Why did Danny Manning take a job as a Maryland assistant? Because he can’t stay away.

“For me, it was whatever needed to be done,” Manning said Monday. “That’s what fell into my wheelhouse.”

There’s a thread there, one that has carried though Manning’s career as a national player of the year and national champion at Kansas; his 15 professional seasons that included more than 12,000 points and exactly three knee surgeries; and his introduction to “coaching” on his alma mater’s staff, where he was, by his own account, “a glorified manager” and simply didn’t mind.

Manning is nothing short of college basketball royalty. He turned years of exploring the coaching profession from every vantage into head jobs at Tulsa and Wake Forest. He doesn’t need this. That’s why Turgeon — a Jayhawks point guard for Manning’s first three years in Lawrence, a Jayhawks assistant when Manning willed his group to the 1988 title — asked him, “Man, are you sure?”

Manning had served Kansas Coach Bill Self for nine years. He was a head coach for eight more. When he was let go at Wake Forest following the 2019-20 season, Turgeon called him, suggesting potential avenues out. Manning pushed back. Turgeon remembers hanging up and saying to his wife: “Man, he’s crazy. He needs to get out of this stuff.”

And here he is, right back in it.

“I just missed it,” Manning said Monday afternoon by phone. “I missed the competition. I missed the camaraderie. I miss the interactions with the players, the general give-and-take you have in those situations where you’re helping a kid through something. I miss being able to share the passion and the insight that I’ve been fortunate enough to gain over a long period of time.”

More than that: The people who know him believe the game missed Manning.

“We need Danny coaching,” said Larry Brown, the Hall of Famer who coached Turgeon and Manning at Kansas. “He’s pretty special in my mind.”

Any Manning origin story must include Brown, because Brown coached Manning’s father, Ed, with the Carolina Cougars of the old American Basketball Association, and Brown brought Ed Manning to his Kansas staff as an assistant. Brown knew Danny before he was a 6-foot-10 prospect. He knew him when he was a kid.

“His dad was really bright and was a basketball lifer,” Brown said by phone Monday. “Danny’s the same way. If you look at a player that did all the things the right way on a team sport, in a dictionary, it’d probably be Danny Manning’s name. He was unbelievably unselfish. He cared about his teammates. He accepted a coaching job at Kansas that a lot of people with his accomplishments might not have taken. He’s so, so smart.”

When a player has what Manning had in college, which was uncommon athletic ability, it can be easy to dismiss how they assess the game mentally. Listening to Manning is another reminder that such dismissals are foolish. His first ACL injury came just 26 games into his rookie season with the Los Angeles Clippers, who had drafted him No. 1 overall. He was told it could be career-threatening. His approach to returning, likely with diminished physical skills: Think like a coach.

“I knew I might not be as athletic,” Manning said. “I might not jump as high or move as quickly. But I had to have great anticipation. And in order to have great anticipation, I needed to know what my opponent would do.”

So Manning became a video maven. When he returned to the floor to begin the 1989-90 season, he had a pair of books: one on the tendencies of all the power forwards he would face in the Western Conference, and another on all those he would face in the East. He became an all-star in 1993 and 1994. Maybe more revealing: He’s the only player to return to the NBA after three ACL surgeries. That says something about his will. It also reveals something about how wily he is. In his final years, when his minutes dwindled, he still wore a uniform — but coached anyway.

“I’m not playing as much, so I had to let them know what I’m seeing from the bench,” he said. “There’s a timeout, and I’m running up saying: ‘This is how they’re playing ball screens. This is where the weak side help is coming from. This guy tweaked his ankle two plays ago, so if you can drive at that leg …’ ”

He was helping, however he could. That’s the attitude he brings to College Park, where in some ways he starts over again. In his year away from coaching, Manning called games as an analyst on ESPN. There is preparation for those broadcasts, and he said he enjoyed his time. But when the game was over, there was no film to watch, no mistakes to correct.

“I missed sitting down with a young man and going, ‘Hey, this was the scouting report going into the game, and this is what happened,’ ” Manning said. “ ‘We were going to do X, Y and Z. We got X and Y. We got to get better at Z.’ ”

The money is in the bank. He has status as a member of the College Basketball Hall of Fame, as Kansas’s all-time leader in points, rebounds and games played. He is 54, and he knows exactly what he has accomplished. But he also knows what awaits him — again. The hours away from home. The nights on the road recruiting. The losses that tear away stomach linings. He embraces it still.

“It’s just in him,” Turgeon said. “He’s just competitive. It’s what he wants to do.”

One more story: Manning’s son, Evan, played four years as a walk-on for Self at Kansas. When he graduated, he told his dad what he wanted to do: coach. Danny’s response: “Dude, are you sure?” He was and is. After serving on his dad’s staff at Wake Forest, Evan spent the past year as a graduate assistant at Gonzaga.

Dude, are you sure? That’s the pertinent question about Danny Manning, the basketball prodigy and basketball star who by now is a basketball lifer. In Kansas, he is bigger than life. In Maryland, no task will be too small.

“I’m thrilled he’s back with Mark,” Brown said. That’s true for Turgeon, too. Not because of his numbers in the record books or his status as a player. But because of who he is and how he works — even though he doesn’t have to.

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