Knight, Bobby

Fiery college basketball coaching legend Bob Knight.

Robert Montgomery Knight (born October 25, 1940 in Massillon, Ohio,) is the head men's basketball coach at Texas Tech University. He previously held the same position at Indiana University and at Army. He is widely considered both an outstanding coach and stern disciplinarian, but a controversial figure who attracts a great deal of press and spectator attention for his behavior on and off the court.

Coaching career

Bob Knight began his career as a player at Orrville High Schooland continued under Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State University in 1958. He was a reserve on the Buckeyes' 1960 NCAA Division I National Championship team, which featured future Hall-of-Famers John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. Knight graduated with a degree in history and government in 1962.

After graduation in 1962, Bob Knight coached at Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) high school for one year, then accepted an assistant coaching position at Army in 1963, where, two years later, he was named the head coach at the relatively young age of 24. In six seasons at West Point, Knight won 102 games. One of his players was future Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Knight was noticed as a rising star, and when Indiana University was seeking a new coach in 1971, they turned to Knight. Knight immediately endeared himself to the basketball-mad state of Indiana with his disciplined approach to the game. Educated in military history, Knight was given the nickname "The General" by former University of Detroit and Detroit Pistons coach-turned-broadcaster Dick Vitale.

Within two years, Knight turned a mediocre team into a Big Ten Conference powerhouse. In 1975 the Indiana Hoosiers were undefeated. the number one team in the nation, when leading scorer and All-American Scott May, the father of former North Carolina star and current Charlotte Bobcats player Sean May, broke his arm during the Hoosiers' historic defeat of arch-rival Purdue on Purdue's home court. Indiana subsequently suffered a heartbreaking 92-90 loss to Kentucky in the regional finals of the Division I Men's National Championship tournament despite a determined, but ultimately ineffective, May gamely playing with a heavily-braced arm. The final game between UCLA and Kentucky was historic, as it was Indiana-born UCLA head coach John Wooden's final game.

In 1976, the Indiana Hoosiers made history, posting a perfect 32-0 record and winning the championship, beating Michigan 86-68. Immediately after the game, Knight lamented that "it should have been two." No Division I men's team has replicated the feat. Under Knight, the Indiana Hoosiers would also win championships in 1981 and 1987.

The 1981 team featured future Hall of Fame NBA point guard Isiah Thomas, and the 1987 team featured Steve Alford. The 1987 championship game was won on a exhilarating last-second shot by Keith Smart.

Additionally, Knight's Hoosiers won the 1979 NIT championship and the Olympic gold medal as coach of the Michael Jordan-led 1984 team. He also won eleven Big Ten Conference titles. Knight is only one of four coaches to win NCAA, NIT, and Olympic championships, joining the legendary coaches, Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina, Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky, and Peter Newell of California in that achievement.

The Indiana Hoosiers were undefeated in Big Ten Conference play from 1974 to 1976, and, in fact, only lost one game during the period.

Besides the 1975 Men's Division I tournament loss, many fans and pundits consider Bob Knight's only other true failure as Hoosiers head coach was his inability to convince future National Basketball League legend Larry Bird to stay at Indiana. Bird, who was raised in small town Indiana, in a small town called French Lick could not acclimate himself to the massive Indiana University campus. He left Indiana never having attended a single practice and transferred to the far smaller Indiana State University, where he led the Sycamores to the 1979 Men's Division I championship game against the Earvin "Magic" Johnson-led Michigan State Spartans. The Spartans won 75-64.

Knight's basketball philosophy

Bob Knight's teams feature an offense with players in constant motion, with an emphasis on having his post players set screens and his perimeter players passing the ball until a teammate becomes open for an uncontested jump shot or layup. On defense, Knight's players are required to both tenaciously guard opponents man-to-man and to help teammates when needed. This requires tough, selfless, and intelligent play by players and the sacrifice of individual glory for the sake of the team's success. Inarguably, this has become difficult in an era when underclassmen began leaving college in greater numbers for the greener pastures of the NBA. However, Bob Knight has consistently had among the highest graduation rates among the college coaching fraternity.

Knight's basketball philosophy is, arguably, a major reason why so few of his players — even the more prominent ones such as Steve Alford and Keith Smart — have had long term success in the NBA. Isiah Thomas is one of the few exceptions to the rule.

Bob Knight was very mindful of the great coaches who had preceded him, such as John Wooden, Pete Newell, and Hank Iba of Oklahoma State. In 1991, Bob Knight joined them by being elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, in his first year of eligibility.

Controversy

Bob Knight is, undisputedly, a disciplinarian. His long coaching career is replete with incidents where his volatile temper and surliness have come to the surface.

Not only have his own players felt the force of Knight's tongue-lashings, but so have opposing players, reporters, referees, and Indiana University officials alike. Bob Knight's sometimes bizarre behavior has often made national and international news.

In 1979, he was arrested for assaulting a police officer during the Pan American Games in Puerto Rico. Knight was angry that a practice gymnasium was not opened to his team, which featured future NBA stars Kevin McHale of Minnesota and Ralph Sampson (who was then a high school player) at center, as well as Indiana's Isiah Thomas. The team swept through the tournament, posting a 9-0 record. Bob Knight was later convicted in absentia in a Puerto Rican court. However, the charges were later dropped when the governor of Indiana refused to cooperate in extraditing him to the island nation.

Other notable incidents include Knight pulling guard Jim Wisman off the court by his jersey in 1976, throwing a chair across the court in protest of a referee's call during a 1985 game against the rival Purdue Boilermakers, kicking his own son, Pat Knight, during a 1993 game (Knight claims he actually kicked a chair,) and berating a university volunteer at a 1998 news conference, for which the school was later fined $30,000.

Women's groups nationwide were infuriated by Bob Knight's comments during an April, 1988 interview with Connie Chung in which Knight said, I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." A crowd of about 300 protested on the Indiana University campus.

Indiana University was once again fined in 1999, this time for $10,000 for Knight's derogatory remarks about a referee. Knight paid the fine himself to avoid being suspended by the university for a tournament game.

An Indiana University secretary also accused Knight of throwing a potted plant at her, and assistant coach Ron Felling says Knight threw him off a chair after an eavesdropping Knight overheard him criticizing his program on the telephone. Many feel it was Felling who precipitated Knight's 2000 firing by Indiana University president Myles Brand by leaking a video of a private practice session to the media in which Knight appears to strike and hold the throat of player Neil Reed. It is believed that Felling leaked the video in retaliation for being fired by Knight for disloyalty.

Reed was later voted off the team by his own teammates.

But, arguably, the most controversial incident involved Knight feigning whipping black player named Calbert Cheaney in 1992, an incident which made national headlines and resulted in howls of protests by civil rights leaders. Knight apologized for the incident. However, Cheaney later revealed that the incident was staged for the benefit of the press after Knight's players tired of being repeatedly asked about how tough it is to play for Bob Knight. The whip, in fact, was a gift from his players.

Knight's supporters

Despite the controversies, Bob Knight has tremendous support among basketball fans — especially those who are aware of his many accomplishments off the court and the positive influence he's had on former and present players. They cite his honesty and exacting ethical standards, the fact that the Indiana University program was never charged with NCAA violations, and that he was intolerant of behavior, on court or off, that would taint his the team or the school in any way. Moreover, many of his players earned degrees. Many parents of Knight's players praise the coach for instilling ethics and a drive to succeed in their sons and are grateful to him.

One of the best indicators of Knight's positive influence is how many former players, assistant coaches, and even student managers have gone on to successful coaching careers. Examples include Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and Iowa coach Steve Alford.

The end of an era

In May, 2000, Indiana University president Myles Brand announced that he had adopted a a zero tolerance policy in regards to Bob Knight.

In September, 2000, a freshman student named Kent Harvey reportedly said, "hey Knight, what's up?" to Bob Knight. According to Harvey, Knight grabbed him by the arm and berated him for not showing him proper respect. Knight later told the media that Harvey was exaggerating the incident; he only placed his hand on his shoulder and quietly lectured him.

Nonetheless, Knight was soon fired by Brand for "defiant and hostile" behavior. Brand says that within a week of the issuance of the zero tolerance policy, he received more complaints, and the Harvey incident was the last straw.

On September 12, 2000, Knight scolded ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap for interrupting him and accused Brand and other Indiana administrators of distorting facts. The next day, Knight said goodbye to a crowd of some 8,000 supporters.

Knight sued Indiana University two years later, claiming the university violated his employment contract. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.

A new start

After taking the next season off, Knight accepted the head coaching job at Texas Tech University. Since joining the Red Raiders, Knight has won his 800th game. He has 854 wins through the 2004-05 season, just 25 wins short of the NCAA Division I record held by Dean Smith. When the head men's basketball coaching position at Ohio State University became vacant in June 2004, Knight quickly expressed interest in returning to coach his alma mater; Ohio State was almost equally quick in expressing its complete lack of interest in pursuing him.

Bob Knight is under contract with Texas Tech until the year 2009, after which Pat Knight will succeed his father. Another son, Tim Knight, is an assistant athletic director for the school's men's basketball special projects.

Books about Bob Knight

Several independent books were written about Knight during this period, and although they noted his temper, they were not entirely uncomplimentary. Three of the best-known are "A Season on the Brink" (ISBN 0025372300) by John Feinstein, "Bob Knight: His Own Man" by Joan Mellen (ISBN 0-380-70809-4), and "Playing for Knight: My Six Seasons with Bobby Knight" (ISBN 067172441X) by former player and current Iowa head basketball coach Steve Alford.

"A Season on the Brink" was a national phenomenon, topping bestseller lists for many weeks and is one of the highest selling sports books in history. Knight became not only the most famous sports coach in America but also one of the most recognizable celebrities in the country. Both supporters and detractors feasted on a wealth of inside information about Knight and the workings of a major college basketball program, as John Feinstein (recommended to Knight by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski) was granted full access to the program and Knight's personal life for an entire season. This book led to a trend of season-long coverage of sports teams by prominent authors.

The episode portrayed in the book most often cited as proof of Knight's lack of sanity is when he takes assistant coaches to see an elementary school basketball game and tells them that the star player of the team is a better player than any guard on the current IU college squad. When journalists, after reading the book, asked Knight if he really believed that, he famously replied, "I'm paid a lot of money by IU to know about such things." That player, Damon Bailey, was later voted the greatest high school player in Indiana's storied basketball history (even beating out Larry Bird and Oscar Robertson,) and went on to star at Indiana University for four years.

In 2002 Knight and longtime friend and sports journalist Bob Hammel wrote his biography, "Knight: My Story" (ISBN 0312311176.)

Film and television

Many aspects of the teaching style and basketball philosophy of Coach Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman) in the 1986 movie Hoosiers are obviously derived from Bob Knight's real history.

Blue Chips is a 1994 feature film about Pete Bell, a volatile, but honest college basketball coach under pressure to win who decides to blatantly violate NCAA rules to field a competitive team after several sub-par seasons. It starred Nick Nolte as Bell and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal as Neon Bordeaux, a dominating once-in-a-lifetime player Bell woos to his school with gifts and other perks. Several incidents in the film are clearly inspired by Knight's history. Current NBA guard Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway co-stars as another "blue chipper" recruited by Bell. NBA legend Bob Cousy plays the school's president. Knight himself has a cameo alongside other collegiate and NBA legends such as Larry Bird and Rick Pitino.

In 2002, veteran character actor Brian Dennehy portrayed Knight in a film adapted from John Feinstein's book. It was ESPN's first feature-length film.

It was announced in mid-2005 that Knight would be the central character of a new reality show for ESPN. To be titled Knight School, the show will follow a handful of Texas Tech students who will compete for the right to join the Red Raiders as a non-scholarship player.

References

• "The Archives". 2004-05 Army Men's Basketball Media Guide. Retrieved Dec. 23, 2005.
• "History". 2005-06 Indiana Men's Basketball Media Guide. Retrieved Dec. 23, 2005.
• "Texas Tech Record Book". 2005-06 Red Raider Media Guide. Retrieved Dec. 23, 2005.

External links

• Bob Knight's page at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal website