A time to remember: Basketball’s ‘Mr. Bones’

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.

A native of Lowland, N.C., a small town on Goose Creek Island in Pamlico County, McKinney grew up in Durham in a neighborhood “in the shadow” of Duke University.

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.”

McKinney bragged that Sykes was the coach who “invented the fast break offense.”

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.