(Budd Bailey and Greg D. Tranter have written a book called "Buffalo Braves From A to Z," published by St. Johann Press. Early in the writing process, they wrote good-sized biographies of all 71 men who played a regular-season game for the Braves during their time in Buffalo from 1970 to 1978. Publishers weren't so enthusiastic about all of that material, so most (59) of the biographies were shortened to about 500 words. However, the authors hated to waste all of that material ... so they are presenting it here. It will appear three times a week. A bibliography is available upon request.)
Jim McDaniels was the “can’t miss” player who missed. He went from a dominant high school and college player to a reserve in the pros almost overnight. Jim’s last stop came in Buffalo, finishing a career with a team that also was in its final days.
“I was a hell of a player. I could do it all,” McDaniels told author Gary P. West. “I really felt like I was on track to be one of the best players ever, even in the NBA. But my game went south.”
James Ronald McDaniels was born in Scottsville, Kentucky, on April 2, 1948. Scottsville is a town of a few thousand people near the Tennessee border, northeast of Nashville. It took a little while for McDaniels to build up a reputation. He was always tall for his age – growing four inches in three months at one point - but facilities were a problem. He played on courts made of dirt with family members and friends while growing up. Jim had never even been in a gymnasium until eighth grade, as he spent his early years of education in a one-room, all-black elementary school. McDaniels was so tall as a child that other teams made him stay away from the basket to make it a fair contest.
Allen County High School merged with Scottsville High School. It won 11 district and two regional boys basketball titles between 1981 and 2010. Before that, though, Allen County was very good as well. The 1964 team made it all the way to the state semifinals. McDaniels was at Scottsdale at the time as a freshman, and he decided to transfer to Allen County HS. That cost him his sophomore season, but he was allowed to practice.
And practice he did, putting in the hours with coach Jimmy Bazzell. “I would practice with the team and then I would stay late and work with Coach Bazzell,” McDaniels said. “We would work an hour, hour-and-a-half- or two hours longer. Coach Bazzell was always encouraging me.
There were days when I got so tired. It was then that Coach Bazzell kept on telling me to work harder, prepare yourself, make everyone pay the following year.”
Jim grew to become a 7-footer and was unleashed during his junior season, when he averaged 28 points per game. McDaniels not only dominated around the basket, but he learned to hit the short and mid-range jumper over smaller foes. Then McDaniels had one of the great seasons in the history of Kentucky high school basketball as a senior. McDaniels averaged 38 points and 25 rebounds per game for new coach Tommy Long during his senior season of 1966-67, and was named the state’s “Mr. Basketball.” The Patriots finished with a 33-2 record.
McDaniels concluded his high school career with more than 3,000 points and 2,000 rebounds. That led him to be named to an All-Star team for Kentucky that played a two-game series with Indiana’s best. In the second of those two games, McDaniels went off for 42 points – a total that remains a record to this day. Parade Magazine named him a first-team All-American.
You’d think that such a talent as McDaniels would have been a good fit at the University of Kentucky. There was one huge problem. Kentucky had never had an African American on its basketball roster. Tom Payne was the first one, and he signed a letter of intent in 1969. McDaniels was ahead of his time in that sense. Kentucky is said to have invited Jim for a campus visit, but certainly it would have been tough for him to have been such a pioneer at that stage in his life. “I never felt that warm and fuzzy feeling up there and I did not want to be the first African-American to go up there,” McDaniels said about Kentucky.
Instead, McDaniels turned his attention to Western Kentucky, just up the road in Bowling Green. The attraction was mutual. “Coach (E.A.) Diddle was over or Coach (Johnny) Oldham was over,” McDaniels said later. “Every time you turned around, I’d tell somebody as I was going out the door of the high school, there was a Hilltopper there. Really. That was about basically it. They aggressively recruited me. … I was already pretty much in love with Western any way, but that was just great. They were the torch of integration of Western at the time and they made it quite a bit easier for me and the other guys who came in.”
What’s more, McDaniels brought some help with him. He convinced three talented teammates from the Kentucky All-Star team to join him: Jim Rose of Hazard, Jerome Perry of Louisville Manuel, and Clarence Glover of Caverna. “It wasn’t something that was premeditated,” McDaniels said about a meeting of the group. “Everybody put their hand in and finally it got to Glover, and he was the only one who didn’t put his hand in. We kept our hands out there for five minutes. He goes, ‘Man, you guys are too much, you guys are crazy’. He puts his hand in and it was great.”
WKU may not have had the pedigree of the school in Lexington but was doing quite well on its own. The Hilltoppers had qualified for the NCAA tournament in 1966 and 1967, losing only three games in each season. Its conference record in that span was 27-1 under coach Oldham. McDaniels watched as a freshman as WKU went 18-7 in 1967-68.
As a sophomore, McDaniels averaged almost 25 points per game and led the Hilltoppers to a 16-10 record. In 1969-70, Western Kentucky went 22-3 and reached the NCAA tournament. The school lost to Jacksonville, the eventual national runner-up, in the first round. That set the stage for the greatest season in school history.
WKU became the first non-historically black college in Kentucky to use five African Americans that season. For his trouble, Oldham received some hate mail (one read, “I can also tell you that Western will never advance to any high finish in the upcoming NCAA tournament simply because you can’t win the big games with five Negro players.”). The team went 24-6 to win the Ohio Valley Conference again, and it knocked off Jacksonville in something of a rematch in the first round of the tournament. That contest is remembered for the way Glover pretended to be tying his shoelace after a timeout in the final seconds, and then took a pass and scored the winning basket.
Then came what must have been the sweetest game in Western Kentucky history, as it was matched against Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen. Before the game, McDaniels said the brackets had given the Wildcats a break. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp replied, “I doubt that he has the intelligence to comprehend how the NCAA brackets are made. You can quote me on that.”
The Hilltoppers had the last laugh, beating Kentucky by an overwhelming score of 107 to 83. Western Kentucky was simply too quick. The lead was 70-47 when McDaniels signaled No. 1 to the WKU side of the crowd. Jim finished with 35 points and 17 rebounds. In the regional final, Western Kentucky erased a 14-point lead by Ohio State and went on to beat the Buckeyes, 81-78 in overtime. Amazingly, the Hilltoppers had reached the Final Four.
There they met Villanova, led by Howard Porter. It was a terrific game, as the Hilltoppers fought back from a small deficit to force overtime. It took two extra sessions before the Wildcats finally took a 92-89 win. McDaniels finished with 22 points and 17 rebounds. WKU beat Kansas, 77-75, in the consolation game that finished its season. Oldham retired immediately following that game.
McDaniels thus completed one of the great careers in college basketball, and certainly the greatest in Western Kentucky history. He was an All-American who averaged 27.6 points and 13.4 rebounds over three seasons, setting school records in both categories. McDaniels was the Ohio Valley Conference’s player of the year as a junior and a senior. Jim’s biggest job now was supposedly to pick between the ABA and NBA. McDaniels was the first overall pick of the Utah Stars, and a second-round choice of the Seattle SuperSonics. That latter was considered a sign that McDaniels may have already decided to join the ABA.
That’s what happened, but not with Utah. Jim’s deal was a six-year, $1.4 million contract with the Carolina Cougars, and that is where he began his pro career. Utah eventually was compensated with a player and draft picks for the signing. McDaniels was a star at the start of his rookie season, averaging 26.8 points and 14 rebounds per game for the Cougars. He teamed up with Joe Caldwell, who had jumped from the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. McDaniels was named the Most Valuable Player of the ABA’s All-Star Game on January 29 in Louisville, as he scored 18 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter to lead the East to a win.
But there were problems in paradise. “McDaniels wasn’t even close to being a big-time pro player when he signed,” Carolina coach Tom Meschery told author Terry Pluto. “He was a face-the-basket, 7-foot jump shooter. He had some speed and skills with the ball, but he was the worst defensive player I had ever seen as a big man who was supposed to be a high draft choice coming out of college. He couldn’t guard anyone.”
And now the Jim McDaniels’ story turns bizarre and a little confusing.
At the ABA All-Star Game the previous winter, Commissioner Jack Dolph left his briefcase in a room that the media frequently occupied. While there’s some dispute about whether the case was open or forced open, reporters discovered that it contained signed contracts for McDaniels and Porter to play in the ABA. The NCAA eventually investigated the claims and found the story of the signed contracts was true, and it took Villanova and Western Kentucky out of the record books for the tournament. “I admit I made a mistake,” McDaniels told the Louisville Courier-Journal’s Bob White in an interview. “There was a lot of pressure. I got around some people who did not have my best interests at heart.”
McDaniels also wasn’t said to be happy in Carolina. At one point he complained that the steering wheel on the Cadillac that the Cougars had given him didn’t tilt and was uncomfortable to drive. McDaniels turned to agent Al Ross, who had steered such players as Spencer Haywood to the NBA and who thought Jim had signed a bad contract. It featured a $50,000 signing bonus and the rest was deferred over 25 years. (“I was the one who wanted the longer terms; I came from being poor and I wanted the security of never being poor again,” Jim told West.) McDaniels skipped a game on February 10, 1972, and the Cougars came to the conclusion that there was no happy ending in sight. So after an exchange of lawsuits, they sat down with the Sonics and reportedly received $400,000 to let McDaniels jump to Seattle. Jim received a five-year, $1.5-million deal. Looking back at the situation later, McDaniels said he should have stayed in Carolina.
The center had trouble adjusting to the NBA right away. His scoring average dropped to single digits, and he played less than 20 minutes per game. The situation was no better a year later, as McDaniels’ statistics dropped again. He was ninth on the team in scoring as a backup center, and the team staggered to a 26-56 season.
In the summer of 1973, the Sonics hired Bill Russell to be their coach. McDaniels was at first excited, figuring that one of the greatest players in history could give him tips on how to be an NBA center. But it didn’t work out, at all. “He completely demoralized me,” McDaniels recalled to West. “He took any confidence I ever had away and totally destroyed my game.”
Even when McDaniels succeeded, he didn’t make progress. On October 14, Jim scored 29 points and grabbed 18 rebounds in a win against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Milwaukee Bucks. McDaniels claims he didn’t even start the next game against Kansas City-Omaha. “No one could talk to (Russell), he was so arrogant. In any normal situation, (Jim) Fox would have been my back-up, but there was nothing normal about Russell.”
McDaniels had another surprise waiting for him at the start of the next season. He didn’t have a no-cut contract, and the SuperSonics dropped him from the roster on December 28, 1973. McDaniels didn’t find an employer for the rest of the 1973-74 season, and then went to Italy to play for Snaidero Udine in 1975-76. In the meantime, McDaniels and agent Ross continued to battle over financial issues, and legal actions took place.
In October of 1976, Jim turned up on the roster of the Los Angeles Lakers, where he spent 35 games serving as a spare big man. One day he was sick and missed practice without calling the team, and the Lakers released him on February 3, 1976. McDaniels turned back to the ABA for employment. This time, it was close to home.
The Kentucky Colonels, owned by John Y. Brown, were based in Louisville, and they signed McDaniels. He played in 29 regular season games, averaging 6.2 points per game. “I was old emotionally, even though I was a young man in years,” McDaniels told West. The Colonels made it to the second round of the playoffs, and then folded as part of the NBA-ABA merger. McDaniels couldn’t find work in the 1976-77 season, and went back to Italy for a year.
Finally, Jim’s story collides with Buffalo. The Braves were looking for players, and Brown – now an owner of the NBA team - was always willing to take a chance on one of his former players from the ABA days. McDaniels signed on September 15. He averaged 5.6 points over 42 games, as he was a backup to Swen Nater. An early highlight was the chance to play in his old home in Seattle on October 26, where Jim didn’t think he was treated well. “They said I couldn’t play, they said I couldn’t walk,” McDaniels said before the game. “They said I was big and dumb and couldn’t do anything.” Jim had four points in 13 points in a Braves’ loss, 97-92.
His best scoring night came on December 20. McDaniels had 26 points to lead the Braves to a 110-104 win over the Houston Rockets. Jim also had an 18-point game in a major upset of the Los Angeles Lakers on January 4. According to a teammate, McDaniels soon thought he deserved a reward for his play. "The next day, he was in the owner's office renegotiating his contract," Nater said. "We never saw Jim again." Nater may not have the dates exactly right, but the Braves released McDaniels on February 2, 1978, and his NBA career was over. What’s more, he went out with some strong words for Brown: “He wrote his word to me. I can’t play for $30,000. My car costs $30,000. If he thinks I’m going to be one of his plantation players, forget it.”
McDaniels eventually returned to Bowling Green, Kentucky. He talked to the Hilltoppers many times, and even coached some WKU graduates at a special all-star game in 2011. One of his activities for the rest of his life was to pick up honors for his basketball work, and there were many of them. Jim was in the first class ever inducted into the Allen County-Scottsville Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009. Jersey number 44 was retired by Western Kentucky in 2010. He was a charter member of the Western Kentucky University Athletic Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, the Dawahares/KHSAA Hall of Fame and the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame.
Jim died on December 6, 2017, in Bowling Green due to illnesses related to diabetes. He was survived by his wife, Carolyn, sons Shannon and Eskias, and daughter Lydia.
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