MEMPHIS — Step inside Stein’s, a white-brick soul-food restaurant in south Memphis, and it looks as if you have walked into the basement of a small church, with colorful tablecloths brightening the dimly lit dining room. The aroma, though, takes you to Grandma’s house after Sunday service. All that’s missing is that couch covered in plastic that squishes when you plop down.
Most of the dishes — neck bones with white beans, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese — are already prepared, with a masked attendant serving up spoonfuls, though some in the lunchtime crowd are willing to get back to work a little late while waiting for them to refill that aluminum pan of fried chicken. Seating is like a school cafeteria: Find the first available chair or familiar face and dig in.
But most afternoons, one table is reliably occupied by old men who gather to vent about life, make fun of one another or console each other. Some of them have big money. Some just have big mouths. Station in life is less relevant than fellowship. Just keep the bluster and bluffing elsewhere because lies are discarded like fried catfish carcasses here. They call it the “Truth Table.”
One afternoon this year, as his University of Memphis men’s basketball team was at its lowest point, Tigers Coach Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway showed up for a hot plate.
Hardaway, 50, is among a wave of former NBA players hired by their alma maters in recent years to resuscitate fallen programs. It wasn’t going well, because nostalgia usually has an expiration date. At Georgetown, Patrick Ewing was on his way to a school-record 21-game losing streak; at Michigan, Juwan Howard would soon be suspended for five games after mushing a Wisconsin assistant in the face during a postgame handshake-line fracas.
And at Memphis, Hardaway was learning that no amount of bravado, no ballyhooed collection of talent, could guarantee success. Memphis had chemistry problems in its locker room, partly because Hardaway had announced that his top recruits, Jalen Duren and Emoni Bates, had come to campus to take jobs. A coronavirus breakout altered two games, and the vaccination status of Hardaway’s high-profile assistant, former NBA star Rasheed Wallace, forced Wallace to coach remotely.
It all boiled over after an embarrassing January loss to SMU, the Tigers’ third in a row, dropped Memphis to 9-8 and led a local columnist to ask Hardaway whether he was capable of getting the job done. “Stop asking me stupid f—ing questions,” Hardaway said, angrily, in a rare show of frustration. “Stop disrespecting me, bro.”
The weight of lifting up a school is heavier when you’re seen as a symbol of success for your community. The stakes are higher, the pain sharper, when you’re home. Hardaway has referred to coaching at his alma mater as his “dream job.” But this isn’t just a job. And Hardaway didn’t just attend Memphis.
“He is Memphis,” said Phoenix Suns guard Cameron Payne, Hardaway’s friend and former AAU player.
He showed up at the Truth Table that day at the request of Stein’s regular Leonard Draper — not that he needed permission. “He don’t have to be invited,” Draper said. “He’s a member.”
The gray-haired men didn’t offer coaching advice, only an honest assessment. Before Hardaway directed blame toward anyone else, Draper recalled them saying, “Do a self-check first.”
“We just told him some things he needed to hear,” Draper, 82, said one recent day at Stein’s (pronounced Steens) while wearing a black “Team Penny” cap.
Draper is a longtime Memphis supporter and the first Black head of the program’s Rebounders booster club. He played an instrumental role in convincing Memphis legend Larry Finch to commit to the Tigers in 1969 — a controversial decision in a city still fractured by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and in a Black community that mostly resented what was then known as Memphis State for failing to recruit the city’s best Black basketball talent.
Finch became an all-American and led the school to its first Final Four appearance in 1973, losing in the final to Bill Walton’s UCLA. That run helped unify Black and White fans around the Tigers. They were Memphis’s team.
“That’s the one thing that’s not racial in Memphis. Everybody loves Memphis State, University of Memphis basketball. Love it,” said Fred Jones, one of the regulars at Stein’s. “And anybody who steps into that seat — head coach or a player for a team — people embrace you.”
So that afternoon, they embraced Hardaway at the Truth Table.
“When I find something I don’t like, I’m going to let you know,” Draper recalled telling Hardaway. “He said, ‘Please do.’ I think that’s what friends are for. When people care, they’re not criticizing. You can have constructive criticism. And that’s what we’re all about. We all African Americans. I want to see my boy succeed. You know how it goes: We get out of a job, they don’t give us many second chances.”
On the rise
Hardaway’s affection for Memphis starts with his love for his late grandmother, Louise, whose Southern drawl was so thick that her attempts to call Anfernee “pretty” led to him being rebranded as a form of currency. When Hardaway’s mother, Fae, moved to work in California, she left him in the care of Louise, who took Penny to Early Grove Baptist Church and raised him on the principles he continues to adhere to.
Fae returned to Memphis when Penny was 14. He was already known in town as its next great hoops hope. Hardaway averaged 36.7 points and 10.1 rebounds as a senior at Treadwell High in 1990, earning Parade magazine’s high school player of the year honor despite missing six weeks for academic problems. But he shunned all outside recruiters, including Arkansas’ Nolan Richardson and Georgetown’s John Thompson Jr., to stay home. Draper said a “driving force” of that decision was Louise’s friendship with Finch, who had gone from uniting Memphis as a player to uniting it as the Tigers’ legendary coach.
“Ms. Louise told them, ‘I know all you guys are good coaches, but my grandson is going to play for Larry Finch,’ ” Draper said. “I don’t think Penny could’ve afforded to mess up, because his grandmother, Ms. Louise, would wear him out. He had the utmost respect for her.”
Hardaway missed his freshman season because of a low college entrance exam score. He trained regularly at his neighborhood gym, where one night he was robbed at gunpoint and shot in the foot. He recovered to play two seasons at Memphis, leading the Tigers to the Elite Eight in 1992 before a summer spent scrimmaging the Dream Team. He went third in the 1993 NBA draft and had a starring role in the 1994 movie “Blue Chips.”
At 6-foot-7, Hardaway was hailed as the second coming of Magic Johnson, only with ridiculous hops. He became one of the 1990s’ most popular players this side of Michael Jordan, with a successful Nike ad campaign that featured a puppet, voiced by Chris Rock, named Lil Penny. He was voted an all-star starter four straight years, reached the NBA Finals alongside Shaquille O’Neal in 1995 and finished third in the MVP voting in 1996, the same year he won an Olympic gold in Atlanta. Hardaway’s signature Nike shoe is the only sneaker Jordan wore in an NBA game other than his own.
But Hardaway always stayed connected to Memphis and to Louise, who died in 2011.
“I told my grandmother when I was younger that I would never leave Memphis and that I would always do as much as I could,” Hardaway said in 2019. “And I stood by that.”
Hardaway remains an icon here: Walking down Beale Street, you’re bound to see someone wearing Hardaway’s No. 1 Orlando Magic jersey. But he’s also visible and accessible, traveling without an entourage. If he buys a new car, word quickly spreads about the make and model. He also invests in the community, donating to charities and helping businesses get off the ground.
“Penny has probably had more impact, or as great an impact, as any Memphian that I can think of in a long, long time,” said Dorsey Sims III, the son of Finch’s top assistant at Memphis. “He’s touching a lot of young people’s lives.”
Payne credits Hardaway with rescuing his stalled NBA career. A 2015 lottery pick of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Payne was out of the league within four seasons. He called up Hardaway, hoping to use Memphis’s athletic facilities to prepare for a 2019 Summer League stint with the Dallas Mavericks. Hardaway not only let Payne work out at the school, he trained him, broke down video with him, taught him.
“He had just got to Memphis. He just got started. He could’ve definitely said no,” said Payne, who after an injury to Chris Paul starts for the team with the NBA’s best record. “He pushed me. He changed my game and helped me get back to where I’m supposed to be.”
Coaching wasn’t a calling as much as it was the result of a friendly request. Hardaway’s friend and longtime rival from the playground, Desmond Merriweather, was coaching at Lester Middle School in the Binghampton neighborhood where he and Hardaway grew up. When Merriweather was diagnosed with colon cancer, he scribbled “1 Cent” on a sheet of paper from his hospital bed as a signal for his wife to call Hardaway to come help coach the team. Hardaway hadn’t fully accepted that his NBA playing career, which had been derailed by injury, was done. But he obliged.
Elliot Perry, a 10-year NBA veteran and Hardaway’s former high school teammate, said he was always a coach, well before he had the title before his name. “We’d play pickup games in the summertime. We’d pick teams … and he’s playing a real game. He’s telling guys where to be. He’s telling guys where to spot up: ‘Get this guy in the post.’ He’s coaching these guys in pickup games,” Perry said, laughing. “Sometimes guys just want to play. This is a passion for him.”
Merriweather recovered enough to return to coaching, and Hardaway stayed on as co-pilot, adding a program to steer the boys away from trouble and make sure they were focused on going to college. (Hardaway earned his degree from Memphis in 2003.) The duo led Lester to three state championships and made a commitment to see that group through its high school graduation. Then they transitioned to East High, Merriweather’s alma mater, where a hobby became a promise that Hardaway had to fulfill.
“It’s kind of like, you don’t know you needed this thing until you got this thing,” Perry said.
Merriweather died in 2015 at 41, but Hardaway stuck around for three more years as a class that included current Tigers point guard Alex Lomax graduated with three more state titles. In between, Hardaway built a local YMCA team into a powerful AAU program that collected local talent and lured James Wiseman, then the top recruit in the country, from Nashville to East High. They won a state title together.
“Having a coach like that is second to none,” Wiseman said, “because it’s not too many coaches that you can say played in the NBA.”
Tubby Smith, Hardaway’s predecessor at Memphis, had a more accomplished résumé, having won a national title at Kentucky in 1998. But he failed to connect with the locals and attendance lagged, which placed him on a shorter leash. “Tubby is a heck of a coach, but Tubby was kind of set in his ways. We never could get him to come here at Stein’s,” Draper said of Smith, who was dismissed in 2018.
Smith tried to hire Hardaway as an assistant, but he declined, according to those close to Hardaway, who was waiting for the opportunity to run his own program. “He knew exactly what he wanted to do,” said Perry, the first McDonald’s all-American to play at Memphis for Finch. “He wanted to stay at East and hone his skills and pour into these young guys. He didn’t want to be an assistant coach.”
Hardaway quickly replaced Smith, days after winning his final state title at East, and was immediately considered the man who could restore the program to the days when Finch played and coached — or perhaps push it even further. He had name recognition and was connected to some of the best local talent through his AAU program.
Despite his lack of experience at the college level, Hardaway has boldly repeated his desire to deliver a national title to Memphis sooner than later. That swagger can be appealing to recruits, who aren’t accustomed to a coach sauntering through the door with a cap cocked to the side and in the same signature Foamposite sneakers they once saved up to buy.
But that confidence might come across as abrasive to opposing coaches, athletic directors or boosters, which Hardaway acknowledged after his first season. “At first, it was frowned upon to bring an NBA guy to coach college because the stigma on them was they don’t want to work hard. They don’t take the grind seriously — because they’ve made millions of dollars,” said Hardaway, who earned nearly $120 million over a 14-year career. “I’m sure there was some resentment, but I went through the grass roots as well.”
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