Consider what he has done:
- After riding the Greyhound bus from Detroit to UD in 1973, he had the greatest freshman season in program history since first-year players were eligible for varsity.
He averaged 14.3 points and 4.1 assists a game and was a key reason the Flyers jumped from the 13-13 mediocrity of the year before to a 20-9 season that included an NCAA Tournament victory before eventually falling to a mighty UCLA team – led by Bill Walton and Keith Wilkes – in an epic, triple overtime game.
- In his three UD seasons, he would score 1,562 points, twice be named the Flyers’ MVP and sometimes draw out-of-character, gushing praise from head coach Don Donoher.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever had a player with speed like Johnny’s,” Donoher told the Journal Herald’s Jim Zofkie after the Flyers shocked everyone with a 15-point victory over 24-1, No. 2 ranked Notre Dame at UD Arena when Davis was a freshman. “You add that to his other assets and it spells out excitement.”
Earlier the next season, Donoher was just as effusive: “There isn’t a college team anywhere today that can’t use him. He’s not our whole team, but I wouldn’t want to think where we’d be without him. He simply does it all.”
- In 1993 Davis was enshrined in the UD Hall of Fame and in 2017 he was inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame.
- Along the way, he helped Team USA win a gold medal at the Pan American Games in Mexico City in 1977.
- After leaving UD a season early on a hardship exit to financially assist his ailing mother, he was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers and promptly won an NBA title his rookie season. Over his 10-year career, he played 750 games for Portland, Indiana, Atlanta and Cleveland and averaged 12.9 points per game.
- After three years working in the front office of the Atlanta Hawks, he spent 25 years as an NBA coach with 11 different teams. While the bulk of that time he was an assistant coach, he had three stints as an NBA head coach, including one year leading the Philadelphia 76ers, two guiding the Orlando Magic and then stepping in as the interim head coach in Memphis.
- Most recently he spent six years on the Board of Directors — three as the chairperson — of the National Basketball Retired Players Association, which helps former players with health care issues, education, career counseling and financial services.
“Yes, I did a lot, but something was missing,” Davis said the other day from his Asheville, North Carolina home.
“I just didn’t feel complete in terms of what I had wanted to accomplish when I entered the University of Dayton. I didn’t feel fully connected to the school on the most meaningful and personal way. I needed to do something to solidify that.”
This summer the 69-year-old Davis took two courses – business and philosophy – to finish the credits he needed to get his UD degree. He said he’s planning to march in his cap and gown in the December commencement exercises at UD Arena on Dec. 13.
It will be his first time back on the Flyers’ court in front of a crowd in 49 years.
When he was enshrined in the UD Hall of Fame, he was an assistant coach in Atlanta and had a game that day in Chicago. He managed to fly in for a brief pre-ceremony gathering and then Donoher rushed him back to the airport for a 1 p.m. flight.
In 2017 – when he was inducted in the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame – he attended a UD game with Donoher and former teammate Leighton Moulton, but they sat together in the stands.
“After 52 years I’m finally going to walk across the stage as an official alumnus of the University of Dayton,” he said with a flicker of excitement in his voice. “I just can’t tell you how wonderful that is.
“Did I need this degree to succeed? No. But I needed it on a personal level. I needed it for me.
“And now I can’t wait to take part in every facet of the commencement ceremony.”
Credit: David Sherman
Credit: David Sherman
Although Davis did get a bachelor’s degree after his playing career ended – finishing off his UD credits with courses at Georgia State University – and then went on to get a master’s at Union College, he said none of that was the same as being a UD alum.
“With all due respect to Georgia State – and Union – my university is the University of Dayton,” he said. “That’s where I’m rooted. I don’t identify with the other schools from an emotional standpoint. There’s just not the same passion.
“It was a privilege to play for the University of Dayton and it’s a privilege to graduate from UD.
“I’m proud to be a Dayton Flyer.”
‘Take it to them’
Davis admitted he beat the odds growing up:
“When I think back to all the things that could have gone wrong when I was growing up, I know I’m very fortunate to have made it.
“I grew up in a single-parent household. I didn’t get to know my father. My parents divorced when I was just a kid.
“It was tough for my mother in the beginning. We started out on government assistance and lived in the Brewster Projects.”
The Brewster-Douglass Housing Project on the Eastside of Detroit was a massive complex – at its peak there were almost 10,000 people living there – that was often plagued with crime but also produced some wonderful talents including the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Loni Love and Etterlene DeBarge.
Davis stands shoulder to shoulder with them thanks in a big way to Dorothy Davis, his late mother.
“She demanded certain standards from us,” he said quietly. “She stressed discipline, paying attention to detail, doing things the right way, being polite and courteous. Those were things that wouldn’t be compromised in our house.”
When it came to basketball, he said he had coaches from elementary school, specifically Ned Brazelton, to his high school coaches, George Duncan and Paul Dean, who guided him on the court and off.
A quick, aggressive 6-foot-1 guard, he averaged 31 p.p.g. as a senior and was named a High School All-American.
He said he had 300 college offers and eventually narrowed his list down to Johnny Orr’s University of Michigan team … with Dayton a distant second.
“I was living in Detroit and Michigan at the time was the hot team,” he said. “I was just about to sign with them, but I promised Jack Butler, he was one of Donoher’s assistants, that I’d at least come to Dayton for a visit.
“Jack might have attended every one of my games as a senior. He came to my home and got to know my family. Everybody thought highly of him.
“To be truthful, I told him my trip to Dayton was just a courtesy visit. As soon as I returned home, I planned to sign with Michigan.
“But then I came to Dayton, and it was a game night. At the time, UD was struggling a bit, but you could clearly see they had a talented team. They had Donald Smith and Mike Sylvester. Both of them could play with anybody.
“And they had two guys I knew from home. Allen Elijah had played in the same league I did in high school and Leighton Moulton had been an All-American at River Rouge just outside of Detroit.
“With those guys I figured it was just a matter of time until they turned it around. I liked the players and the coaches and what really sold me though was the energy of the building that night.
“The team was average, but the Arena was sold out and the fans were passionate. They screamed as if the team was in first place and hadn’t lost a game all year. I got swept up in the environment. It was an amazing visit.
“I could see myself growing with them. It just felt right, so I talked it over with my high school coaches and family and then I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to the University of Dayton – not Michigan.’
“Right then, you could have heard a pin drop.
“My friends were shocked. But it’s the best decision I ever could have made.”
He has special praise for Donoher and his wife Sonia: “They meant so much to me. They really cared about me.
“Coach Donoher was such a strong coach. He demanded excellence on and off the floor.”
The UD Arena crowd got to share that on-court excellence that so often was on display.
In December of 1974, Davis played against his hometown University of Detroit and made 11 of 15 field goal attempts and all 12 of his free throw attempts in a 34-point effort that left Detroit coach Dick Vitale singing his praises afterward: “He’s definitely an All-American.”
In another game that same month, UD managed a 71-69 comeback win over visiting Clemson, thanks to Davis, who took over the game and scored the Flyers’ final eight points in the last 98 seconds.
And there was the February 1976 game when the Flyers needed a spark against Notre Dame.
Davis said Donoher pulled him aside and said: “Take it to them!”
Although the Flyers still fell by six points, Davis did his part, scoring a game-high 38 points.
His junior season he missed a game to be with his mother when she underwent surgery. By year’s end, he knew he had to step up:
“She couldn’t work and I knew I could support us if I went to pro basketball. I’d played against pros in the summer and knew I could hold my own with them. I knew I could play in the NBA.”
‘To complete what I started’
Davis said Lezli, his wife of 44 years, was the one who kept pushing him to get his UD degree:
“She said, ‘When you’re talking about representing the colors of the University of Dayton, you know you are not really an official graduate.’ She motivated me.
“I’d already been the first college graduate in my immediate family (with his Georgia State degree.) In that way, I could be an example for my kids.
“This time around it was more for me. To complete what I started.”
He and Lezli have two sons – Reginald and Austin –and a 16-year-old grandson, Spencer.
Davis recently finished his terms on the board of UNC Asheville Foundation and the Bulldog Anti-Racism Council and after he completed his online classes the summer, he and Lezli took a trip to Egypt to visit The Pyramids. They toured other historical sites and spent time at a Nubian school.
The couple likes to travel. They’ve been to China and Japan, and he said they are planning a trip down the Mekong River to visit Vietnam and Cambodia.
Back home he coaches the Asheville Middle School golf team.
Asked if his young charges have any clue about his past, he started to laugh.
“Well, they got the Google. With it they can see I played in college, and they can see about all my time in the NBA. They can pretty much see everything I’ve done.”
Not quite everything.
The whole story won’t be on display until Dec. 13, the day he gets his UD diploma.
And he already has plans for it:
“I’m going to frame it and put it on the wall above the piano we’ve got.
“I try to play the piano a little – it’s my hobby – so every time I sit down, I’ll look at it.”
And he’ll feel complete.
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