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Good Or Bad, Coach Knight Is One Of A Kind

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 6, 2008

Updated: 02/06/2008 12:12 am

Anyone else would have taken a victory lap, but not Bob Knight.

He could have turned this basketball season into a farewell tour, with tributes and speeches at every stop for his Texas Tech team. Some coaches might have enjoyed feeling the love, but not Bob Knight. It would have been too awkward, too phony. Better, in his mind, to just be done with it all. No looking back.

So he quit. At least he did it on his terms this time, unlike when he was unceremoniously fired after three decades at Indiana. It's better this way.

Even though, as University of Texas coach Rick Barnes said, "The best that has ever been just walked off into the sunset," Knight leaves the game as the same enigma who taught and terrorized in equal measure.

It is a fact that the man who was all about doing things the right way left this season undone. Ten games remain. Texas Tech could still reach the NCAA Tournament, but Knight decided he was physically spent and could take no more.

So be it. A career of contradictions has ended.

He won more games and probably made more enemies than any men's basketball coach. Too many times, he was a disciplinarian without self-discipline, a teacher who never learned his own lessons. But he also had at least as many supporters as detractors. The rants and thrown chairs are more than balanced by a legion of former players and coaches who say the substance outweighed the style.

"Outside of my immediate family, no single person has had a greater impact on my life than Coach Knight," a statement from Duke's Mike Krzyzewski read. "I have the ultimate respect for him as a coach and a mentor, but even more so as a dear friend. For more than 40 years, the life lessons I have learned from Coach are immeasurable. Simply put, I love him."

Pursuit Of Perfection

I always wondered, but never got the chance to ask, what Knight's vision of a perfect basketball game looks like. But Dan Hipsher, an assistant coach at the University of South Florida, has a good idea. When Hipsher was the head coach at Akron, he hired Knight's son, Pat, as an assistant. His relationship with the family goes back decades.

"He probably came close to a few perfect games," Hipsher said. "I don't think it would mean making every shot or anything like that, but what he'd want to know is whether it was the right shot for the right guy at the right time.

"On defense, he'd want to know if you took away what the other team did best, were you in the right position, that sort of thing. It might not have even mattered if you had won that night; did you play the right way?"

Alas, too many times Knight didn't play the right way. His outbursts often reduced him to a caricature, such as the time in 1979 when he was arrested in Puerto Rico for assaulting a police officer during the Pan Am Games. Knight was mad he couldn't get into a gym for practice.

You've all seen the clip of him throwing a chair during a game against Purdue. He had the stupid line about "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." He flipped out at a postgame news conference following a loss in the NCAA Tournament. Indiana had to fire him after, oh, a million incidents or so.

So it's reasonable to ask why so many people are saying so many nice things about Bob Knight today. Perhaps those people know him better than we do.

"Maybe I've got blinders on, but I've seen a lot of the good he did," Hipsher said. "He is charismatic, he is brilliant. He has given people the shirt off his back without outside people ever knowing about it. That's the way he wants it."

A Lasting Legacy

Bob Knight wouldn't last long if he were just starting out today. He is not smooth enough, compromised enough, or politically savvy enough, to work his way up from the bottom in today's collegiate atmosphere.

But if this many people say good things about him in the face of conflicting evidence, maybe he taught some lessons that still need to be learned. He never cheated to win. His players actually had to go to class and get their degrees.

"His legacy to basketball is more than the number of wins he has achieved," Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said. "Bob has given back to the game of basketball as much or more than anyone who ever coached the game."

Knight no doubt would like to be remembered that way, and many do. You look at the balance sheet on days like this and Knight's plus side more than balances out the negative, even after 42 years in the game. That alone should be worth a victory lap.

But maybe if his former players promise to take good shots and play tough defense, it will be enough.

Reporter Joe Henderson can be reached at (813) 259-7861 or jhenderson@tampatrib.com.

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