrase said. "I just didn't know if he could be away from something for that long and come back the way he did."

Wrase didn't make it easy for Manning, refusing to contact him. Manning had to make the first move, reach toward the life preserver before Wrase let out any more line.

Manning didn't do much with his life in the years after high school. He had a son with girlfriend Lashanne Anderson - part of the reason he never returned to St. Thomas More - and named him after himself. He worked odd jobs, seasonal work such as landscaping and picking on farms. Real John Steinbeck stuff, not the typical image of the Hamptons.

He hung out with friends on Huntington Crossway in Bridgehampton, went to clubs, spent his money on flashy clothes and trendy shoes, watched television, did nothing. People told him to get his life together, go back to school.

"Uh-huh," he said.

His father, David Manning, urged him to get his diploma, find a better future than the one David had as a physical laborer.

"All of my hopes for him had disappeared when he came back from St. Thomas More," David Manning said. "I can't describe the disappointment."

Maurice Manning said he almost lost his love for basketball. It became a long-distance relationship, dragged out by occasional pickup games and local shoot-arounds.

But one day last season, watching a basketball game on television, Manning felt something inside him that hadn't been stirred in years. He watched the players and their relationship with each other and the postgame interviews. "I used to do that," he thought. "Maybe I still can."

That seed wouldn't have germinated had not Ronnie White sprinkled it with water. White, a high school teammate of Manning's at Bridgehampton and a neighbor on the Crossway, was playing at Selden. Manning had always been the better player, a year older and a few inches taller, but Manning looked up to White when it came to things such as maturity and focus.

White suggested Manning try to gather himself and play basketball at Selden. He might as well have told Noah to build a boat.

"The main reason I am here is my man Ron White," Manning said. "He has looked out for me in a lot of ways."

White deflects much of the credit for bringing Manning to Selden, even though he worked as a matchmaker between Manning and Wrase.

"Mo is a difficult person," White said. "He's very stubborn and would not have done any of these things had he not wanted to do them. I threw it up there only one time for him. I just sparked something. I don't deserve too much credit."

Neither, he said, does Manning. Yes, he took classes in math and English at Suffolk CC's Riverhead campus to get his high school diploma. And yes, Manning had to lose about 25 pounds to get into playing shape. And he drives an hour and a half back and forth each day and earned a 2.5 GPA in his first semester at Selden.

"But I think he realizes this is something he was supposed to be doing since day one," White said. "This is not something extra special."

White, a sophomore at Selden, will play at Division II Southampton College next season. Manning said he will return to Selden, finish his career there next spring, then ride the education system as far as it will take him.

"I feel like I am in it now," Manning said. "I looked at the people in my circle and I said I don't want to be like that anymore. I want to show my son there is a right way and a wrong way. I've been down both roads."