Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
One more less Trump voter.
Bandwagon fan of the 2023 STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS!
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A_B
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
This is an appropriate thread title and tone for the post. Excellent work.
You know what you need? A lyrical sucker punch to the face.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
I’ve reached the limits of my cynicism
I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
But he graduated players blah, blah, blah...
Seemed like a complete and utter asshole.
Seemed like a complete and utter asshole.
Canadian International
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Someone needs to edit his chair throwing incident to him throwing himself into a grave.
mister d wrote:Couldn't have pegged me better.
EnochRoot wrote:I mean, whatever. Johnnie's all hot cuz I ride him.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
I wonder if he is going to be buried ass up so his critics can kiss his ass as he requested.
To quote both Bruce Prichard and Tony Schiavone, "Fuck Duff Meltzer."
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DaveInSeattle
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
I was in a meeting and my phone started to blow up with texts from all my Hoosier friends.
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Nonlinear FC
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Yeah, I read Feinstein's book on him, which put me on the "he's a huge asshole" track before the mainstream caught up to him. And this was, of course, prior to him putting hands on players and the accompanying video got out. And the way they treated that kid, in service of Knight, was disgusting. (30 for 30 on this topic is highly upsetting.)
Classic example of a college coach that created a cult bubble that just fed the beast. He was insufferable for most of his career, but at the end it was just gross.
Classic example of a college coach that created a cult bubble that just fed the beast. He was insufferable for most of his career, but at the end it was just gross.
You can lead a horse to fish, but you can't fish out a horse.
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DaveInSeattle
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Total cult surrounding him. When I lived in Bloomington ('90-'93) was when his teams started to go downhill, but he still had huge support in the community. There was a store called "The General's Store" on the Courthouse square that sold nothing but IU/Knight merch, and the pep band would play the theme from "Night Court" when he would walk out for games.Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Thu Nov 02, 2023 9:33 am Classic example of a college coach that created a cult bubble that just fed the beast. He was insufferable for most of his career, but at the end it was just gross.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
And it encompassed the whole state. The man could do no wrong in the eyes of many Hoosiers. Throwing a chair; just needed to get the attention of the referees. Punch a cop in Puerto Rico; it was just in the heat of an international competition. Saying Puerto Ricans only knew how to grow bananas; they had it coming after keeping a warrant active for almost a decade. Kicking his own son during a timeout; just being a good dad. Choking Neil Reid during practice; the kid was a punk and couldn't hack it at IU. Telling Connie Chung rape is inevitable and to just sit back relax and enjoy it as well as saying women are only good for two things "having babies and frying bacon"; he was joking like men do in locker rooms.DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Thu Nov 02, 2023 10:49 amTotal cult surrounding him. When I lived in Bloomington ('90-'93) was when his teams started to go downhill, but he still had huge support in the community. There was a store called "The General's Store" on the Courthouse square that sold nothing but IU/Knight merch, and the pep band would play the theme from "Night Court" when he would walk out for games.Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Thu Nov 02, 2023 9:33 am Classic example of a college coach that created a cult bubble that just fed the beast. He was insufferable for most of his career, but at the end it was just gross.
It was sickening to me as his behavior got worse and his followers continued to spout of his graduation rates and championships. As if those two things were the only things that mattered.
When he took the job at Texas Tech, most of those "fans" moved their allegiance to the Red Raiders.
Thankfully, these feelings have waned as the years have passed. Most of the "fans" have died off just like he has.
To quote both Bruce Prichard and Tony Schiavone, "Fuck Duff Meltzer."
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Will be interesting to see what Feinstein says tomorrow on his weekly hit on the sports junkies (dc radio show that nonlinear has a connection with).
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A_B
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
He had an article in the WaPo today but I don't subscribe.
You know what you need? A lyrical sucker punch to the face.
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govmentchedda
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
There was almost no one neutral on the subject of Robert Montgomery Knight, who died Wednesday at 83 after being ravaged by dementia for several years. Many swore by him; many swore at him. He was an emotional and intense person who inspired great emotions and intensity.
Let’s begin with the easy part: He was a great basketball coach. He won 902 games at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech, retiring as the all-time winningest Division I men’s basketball — surpassed later by his pupil Mike Krzyzewski and a handful of others. He won three national titles, went to five Final Fours and won an Olympic gold medal. His first national championship team in 1976 is the last Division I men’s team to go undefeated. Knight almost never drank, but each winter when the last undefeated team went down he would treat himself to a sangria and ginger ale.
He played his college basketball for great teams at Ohio State, but he rarely got off the bench, in large part because — ironically — he couldn’t play defense. Coaching was his way of becoming a bigger star in the hoops pantheon than teammates such as Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and Mel Nowell. Defeat always tore him up, and he always needed to blame someone else — referees, players, the media, even his bosses at Indiana.
When the Hoosiers finished their undefeated 1976 season, Knight walked out of the Philadelphia Spectrum with his pal Bob Hammel, sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Telephone. Hammel remembered being thrilled and saying to Knight, “You did it, you did it, you won the championship!”
Knight’s response? “Shoulda been two.” He was still upset that his 1975 team had finished 31-1, losing in the region final to Kentucky. Knight never got over losses — it was part of his greatness as a coach and his frequent unhappiness as a person.
Knight was an almost Shakespearean character: brilliant, thoughtful and tragically flawed. In the late 1980s, he happened to show up on a rare evening when high school recruit Calbert Cheaney had a bad night. He upbraided his assistants for dragging him to see a player clearly not good enough for Indiana. They explained he had caught Cheaney on a bad night and should see him play again. Knight told them he wouldn’t waste any more time, nor should they.
Cheaney committed to Evansville — coached by Jim Crews, who had played on Indiana’s 1976 team and coached under Knight for eight years. Knight was at a summer camp game a few months later and saw Cheaney again. This time, the real Calbert Cheaney showed up.
“Why aren’t we recruiting that kid?” Knight asked his assistants.
The assistants told him he had ordered them not to recruit Cheaney. “Why don’t you just give him a call and see if he might have any interest in Indiana?” Knight said.
Cheaney, quite naturally, was thrilled. He chose Indiana, was the star of Knight’s last Final Four team in 1992 and is still the Big Ten’s all-time leading scorer. Crews was stunned that his old coach had recruited a player who had committed to him.
“If some other coach did that to me, you’d call him every name in the book,” Crews said to Knight. “I know coaches do this sort of thing, but how could you do this to me?”
Knight responded by telling Crews he would be nothing in basketball if not for him. Crews finally said, “You know something, Coach: The saddest part of your life is that you treat your enemies better than you treat your friends.”
The truth in that statement is very sad. Although they all stayed publicly loyal to Knight to the end, he got into huge fights with, among others, Krzyzewski, former Indiana star Steve Alford, longtime assistant coaches Ron Felling and Dan Dakich and — far less importantly — me.
I can’t possibly overstate how important Knight was in my life. The access he gave me for “A Season on the Brink” allowed my first book, about Indiana’s 1985-1986 season, to become a No 1. bestseller, which has allowed me to pick and choose book topics for the past 38 years. Not once did Knight back away from the access, even during some difficult moments for his team. Although he didn’t speak to me for eight years after the book’s publication — upset, of all things, with seeing profanity in the book — he eventually decided to “forgive” me, and we had a distant though cordial relationship for the rest of his life.
He could be cruel, and he could be downright mean. There were times, though, when he was as loyal of a friend as you could have. I saw both sides.
Among his many flaws, there were two that stood out: He always insisted he didn’t care what anyone cared about him when, in fact, he cared desperately and went so far out of his way to prove it that he hurt himself figuratively — and literally.
Early in my season there, Indiana lost a very good game at Louisville, which went on to win the national championship. Exams were starting at Indiana that week, and Knight told his longtime sports information director, Kit Klingelhoffer, to let the Louisville people know he wouldn’t be coming to speak to the media because the team had to get back to Bloomington. It was a legitimate excuse, although Knight could easily have gone in for a few minutes while the players were showering and dressing.
Somehow, the reason for his absence never got to the Louisville people, who announced only that Knight wasn’t coming in to speak. I know Klingelhoffer delivered the message because I was standing there when he did.
The next morning, all the local paper reported was that Knight had “refused” to come in. Reading this, Knight went ballistic. He sent for Klingelhoffer and read him the riot act. When Klingelhoffer said he had delivered the message, Knight got so angry he kicked the telephone that was sitting on the floor next to his locker room chair. Unfortunately, he was barefooted at the time and began hopping around in pain, screaming profanities. I ran from the room, afraid that if I laughed, he would banish me forever.
Worse than that, he always had to have the last word — whether it was with referees, other coaches, players, the media and even his family.
His firing at Indiana in 2000 was classic Knight, reacting angrily to an Indiana student walking past him and saying, “What’s up, Knight?”
The kid was being a jerk, and Knight wasn’t wrong to be upset about being spoken to that way by someone 35 years his junior, but he went too far getting in the kid’s face. He was already on a “zero tolerance” edict from school president Myles Brand after a video had come out the previous season showing him choking the late Neil Reed in practice after Knight had insisted such a thing never happened. I was asked if I had ever seen Knight physically abuse a player during my season with him. Physically abuse them? No. Emotionally and verbally abuse them? You bet.
After Brand fired him, he vowed never to return to Indiana and even made a point of visiting archrival Purdue to “show” Brand. When the 1987 championship team gathered for a 20th reunion, Knight refused to attend. The same thing happened when the 1981 title team gathered for a 25th reunion. In 2016, the undefeated 1976 team had a 40th reunion, and Knight refused to come. He was still showing Brand — who had been dead for seven years.
The person most hurt by Knight’s absences was Knight.
Three years later, he finally returned to Assembly Hall after moving back to Bloomington for medical care. Sadly, he was sick by then and couldn’t really appreciate or enjoy the roaring ovation he got from the Indiana faithful.
His other great flaw: Knight regularly thought he was funny when he wasn’t, and his idea of humor was often offensive.
One day after practice, Felling didn’t hear Knight calling him because he was talking to me. When I finally pointed out that Knight was calling him, we sprinted across the court. When we arrived, Knight, having decided it was my fault Felling hadn’t heard him, made a truly egregious antisemitic comment.
I froze. I knew I couldn’t argue with him in front of his coaches because he would have to win the argument.
But that night, he and I were alone in his car en route to one of the many preseason appearances, and I called him on it.
There was a long pause.
“You know what I hate more than anything?” he finally said. Oh, God, I thought, here we go.
“What?” I said.
“When I say something truly stupid,” he said.
I knew two coaches well who had almost fail-safe memories for names, dates and just about every game they ever coached: Dean Smith and Bob Knight. Both later suffered from dementia, as tragic of an irony as I can imagine.
I feel truly sad that he died in such an agonizing way. He left behind a lot of friends and some emphatic enemies. But he made an indelible impression on everyone who knew him.
Let’s begin with the easy part: He was a great basketball coach. He won 902 games at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech, retiring as the all-time winningest Division I men’s basketball — surpassed later by his pupil Mike Krzyzewski and a handful of others. He won three national titles, went to five Final Fours and won an Olympic gold medal. His first national championship team in 1976 is the last Division I men’s team to go undefeated. Knight almost never drank, but each winter when the last undefeated team went down he would treat himself to a sangria and ginger ale.
He played his college basketball for great teams at Ohio State, but he rarely got off the bench, in large part because — ironically — he couldn’t play defense. Coaching was his way of becoming a bigger star in the hoops pantheon than teammates such as Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and Mel Nowell. Defeat always tore him up, and he always needed to blame someone else — referees, players, the media, even his bosses at Indiana.
When the Hoosiers finished their undefeated 1976 season, Knight walked out of the Philadelphia Spectrum with his pal Bob Hammel, sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Telephone. Hammel remembered being thrilled and saying to Knight, “You did it, you did it, you won the championship!”
Knight’s response? “Shoulda been two.” He was still upset that his 1975 team had finished 31-1, losing in the region final to Kentucky. Knight never got over losses — it was part of his greatness as a coach and his frequent unhappiness as a person.
Knight was an almost Shakespearean character: brilliant, thoughtful and tragically flawed. In the late 1980s, he happened to show up on a rare evening when high school recruit Calbert Cheaney had a bad night. He upbraided his assistants for dragging him to see a player clearly not good enough for Indiana. They explained he had caught Cheaney on a bad night and should see him play again. Knight told them he wouldn’t waste any more time, nor should they.
Cheaney committed to Evansville — coached by Jim Crews, who had played on Indiana’s 1976 team and coached under Knight for eight years. Knight was at a summer camp game a few months later and saw Cheaney again. This time, the real Calbert Cheaney showed up.
“Why aren’t we recruiting that kid?” Knight asked his assistants.
The assistants told him he had ordered them not to recruit Cheaney. “Why don’t you just give him a call and see if he might have any interest in Indiana?” Knight said.
Cheaney, quite naturally, was thrilled. He chose Indiana, was the star of Knight’s last Final Four team in 1992 and is still the Big Ten’s all-time leading scorer. Crews was stunned that his old coach had recruited a player who had committed to him.
“If some other coach did that to me, you’d call him every name in the book,” Crews said to Knight. “I know coaches do this sort of thing, but how could you do this to me?”
Knight responded by telling Crews he would be nothing in basketball if not for him. Crews finally said, “You know something, Coach: The saddest part of your life is that you treat your enemies better than you treat your friends.”
The truth in that statement is very sad. Although they all stayed publicly loyal to Knight to the end, he got into huge fights with, among others, Krzyzewski, former Indiana star Steve Alford, longtime assistant coaches Ron Felling and Dan Dakich and — far less importantly — me.
I can’t possibly overstate how important Knight was in my life. The access he gave me for “A Season on the Brink” allowed my first book, about Indiana’s 1985-1986 season, to become a No 1. bestseller, which has allowed me to pick and choose book topics for the past 38 years. Not once did Knight back away from the access, even during some difficult moments for his team. Although he didn’t speak to me for eight years after the book’s publication — upset, of all things, with seeing profanity in the book — he eventually decided to “forgive” me, and we had a distant though cordial relationship for the rest of his life.
He could be cruel, and he could be downright mean. There were times, though, when he was as loyal of a friend as you could have. I saw both sides.
Among his many flaws, there were two that stood out: He always insisted he didn’t care what anyone cared about him when, in fact, he cared desperately and went so far out of his way to prove it that he hurt himself figuratively — and literally.
Early in my season there, Indiana lost a very good game at Louisville, which went on to win the national championship. Exams were starting at Indiana that week, and Knight told his longtime sports information director, Kit Klingelhoffer, to let the Louisville people know he wouldn’t be coming to speak to the media because the team had to get back to Bloomington. It was a legitimate excuse, although Knight could easily have gone in for a few minutes while the players were showering and dressing.
Somehow, the reason for his absence never got to the Louisville people, who announced only that Knight wasn’t coming in to speak. I know Klingelhoffer delivered the message because I was standing there when he did.
The next morning, all the local paper reported was that Knight had “refused” to come in. Reading this, Knight went ballistic. He sent for Klingelhoffer and read him the riot act. When Klingelhoffer said he had delivered the message, Knight got so angry he kicked the telephone that was sitting on the floor next to his locker room chair. Unfortunately, he was barefooted at the time and began hopping around in pain, screaming profanities. I ran from the room, afraid that if I laughed, he would banish me forever.
Worse than that, he always had to have the last word — whether it was with referees, other coaches, players, the media and even his family.
His firing at Indiana in 2000 was classic Knight, reacting angrily to an Indiana student walking past him and saying, “What’s up, Knight?”
The kid was being a jerk, and Knight wasn’t wrong to be upset about being spoken to that way by someone 35 years his junior, but he went too far getting in the kid’s face. He was already on a “zero tolerance” edict from school president Myles Brand after a video had come out the previous season showing him choking the late Neil Reed in practice after Knight had insisted such a thing never happened. I was asked if I had ever seen Knight physically abuse a player during my season with him. Physically abuse them? No. Emotionally and verbally abuse them? You bet.
After Brand fired him, he vowed never to return to Indiana and even made a point of visiting archrival Purdue to “show” Brand. When the 1987 championship team gathered for a 20th reunion, Knight refused to attend. The same thing happened when the 1981 title team gathered for a 25th reunion. In 2016, the undefeated 1976 team had a 40th reunion, and Knight refused to come. He was still showing Brand — who had been dead for seven years.
The person most hurt by Knight’s absences was Knight.
Three years later, he finally returned to Assembly Hall after moving back to Bloomington for medical care. Sadly, he was sick by then and couldn’t really appreciate or enjoy the roaring ovation he got from the Indiana faithful.
His other great flaw: Knight regularly thought he was funny when he wasn’t, and his idea of humor was often offensive.
One day after practice, Felling didn’t hear Knight calling him because he was talking to me. When I finally pointed out that Knight was calling him, we sprinted across the court. When we arrived, Knight, having decided it was my fault Felling hadn’t heard him, made a truly egregious antisemitic comment.
I froze. I knew I couldn’t argue with him in front of his coaches because he would have to win the argument.
But that night, he and I were alone in his car en route to one of the many preseason appearances, and I called him on it.
There was a long pause.
“You know what I hate more than anything?” he finally said. Oh, God, I thought, here we go.
“What?” I said.
“When I say something truly stupid,” he said.
I knew two coaches well who had almost fail-safe memories for names, dates and just about every game they ever coached: Dean Smith and Bob Knight. Both later suffered from dementia, as tragic of an irony as I can imagine.
I feel truly sad that he died in such an agonizing way. He left behind a lot of friends and some emphatic enemies. But he made an indelible impression on everyone who knew him.
Until everything is less insane, I'm mixing weed with wine.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
There's a lot of overlap between Knight and Trump. The big difference is that Bobby Knight was actually really successful and mostly universally revered in his field.
Totally Kafkaesque
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
"A Season On The Brink" was a great book.
If Knight wasn't a basketball coach somebody might have taken a crowbar to him at some point
If Knight wasn't a basketball coach somebody might have taken a crowbar to him at some point
Canadian International
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Imagine had he been a drunk too?
well this is gonna be someone's new signature - bronto
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DaveInSeattle
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Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
Some friends of mine in Bloomington were out hiking in the woods after taking some mushrooms, and ran into Knight and a couple of his buddies out hunting.
They said they were not in the right frame of mind for that at all...kept having to check in with each other saying "did we both hallucinate that?"
They said they were not in the right frame of mind for that at all...kept having to check in with each other saying "did we both hallucinate that?"
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
I had no idea this was a thing. It's actually hilarious.
mister d wrote:Couldn't have pegged me better.
EnochRoot wrote:I mean, whatever. Johnnie's all hot cuz I ride him.
Re: Indiana Basketball Dead Coach
I used my "gift" feature to share...not sure how many folks will be able to read this link
https://wapo.st/3tRA0hS
I can also show folks who to use my local library website to get free access...okay, just click the link at the top of this page
https://library.arlingtonva.libguides.com/wapostcurrent