More from Penny Hardaway’s introduction
Mark Giannotto Tony Madlock to join Memphis staff, Page 4B
He emerged from the glass windows at the Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center on Tuesday morning and the first spontaneous ovation of the morning began.
Then he walked downstairs, found a seat by the stage and watched intently as University of Memphis President M. David Rudd made it official.
“It is a pleasure to see all of you here to welcome Penny Hardaway as our new basketball coach,” Rudd said, and the hundreds on hand to witness this anticipated moment broke out in uninterrupted applause for 18 seconds.
Memphis introduced Hardaway, the former Tigers star, as its new men’s basketball coach during a news conference that doubled as a celebration.
Hardaway, 46, becomes the school’s 19th coach and the third alumnus to lead the men’s basketball program, joining Wayne Yates (1974-79) and Larry Finch (1986-97). He takes over for former coach Tubby Smith, who was fired after two seasons.
Hardaway agreed to a three-year contract, according to one person directly involved with the negotiations. The university did not release any information related to Hardaway’s contract Tuesday. Geoff Calkins: Hardaway reminds a city what Tigers basketball can be,
Hardaway’s return to campus, and his status as a local basketball legend, is expected to excite the Tigers’ fan base and provide an immediate jolt on the recruiting trail.
Hardaway has no college coaching experience, but led Memphis East High School to its third straight TSSAA AAA state championship on Saturday. He also runs the high-profile, Memphisbased AAU program Team Penny, and has ties to several top 100 2019 recruiting prospects as a result.
But this hire is as much about the hope Hardaway’s presence will provide a depleted fan base as it is the product he could potentially put on the floor. He did not shy away from that fact during a speech that captured the current emotions of the Tiger faithful and former players in the crowd, and galvanized them all at once.
“I’m not a luck hire. I’m not just coming here to be a face. I’m coming here to
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make a difference,” Hardaway said. “I really feel like I can do so with the help of getting the fans back in the stands like it was back in the old school days . ... I miss those days. We’ve got to get those days back.”
“Like I told those kids in the locker room,” he continued, alluding to this past year’s Memphis basketball team, “it was kind of unfair a little bit to them that nobody really showed up. But those days are gone.”
Memphis finished with a 21-13 record this season and missed the postseason for the fourth straight year. After both of Smith’s 2018 recruits decommitted last week, Hardaway will have at least three scholarships available to use next year.
He expects more attrition in the weeks to come, noting that he didn’t think it was “realistic” to keep the entire roster intact considering it had been recruited by Smith and his staff.
But university officials said they initiated this coaching change largely because of financial concerns surrounding the men’s basketball program. Rudd emphasized this even further on Tuesday when he met with reporters.
Rudd said that the program is projected to lose $4.7 million in revenue this year and that season ticket sales dropped to 4,115. He described the latter figure as “the lowest in modern history for Tiger basketball.”
Smith is owed nearly $10 million after being fired with three years remaining on his five-year contract, and attendance at Tiger home games hit a 48-year-low this past season. Donations to the athletic department also decreased by $1.1 million during the 201617 fiscal year.
The hope is Hardaway can reverse these trends.
“From a financial perspective, we need our fans back and we need them back now,” Rudd said.
The city’s love affair with Hardaway began more than 30 years ago, when he starred at Treadwell High and chose to stay home and play at Memphis despite suitors from around the country.
He went on to earn All-America honors two years in a row for the Tigers (1991-92 and 1992-93) before being selected with the No. 3 overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft. He was a four-time AllStar and played 15 seasons in the NBA.
Hardaway then returned to Memphis after his retirement and got involved in the city both philanthropically and through the grassroots basketball scene. He earned a bachelor’s degree in professional studies from the university in 2003.
He was not, however, a serious candidate for this position when Memphis hired Smith in 2016. Two years later, when faced with another opening, Hardaway appeared to be the only person the school considered.
But he saw himself as college coaching material long before administrators did.
“I’ve always had the confidence when I retired from the NBA that I could coach any level,” Hardaway said. “I respect the coaches that have done it for a while, but I’ve had enough experience in the NBA playing under some great coaches and being a coach on the floor to be able to run a program.”
Hardaway nonetheless insisted the possibility of getting this job, however attainable it may have appeared in recent months, felt like a dream until Tuesday morning.
Until he began driving back to the university he once starred at and thought about the new chapter he was about to embark upon.
“I have the opportunity to be the University of Memphis head coach,” Hardaway said. “It’s coming full circle.”