How a Wichita State basketball super fan became a light for his community
Around lunchtime at Doc Green’s, Devin Slane rarely stays in one place for long.
As the orders stack up and the dining room fills, Slane makes his rounds. He checks on tables. He asks customers how their food tastes. He tosses out a compliment here, a quick joke there. Sometimes it’s a familiar face. Sometimes it’s someone he’s never met. Either way, the reaction is usually the same.
People smile.
That has become one of Slane’s gifts around Wichita. At 37, the Andover graduate, father of three and new owner of Doc Green’s in Wichita has built a reputation as the kind of person who can brighten a room just by walking into it. Former Wichita State basketball players know him as the loyal super fan who never asks for anything back. Customers know him as the owner who is never too busy to try to brighten someone’s day. Friends know him as fiercely loyal, the kind of person who is always there with encouragement when someone needs lifting up.
But the reason Slane’s positivity resonates with so many people is because it was hard-earned.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when Slane said he was quick to reach for a bottle, moody and not much fun to be around. He looks back now and sees a man who was not the father he wanted to be for his children, not the husband he wanted to be in his marriage and not the example he wanted to set.
One look from his daughter changed everything.
“She didn’t even say anything, but you could just see it in her face that she wasn’t proud that I was her dad,” Slane said. “That’s when it hit me, like is this the legacy that I want to leave for my kids to look up to?”
That question still drives him.
This August will mark three years of sobriety for Slane, who said he made a choice to stop pouring his time, energy and money into alcohol and start pouring it into the people and parts of his life that mattered most: his wife, his children, his faith and himself.
“I used to run to that bottle whenever I felt stress,” Slane said. “But it was just an excuse. My new goal is 10 years from now, I want my family to say, ‘Look at what dad did for us. Look at the choices he made in his life to become better.’”
The version of Slane that Wichita sees now — the upbeat restaurateur, the community-minded businessman, the tireless Shocker supporter — is the result of that reckoning.
He starts every day with a 5 a.m. workout. He lives the healthy lifestyle that Doc Green’s has long sold under its tagline, “healthy as you wanna be.” The first Wichita Doc Green’s, opened by Slane’s uncle and aunt, Scott and Tammi Kuthan, will celebrate its 20-year anniversary in June at 13th and Webb. The local chain has since grown to three Wichita locations, including spots in the Waterfront, College Hill and New Market Square.
Slane has spent the last 15 years helping grow the business, recently finalizing the paperwork to take over ownership from his aunt and uncle after years serving as a regional manager. He jokes the title is the biggest change, because in practice, not much feels different. He was already putting in 80-hour weeks. He was already treating the stores with the kind of care, attention and personal investment of someone whose name was on the door.
He said he has developed roughly one-third of the current menu. His creativity helped turn freshly pressed juices into a Doc Green’s staple, an idea born almost by accident when he was making juices for himself and a customer asked to buy one. What started as a few bottles soon snowballed into popular menu items with names like the Dr. Green, Dr. O, Dr. Goku and Dr. Beet. He has also pushed into meal prep, another fitness-minded venture that has found success.
But for all the entrepreneurship, the menu innovation and the long work hours, Slane’s impact is often felt in ways that do not show up on a balance sheet.
Sometimes that means quietly giving a free meal to somebody who needs it.
Sometimes that means stepping away from the food-prep station to sit down with someone who needs a heart-to-heart conversation.
Sometimes it means trying to turn a lighthearted social media video into a chance to help somebody else.
That was the idea behind a recent trick-shot series Slane started with former Wichita State women’s basketball player Hannah Mortimer, now a content creator around Wichita. The videos feature mini basketballs, a child-sized hoop and increasingly absurd setups, including one off the roof of Doc Green’s east-side location. But the fun came with a purpose. Slane put up $100 of his own money for a giveaway to a random follower when they made the shot.
Mortimer said that kind of generosity is simply who he is.
“Devin has probably got the biggest heart out of anybody that I’ve met,” Mortimer said. “He has such a bright spirit and he’s always trying to bring positivity into the world. You can see it when you go eat at Doc Green’s and he goes around the room and people’s faces just light up. He just has a way of putting a smile on people’s faces. That’s the kind of person that you want to keep around as a close friend.”
That ability to connect with people has also made Slane a beloved figure in the Wichita State basketball realm over the past decade.
He grew up only a casual Shocker fan. That changed after he moved back to Wichita and started working for his uncle at Doc Green’s. One day, he spotted an enormous customer in the lobby of the east-side location and figured there was a decent chance he played basketball for Wichita State. Slane introduced himself. The customer turned out to be Shaquille Morris.
A friendship formed quickly and Morris became the bridge to the rest of that era of Shockers. Slane soon became close with Morris, Rashard Kelly, Zach Brown, Markis McDuffie, Landry Shamet and Austin Reaves. Over the years, those bonds expanded to names such as Fred VanVleet, Ron Baker, Evan Wessel, Zach Bush and J.R. Simon. The growth of the AfterShocks, Wichita’s alumni team in The Basketball Tournament, only strengthened those ties as former players returned each summer.
What made Slane different, those former players say, is that he never approached them like a fan trying to gain access. He was simply a friend.
“Getting to know those guys as people first is what turned me into a super fan,” Slane said. “Everybody thinks they’re just basketball players and that’s all they do. But they have lives too. They’re humans and have problems and issues, just like me and you.”
That perspective is part of why so many former Shockers still gravitate toward him.
“I wasn’t someone who played a lot, but he treated me the same as everyone else,” said former Shocker walk-on J.R. Simon, who also coaches with the AfterShocks. “He was always looking to take care of us, support us in whatever way he could. That just shows you who he is as a person.”
“With Devin, it’s always, ‘What can I do to help?’” Simon said. “It’s never, ‘I’ll do this if I can get this.’ He doesn’t care about that. He just wants to help and I think that’s what makes him a pretty amazing dude.”
The AfterShocks have seen that side of him over and over. Slane has routinely fed players at no charge when they come back to town. He has designed, printed and paid for his own AfterShocks shirts to give players, never asking for anything in return.
“When you think of Devin, that’s a guy who is as genuine as they come,” said Bush, the head coach of the AfterShocks. “He’s not only looking to help people, he’s looking at how he can go above and beyond.”
Former Shocker point guard Clevin Hannah put it even more simply.
“He’s the type of guy who would give you the shirt off his back,” Hannah said. “If you need something and he’s got it, he will give it to you. He’s just a real, genuine person.”
Those friendships deepened Slane’s attachment to Wichita State, but his fandom truly took root when it became something he could share with his son, Liam.
Not long after Liam was born, Slane and his wife learned he had autism. Since then, one of the most special bonds between father and son has been built inside Koch Arena.
Liam, 5, is routine-based, so every detail matters. They park in the same parking spot. They enter the same way. They take the same route to their seats. Before each game, they stop to say hello to Shocker legend Cheese Johnson. Liam may not fully know Cheese’s place in WSU history, but he knows this much: Cheese is always smiling and always happy to see him.
This season added another ritual. Wichita State introduced a jumbotron game involving racing cars and Liam quickly developed a knack for picking the winner. Now, Slane said, his son talks at home before games about which color car he is going to choose that night.
For a father who once worried about the example he was setting, those nights now feel like a gift.
“It means absolutely everything to me to see him smile and jump up and down and see that excitement in him,” Slane said. “It’s been so cool to see him become a fan and hopefully that’s something he can pass down to his kids someday. That’s what Shocker basketball is all about.”
Slane sees Wichita State as something bigger than a basketball team. To him, when the Shockers are thriving, Wichita feels it — and he has seen that firsthand from the business side.
“WSU is like the heartbeat of Wichita,” Slane said. “When the Shockers are doing well, business is doing well. The community feels that.”
That belief helps explain why Wichita State remains such an important thread in his story. But the more revealing part is what Slane has done with the relationships and reach that fandom has brought into his life.
He is open about his sobriety on social media. He posts workout videos, prayer routines and messages of encouragement, not because he thinks he has life mastered, but because he knows what it felt like when he did not. He said he regularly hears from people — close friends, acquaintances, even strangers — who tell him a post helped them make a change, keep going or think differently about their own struggles.
That, he said, is the point.
“It’s all about doing small actions every single day and staying consistent,” Slane said. “That’s how you create major wins in your life.”
That philosophy sounds simple, but for Slane, it was forged through failure, regret and the kind of honest self-assessment that many people avoid.
He had to admit he had a problem. He had to confront the fact that alcohol had made him unpleasant to be around. He had to accept that the people closest to him were seeing a version of him that he himself no longer respected.
Now, the mission is not perfection. It is consistency.
He still works nearly every job inside his restaurants. He still gets up before dawn to work on himself. He still tries to show up for his family, his business, his community and his friends. He still wants to be the person who notices when somebody might need a meal, a favor, a conversation or just a little lift in their day.
“It’s so much easier to just be a kind person,” Slane said. “You never know what someone is struggling with or going through. All it takes is just being nice and that can make someone’s day or even week.”
In a city that has always embraced its sports figures, Slane has become something a little different: a super fan whose greatest value has nothing to do with cheering from the stands.
He is, as many around him describe, the same thing whether he is around former college stars, lunch customers or friends trying to find their footing.
“Devin is as loyal as they come,” Bush said. “And that’s pretty rare nowadays because it seems like most people’s loyalty is attached to success. But that’s never been the case for him. He’s the ultimate positive energy.”
And on most days inside Doc Green’s, Slane is still living out the life he fought to build — one conversation, one act of kindness and one smile at a time.
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