Indiana’s Knight: The Enigma Who Enjoys Solving Puzzles

He is the independent, indignant, incorrigible, insufferable, inestimable, indestructible, indefatigable, indomitable, indubitable Indiana coach, Bob Knight. He is many things to many people. He is also one of a kind. He is also two of a kind. The Good Knight and the Bad Knight. Wearer of shining armor and part-time prince of darkness. A man for all basketball seasons.

Let us tell you about the Good Knight. Known throughout the land for winning without cheating, for honesty and candor, for commitment to academics, for being a man’s man and a coach’s coach. More than one person took pains to thank or praise Knight for making sure his kids went to class last week while the other three teams of the NCAA’s Final Four already were exploring New Orleans.

Now, let us tell you about the Bad Knight. Bullies players, swears like a sailor, hurls chairs, harps at officials and holds grudges. Slammed down a telephone at courtside, stormed onto the court and drew a technical foul during the March 22 regional game with Louisiana State. Recently came down from the crowd at a State high school tournament game in Indiana and got into a shouting match with the coach of his 15-year-old son’s team after Patrick Knight reportedly reacted to a benching by cussing and throwing a towel.

OK, time to let Bob Knight himself be asked if he is aware of his public image as sort of an older, grayer John McEnroe.

“Let me tell you what I’m aware of,” he said Sunday, on the eve of Indiana’s national championship game against Syracuse. “OK? I’m aware of walking through an airport and somebody comes up to me and talks to me about how much they enjoy watching Indiana play. Or some superintendent of schools in Oregon writes me a letter about how much he appreciates the stand we take for education. Our governor wrote me a note the other day. How pleased he was that we stayed behind to go to class Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That’s what I’m aware of.

“You know, I’m very comfortable with myself. I’m the only person who has to be comfortable with me.”

When Steve Alford, Indiana’s senior guard, was asked what misconceptions, if any, the public has about Coach Bob Knight, he winced and said: “I’ve survived for four years, and I’ve only got one more game left.” In other words--I’m almost home free. Leave me out of this. After playing for Knight on the U.S. Olympic team in 1984, Sam Perkins of North Carolina, now with the Dallas Mavericks, turned to Alford and said something like: “Three more years with Coach Knight. Good luck!” Ever since, Alford has seen both sides of Good Bob and Bad Bob, enduring abuse in practice, as chronicled in the best-selling book, “A Season on the Brink,” and earning gobs of praise in public. In years to come, Knight will speak of Alford only in glorious terms.

When the All-American guard was asked Sunday about the “real” Bob Knight, he barely squeaked his answer out before the coach got after him again.

“You little S.O.B.,” Knight said. “Keep one thing in mind. You aren’t ever gonna be out from under that umbrella.”

Having played for me , he meant.

Knight caught Alford’s eye and gestured with a wave of his arm, grandly.

“No, go ahead. Say whatever you want,” the coach invited.

Alford sat back and said nothing.

Bob Knight, 46, was in an expansive mood Sunday, talking for more than an hour on subjects ranging from baseball greats Ted Williams and Johnny Bench, both of whom have come here to lend vocal support to their good friend, the Indiana coach, to the three-point shot, which Knight detests, to how he hopes to be perceived. About the only thing he would not discuss was “A Season on the Brink,” a book he refuses to publicly acknowledge.

When he met Williams several years ago, they hit it off immediately because of their mutual love of fishing. Knight described the former Boston Red Sox outfielder as “my all-time idol” and said one of the most vivid memories of his Ohio youth was being in Cleveland’s ballpark the last game Williams ever played there, and seeing him walked intentionally with the bases loaded. “What greater compliment could a player ever be given than that?” Knight asked.

Since then, he has come to empathize with Williams because he was fiercely independent and often criticized for it--”not too dissimilar from me.” Williams, said Knight, was often quoted as saying it was his ambition to be able to walk down the street some day and have people say, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

When Williams spoke to him here the other day, to wish him luck, Knight reminded him: “My greatest ambition is that when you retire, I take your place as the world’s greatest fly fisherman.”

This, in turn, led to a discussion of idols, and Knight was asked which people in his profession, coaching, and not necessarily basketball, were the ones he admired most. He mentioned Vince Lombardi, who “gave a meaning to ‘play as well as you can play,’ ” and Paul Brown, for being a master at organization, and Red Auerbach, for his psychological approach to coaching, and noted that men such as these shared an “inner arrogance” that he found particularly appealing.

Among college basketball coaches, Knight singled out three old friends--Clair Bee, Pete Newell and Henry Iba--saying that everyone in coaching now has “benefited in some degree to the things that these three people figured out.”

“How about you?” Knight was asked. “Would you like to walk down the street some day and have someone say, ‘There goes the greatest coach who ever lived?’ ”

“No,” Knight replied, “because I know there are guys who were better than I was. What I would like people hopefully to say is: ‘There goes a guy who got the most out of what he had.’

“You know, I had a guy who told me the greatest compliment in the world for a coach is to be told you’re worth a few points just sitting on a bench. That’s something I would like to have people think of me.”

After two national championships--with a possible third coming his way tonight--and an Olympic gold medal, what more reward would Knight want from coaching?

Personal ones, he said. “As long as I enjoy putting the pieces together, I’ll keep coaching,” he said. “I’m like one of those guys who likes to do puzzles, and when the puzzle is completed, I’m ready to put together another puzzle. It’s the puzzle that I enjoy. Victory, winning, has never been a particularly satisfying thing for me. It’s how we played. If we lose the national championship, I’m going to look back and wonder what we did wrong. If we win, I’m going to look back and say, ‘How could I improve things even more?’ That’s what matters to me.”

Although Knight has been called inflexible, unyielding, unwilling to change, he actually has made major alterations in his thinking, at least where basketball is concerned. He used a zone defense this season for the first time after years of man-to-man. He recruited junior college players for the first time. He even permitted his team to run with Nevada Las Vegas in Saturday’s semifinal game rather than use the sort of patient passing offense that scored 63 points in the 1981 national championship game. Indiana beat Las Vegas by the gaudy score of 97-93.

When his friend and mentor, Bee, a coach and author of children’s sports books, once wrote him a note that said, “Clair Bee and Bob Knight do not believe that repetition is gospel,” Knight took the words to heart. It underscored to him that it is necessary to change with the times.

“I’ve been called inflexible. If I’d been inflexible, I wouldn’t have lasted,” Knight said.

With that, he turned to Indiana center Dean Garrett and sunk his fingers into Garrett’s neck.

“Do you think I’m unyielding?” Knight asked.

“No,” Garrett said meekly.

“See? He doesn’t think I’m unyielding,” Knight said.

Just because he has adjusted to basketball’s new three-point field goal, though, does not mean he endorses it.

Knight cannot stand seeing players fire when ready. They should work hard for a good shot, he believes. “I enjoy the machinations of the game too much, and there’s not much about the three-point shot that’s traditional within the scope of good basketball. (Louisville Coach) Denny Crum said that in football, maybe if you make a field goal over 40 yards it should be worth four points. If you pass for a touchdown over 50 yards, it should be worth eight points. And if you run for a touchdown over 70 yards, the game should be called off immediately. Actually, I came up with that last one. I thought that was pretty good.”

Johnny Bench had dinner with Knight after Saturday’s game. Knight wanted his players to get to know Bench, he said, because: “How often do you ever get to meet someone who was the best in his profession there ever was. I mean, here’s the best catcher who ever played. I want him to tell them what it’s like to play in a World Series, to play for a championship. To know the feeling. To know what to expect.”

Knight’s Indiana teams played in the national championship game in 1976 and 1981, winning it both times. But the same man who values Bench’s experience in such affairs refused to entertain the notion that his own experience will be an advantage.

“Why should it be?” he asked. “The rules don’t change. The dimensions of the court aren’t different. The buckets are still 10 feet off the floor. There’s still a certain number of timeouts in a game.”

Knight makes such statements with such authority, such assuredness, such, OK, inner arrogance , that a listener has a tendency to believe him, to trust that he knows exactly what he is talking about. When Bob Knight talks, people listen. Perhaps that explains why, when he persisted in the belief, earlier in the season, that his current team was not gifted enough to challenge for a national championship, it was accepted in some quarters as gospel. The Hoosiers’ presence in tonight’s title game only fortifies the notion that it is a great coach who has brought a so-so team so far.