College basketball bid farewell to a giant this week and left a void that will be very hard to fill. Bob Knight quietly resigned after a stellar 42 years of coaching at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech, and for those of us who enjoyed basketball in its best form, the game lost a lot of luster with his exit.
There is no middle ground with Bob Knight, you either love him or hate him, but when it comes to the game his legacy is without rival. Yes, he has his faults, as do we all, and due to his position his errors were magnified, but the only way to examine his career is to view the full body of his work and the lasting impact he left on the game, his players and the institutions where he coached. He coached a style that was a throwback to how the game is supposed to be played, ball control, defense, academics, and placing the focus on the team and not the player.
Here are some of his legendary accomplishments:
· 3 National Championships
· Olympic Gold Medal
· 902 Career Victories, the winningest coach in NCAA history
· Donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the libraries at Indiana and Texas Tech
· Zero NCAA violations in 42 years
· Once refused his salary because he felt his team did not perform well enough for it to be deserved.
My favorite Bob Knight story was his “recruitment” of Patrick Ewing. As a high school star, Ewing had his “people” send letters to those select schools he would like to attend. These letters spelled out the terms that these schools and teams would have to meet in order for him to consider playing there. Coach Knight took the letter, placed it on his desk and for the next couple of weeks used it as the resting place for his cups of coffee and then mailed it back to him without comment. In today’s highly competitive world of athletics, I can think of only a couple of coaches who would have the temerity to say “screw you” to such a highly skilled athlete. Ironically, they all played and/or coached under Robert Montgomery Knight.
Enjoy your retirement coach, you deserve it.
1 Comment
February 23, 2008 at 4:47 am
I’ve read a couple books about this complex man and a story in one of them prompted me to write a scathing letter to Connie Chung. You may remember her as the jerk who sand bagged the snot out of him and reneged on the pre arranged agreement where Coach would have editorial content control on what aired on national tv. He then got laid to waste with the “if rape is inevitable, sit back and enjoy it” remark. I cc’d Coach Knight on the letter and darned if he didn’t write me back and send me the current IU media guide as well.