The Long Day's Journey Into Knight

Polarize.

[poh-luh-rahyz]: to divide into sharply opposing factions, political groups, etc.

I can't think of anyone who is more of a polarizing figure than Robert Montgomery Knight. He's either loved or hated, praised or pilloried, deified or vilified. And now that he's stepped away from the game of college basketball, the game has gotten a lot less interesting.

He began his head coaching career as the l'enfant terrible at Army, evolved into the prickly pillar of Indiana basketball, and then morphed into a curmudgeon at Texas Tech. Unbending, unyielding, all the while enduring (or cultivating) a dislike-hate relationship with the media. And I don't think it was any accident that the coach ended his career without a career-ending session with the members of the fourth estate.

Yes, any of you that know me know where I stand on the subject of coach Knight. I definitely think the good he's done far outweighs all of the negatives. In a sense, it's unfair for the media to be the tallykeepers: his napalm-like negative incidents (the chair-toss, the "if rape is inevitable" comment to Connie Chung, and the verbal-toasting he gave to that NCAA Tournament worker, for a few examples) are such delicious pieces of video that by their very nature they're going to get replay upon replay on television, while most of the good things he does never see the light of day (which is the way he prefers it). Yes, for all the Landon Turners and Ryan Whites who were publicly helped by the coach, there are certainly hundreds more who benefited from his efforts who we'll never hear from. But their stories are just as important. And the library funds at Indiana and Texas Tech are millions of dollars richer because of what he's done for them.

No, you can't say, "Well, if it wasn't for his temper he'd be revered for his accomplishments," like John Wooden, for instance. You can't have one without the other. And as for the age-old question, there is no doubt that I would have wanted my son to play for coach Knight. Sure, there are many players that he recruited that don't have good things to say about their experiences. But Knight always made it clear in the recruiting process that he would be the most demanding (read: unbearable) coach that player could ever have, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to the young man that Knight would use language that would make a sailor blush, would be intolerant to mistakes, and wouod have zero tolerance for falling short in the academic portion of the student-athlete job description. I remember hearing of an IU upperclassman telling a freshman, "Don't listen when he calls you an (expletive deleted). But make sure you listen when he tells you why you're an (same expletive deleted), because that's what will make you better." There was another former player who said that there were times that if he had a gun he would have shot his coach, and there were other times when he wanted to hug him and tell him that he loved him.

There was always the puzzlement that, if Knight expected his players to be disclipined, to set a good public example, and to always toe the line while representing the university, then why couldn't he follow his own set of standards? I say, the opinions of us on the outside don't count---instead, listen to those players who survived the experience, the 95+ percent of those players who got their degrees, and the ones who have gone on to successful lives without appearing in the police blotter. The ones who say they got where they were because of the guy in the rumpled red sweater. Ask them if there was a double-standard issue.

Sure I've cringed at some of his more heavy-handed headline-grabbers, but I always enjoyed his antics in dealing with the media. I'm sure there are those who were insulted when, for example, he said they should put TV people on an island (zing!), and put writers in a cave under the island (zing! zing!), or that we learn to write in the second grade and then most of us move on to other things (zing!). However, I looked forward to seeing clips of his latest joust with the press, giving that Archie Bunker-esque look when he made a sarcastic remark. Or recently, when he brought his toddler grandson to the postgame podium with him, "coached" him on how to deal with the media, and then praised the youngster for not answering a single question. I could always find the humor of those encounters, and for those working press that didn't appreciate it or thought it was a waste of their time, maybe the coach was right: they were sanctimonious and self-righteous.

I'll leave you with my favorite Bob Knight story, which I heard him tell several years ago. When he coached the U.S. Olympic team to gold in 1984, he had the last dominant, all-college roster: Jordan, Ewing, Perkins, Mullin, etc. The U.S had won each game handily (although much to Knight's chagrin, they didn't get a chance to play the then-Soviet Union, who boycotted the L.A. Games), and the gold medal game against Spain was no different at halftime. Knight's quandry was how to get his team to play better in the second half when they were so comfortably in front. He decided he would get on Michael Jordan--that if he rode Jordan, the other players would fall in line. (MJ could take Knight's verbal slings---remember, it was Jordan who left a pregame note on Knight's locker room blackboard that said, "after all the &%$#&* we've put up with, no way we lose tonight."), Trouble was, and predictably, Jordan had put up great stats in the first half. So Knight recited Jordan's numbers and then said, "But Mike, I haven't seen you set one damned screen." So Jordan responded, "Coach, I thought I heard you say the other day that I was the quickest player you'd ever seen?" "Yeah, so what's that have to do with anything?" the coach responded. "Well," Jordan continued, "maybe I set them faster than you can see them." After the laughter died down, Knight added, "Well, just make damned sure in the second half, that you set one slow enough for me to see it."

As I said, the world of sports has now gotten a lot less interesting. ¶ 4:48 PM