Horace
Albert “Bones” McKinney, who was born on New Year’s Day in 1919, was destined
to become basketball’s original “clown prince”…and was so designated while
still just a high school player.
He was 6-foot-6 and skinny. He was
never sure when people started calling him “Bones,” but always said “with a
name like Horace Albert, the sooner the better, right?”
A writer for Life magazine
once commented about McKinney’s volcanic personality: “Mr. Bones erupts
dramatically…looking like a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane.”
McKinney
was not a stellar student, but he learned basketball from some of the great
teachers of the game, beginning with Olive Brown, a physical education teacher
at George Watts Grammar School in Durham. He said: “Miss Brown taught me how to
fake with the ball, and the first time I tried it in a game, it worked. I
thought, ‘How wonderful can she be?’”
His
junior high school coach Paul Sykes molded McKinney from a “backyard player to
a fierce competitor on the court.” While a freshman at Durham High in 1936,
McKinney’s interest in school soured. He turned in his jersey and dropped out
of school.
“I
knew I couldn’t flunk playing pinball at the Owl Pharmacy,” he recalled. To
earn money, McKinney worked as the drug store’s delivery boy, labored in a
textile mill and caddied at a public golf course. He also found time to play some
hoops at the YMCA.
The
next year, Sykes moved up to become the high school coach; he invited McKinney
back to school and offered him a spot on the basketball team. McKinney jumped
at the opportunity and vowed to make it as a “student-athlete.”
One night, Durham High traveled to
Rocky Mount to help christen the opponent’s brand-new gymnasium with its
new-fangled score clock that was capable of counting up to 60.
The Durham squad poured it on, romping
to a 69-25 triumph. McKinney said: “We ruined their gym dedication, broke their
new score clock and broke their hearts. During the game, I went up into the
stands and taught some of the Rocky Mount students how to yo-yo.”
McKinney’s basketball antics seemed
to escalate from there. As a high schooler, he would beg and plead to officials
on bent knees, comically gesture behind their backs, pat them on the head, hide
the ball between his legs to fake a shot, sell programs in the stands, sit on
the opposing coach’s lap, play barefoot and escort opposing players to the foul
line, encouraging them “not to choke.”
Durham High won the 1939 Interscholastic
Basketball Tournament, an invitational for high state championship teams,
played in Glens Falls, N.Y. McKinney’s teammate Bob Gantt was selected as tournament
MVP, but the hosts offered a second trophy. It was inscribed: “To Horace Bones
McKinney – the Clown Prince of Basketball.”
(Do you suppose they had gotten wind
of the trip into New York City that the Durham boys made to “get some culture,”
not at a museum or art gallery, but at a burlesque show?)
Those
Durham Bulldog teams were special. They won 69 straight games, including three straight
North Carolina Class A high school basketball championships and three straight contests
against the Duke University freshman team.
At
one such meeting, McKinney hollered out to the Duke players: “We’ll spot you 10
and beat you by 10.” The high school lads covered, coasting to a 72-45 victory.
The
biggest game for Durham High came in 1940. The Duke varsity had won the
Southern Conference title. Coach Sykes and coach Eddie Cameron of Duke agreed
to play a “closed-door” scrimmage. The game didn’t really count, but Bones
McKinney was keeping score in his head. He reported the Bulldogs won by 15
points…or so.
Cameron
only smiled, because the talented Durham High seniors were all expected to
enroll as Blue Devil freshmen – Gantt, McKinney and the Loftis twins (Cedric and
Garland).
Bones
McKinney would ultimately throw a monkey wrench into those plans, as reported
by author Bethany Bradsher in her book, Bones McKinney: Basketball’s
Unforgettable Showman. Dagnabbit it all, McKinney went and enrolled at
North Carolina State University.
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