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Bob Knight,
the brilliant and combustible coach who won three NCAA titles at Indiana and
for years was the scowling face of college basketball, has died. He was 83.
Knight’s family made the
announcement on social media on Wednesday night.
“It is with heavy hearts that we
share that Coach Bob Knight passed away at his home in Bloomington surrounded
by his family,” the statement said. “We are grateful for all the thoughts and
prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as Coach
requested a private family gathering, which is being honored. We will continue
to celebrate his life and remember him, today and forever as a beloved Husband,
Father, Coach, and Friend.”
Head coach Bobby
Knight of the Indiana Hoosiers looks on during a 1998 game against the Kentucky
Wildcats at the Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky, Photo by Mark Lyons
/Allsport
Knight was among the winningest
coaches in the sport, finishing his career with 902 victories in 42 seasons at
Army, Indiana and Texas Tech. He also coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold
medal in 1984.
The Hall of Famer cared little what
others thought of him, choosing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” to celebrate his 880th
win in 2007, then the record for a Division I men’s coach.
He was nicknamed “The General” and
his temper was such that in 2000 it cost him his job at Indiana. He once hit a
police officer in Puerto Rico, threw a chair across the court and was accused
of wrapping his hands around a player’s neck.
His critics fumed relentlessly about
his conduct, but his defenders were legion. There was this side of Knight as
well: He took pride in his players’ high graduation rates, and during a
rule-breaking era he never was accused of a major NCAA violation.
At Indiana, he insisted his base
salary not exceed that of other professors. At Texas Tech, he sometimes gave
back his salary because he didn’t think he earned it.
Knight expected players to exceed
expectations on the court and in the classroom. He abided by NCAA rules even
when he disagreed with them, never backed down from a dust-up, and promised to
take his old-school principles to the grave.
His disposition and theatrics,
however, often overshadowed his formidable record, tactical genius, and
dedication to his players and the game, leaving behind a singular resume.
“He changed basketball in this
state, the way you compete, the way you win,” Steve Alford, the leader of
Knight’s last national championship team in 1987, once said. “It started in
Indiana, but he really changed college basketball. You look at the motion
offense and people everywhere used it.”
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Long esteemed for his strategy and
often questioned for his methods, Knight reveled in constructing his best teams
with overachievers. As a hard-to-please motivator, he clung to iron principles,
and at 6-foot-5 was an intimidating presence for anyone who dared cross him.
When Knight retired in 2008, he left
with four national championships (one as a player at Ohio State) and as the
Division I men’s record-holder in wins. He coached everyone from Mike
Krzyzewski to Isiah Thomas to Michael Jordan. His coaching tree included
Krzyzewski, who broke Knight’s wins record; Alford; Lawrence Frank, Keith
Smart, Randy Wittman, and Mike Woodson, Indiana’s current coach, among others.
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“I have molded everything we do from
practices to academics to community service and even how you should represent
the school from that time,” Alford said. “Coach Knight had a lot to do with
that.”
Robert Montgomery Knight was born
Oct. 25, 1940, in Massillon, Ohio. His mother, whom Knight credited as his
strongest childhood influence, was a schoolteacher and his father worked for
the railroad.
Hazel Knight seemed to understand
her son’s temperament. Once, when Indiana was set to play Kentucky on
television, two of Knight’s high school classmates ran into her at a grocery
store and asked if she was excited about the game, according to his biography,
“Knight: My Story.”
“I just hope he behaves,” his mother
remarked.
He played basketball at Ohio State,
where he was a reserve on three Final Four teams (1960-62). He was on the 1960
title team that featured Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek, two future Basketball
Hall of Famers.
After a year as a high school
assistant, Knight joined the staff of Tates Locke at West Point. In 1965, he
took over as head coach at age 24. In six seasons, coaching the likes of
Krzyzewski and Mike Silliman, his teams won 102 games and it was off to Indiana
in 1971.
Knight quickly restored the Hoosiers’
basketball tradition with a revolutionary offense and an almost exclusively
man-to-man defense. Most opponents struggled against his early Indiana teams,
with the Hoosiers going 125-20 and winning four Big Ten Conference crowns in
his first five seasons.
The run concluded with Indiana’s
first national championship in 23 years. That 1975-76 team went 32-0, ending a
two-year span when the Hoosiers were 63-1 and captured back-to-back Big Ten
championships with 18-0 records. It remains the last time a major college men’s
team finished with a perfect record. That team was voted the greatest in
college basketball history by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association in 2013.
Knight won his second title in 1981,
beating Dean Smith’s North Carolina team after NCAA officials decided to play
the game hours after President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded earlier in
the day. His third title at Indiana came in 1987 when Smart hit a baseline
jumper in the closing seconds to beat Syracuse, one of the most famous shots in
tournament history.
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Knight spent five decades competing
against and usually beating some of the game’s most revered names — Adolph
Rupp, Smith and John Wooden in the early years; Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino and Roy
Williams in later years.
The Olympic team he coached in Los
Angeles in 1984 was the last amateur U.S. team to win gold in men’s basketball.
And, to no surprise, it came with controversy. Knight kept Alford on his team
while cutting the likes of future Hall of Famers Charles Barkley and John Stockton.
But winning and winning big was only
part of Knight’s legacy. He would do things his way.
Other big-time coaches might follow
the gentlemanly, buttoned-up approach, but not Knight. He dressed in plaid
sport coats and red sweaters, routinely berated referees and openly challenged
decisions by NCAA and Big Ten leaders. His list of transgressions ran long:
· Knight was convicted
in absentia of assaulting a Puerto Rican police officer during the 1979 Pan
American Games.
· He forfeited an
exhibition game to the Soviet Union in 1987 when he pulled his team off the
court after being called for a third technical foul.
· He told NBC’s Connie
Chung in a 1988 interview, “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy
it.” Knight was answering a question about how he handled stress and later
tried to explain he was talking about something beyond one’s control, not the
act of rape.
· He was accused of
head-butting one player and kicking his own son, Pat, during a timeout.
· At a 1980 news
conference he fired a blank from a starter’s pistol at a reporter. During the
1992 NCAA Tournament, Knight playfully used a bull whip on star player Calbert
Cheaney, who is Black.
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His most famous outburst came Feb.
23, 1985, when Purdue’s Steve Reid was about to attempt a free throw. A furious
Knight picked up a red plastic chair and heaved it across the court, where it
landed behind the basket. Fans started throwing pennies on the court, one
hitting the wife of Purdue coach Gene Keady. Reid missed three of his next six
ensuing free throws.
“There are times I walk into a
meeting or a friend calls to say, ‘I saw you on TV last night,’” Reid said on
the 20th anniversary of the incident. “I know what they’re talking about.”
Knight apologized the next day,
received a one-game suspension and was put on probation for two years by the
Big Ten. Intent on preventing such a thing again, Indiana officials chained
together the chairs for both benches.
The iconic black-and-white photo of
the incident remains a classic for Hoosiers fans and even became fodder for a
television commercial with one of his old coaching rivals, former Notre Dame
coach Digger Phelps. Knight for years joked he was merely attempting to toss
the chair to a woman looking for a seat.
Fifteen years after the chair toss,
Knight’s temper led to his downfall in Bloomington. A video surfaced of Knight
allegedly putting his hands around the neck of player Neil Reed during a 1997
practice, a charge that prompted Indiana President Myles Brand to put Knight on
a zero-tolerance policy following a university investigation.
Then, on Sept. 10, 2000, after
winning a school-record 662 games and 11 Big Ten titles in 29 seasons, his time
at Indiana came to a shocking end. While passing Knight in an Assembly Hall
corridor, Indiana student Kent Harvey said, “Hey, what’s up, Knight?” Knight
considered it disrespectful, grabbed Harvey’s arm and lectured him about
manners. A few days later, Brand fired Knight.
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Students protested by tearing down a
goalpost at the football stadium, ripping a dolphin statue off a fountain, and
hanging Brand in effigy outside his home. Knight publicly condemned Brand’s
leadership. Brand became NCAA president in 2002 and died in 2009 at 67 while
still on the job. Neil Reed died in 2012 after collapsing in his California
home. He was 36.
In 2003, he lashed out profanely
after an ESPN reporter asked about his relationship with Alford, then the Iowa
coach. The following year Knight received a reprimand after a verbal dust-up
with David Smith, then the Texas Tech chancellor, as the two men stood at a
grocery store salad bar.
He still won, too. In his first six
years in West Texas, Knight led the Red Raiders to five 20-plus win seasons, a
feat never previously achieved at the school. On Jan. 1, 2007, Knight won his
880th career game, breaking Dean Smith’s record with a win over New Mexico.
Krzyzewski topped Knight’s mark in 2011, with his mentor broadcasting the game
for ESPN.
For nearly two decades, Indiana
officials attempted to make peace. Knight refused, even skipping his induction
into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.
“I hope someday he will be honored
at Indiana. That needs to happen. Somebody needs to make that happen,” Scott
May, a starter on Knight’s 1976 championship team and an outspoken critic of
Knight’s firing, pleaded as Knight stayed away. “I think they should name
Assembly Hall after him.”
The ice finally broke in February
2020, a few months after Knight bought a new house in Bloomington. His first
public appearance at Assembly Hall since the firing came at halftime of the
Hoosiers’ game against rival Purdue.
Billed as a reunion between the
coach and many of his former players, the halftime celebration became a
sustained roar for The General. May and Quinn Buckner, who also played on
Knight’s first title team, helped the aging coach — no longer steady on his feet
— walk onto the court.
“When he moved back here, I knew he
was in a good place,” said Wittman, who played on the 1981 national champs. “I
knew he was happy here, living, and I told him you belong here.”
Knight didn’t speak to the crowd
that day. It spoke to him.
“We love you, Bobby,” one fan
shouted during a brief pause from the crowd, a scene that brought the steely
Knight to tears.
Away from the court, Knight was an
avid golfer who loved to read, especially history and donated generously to
school libraries at Indiana and Texas Tech. He would vacation in far-flung
places to hunt and fish with family or friends such as baseball great Ted
Williams or manager Tony La Russa.
Knight also made a cameo appearance
in the 2003 movie “Anger Management” with Adam Sandler. In 2006, he starred in
“Knight School,” an ESPN reality show in which 16 Texas Tech students vied for
the chance to walk on to his team the following season.
A month after leaving Tech, Knight,
who often lashed out at reporters, joined ESPN as a guest studio analyst during
the 2008 NCAA Tournament. The next season, he expanded his role as a color
commentator. The network parted with Knight in 2015.
He returned to public view in 2016,
campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and kept
a mostly low profile until returning to the campus where he became a household
name.
“I was standing there, and he was
coach Knight,” Wittman said, referring to Knight’s pregame speech in February
2020. “It was like he hadn’t left that locker room. The words he gave to those
players before they went out on the floor, it was fabulous.”
Survivors include wife Karen and
sons Tim and Pat.
Former Associated Press writer Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas,
contributed to this report., saying he was surrounded by family members at his
home in Bloomington, Indiana.
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