Bob Knight Lets His Three Titles Do Talking

It has become clear that Bob Knight can do something else besides coach. He can also count.

Knight can still count his NCAA titles on one hand--he won his third championship in his 16 seasons at Indiana when the Hoosiers defeated Syracuse, 74-73, Monday night--but at the same time his success is increasing, his enemy list is also getting bigger.

In his own touching, sentimental manner, Knight explained what he felt as he won NCAA title No. 3.

“Hell, it’s 1-2-3,” Knight said. “What the hell do you want me to say? I’m happy as hell we won. Hell.”

Yes, Bob must be pleased. Hear the joy in his words? Heck, yes, he’s glad he won, all right. And now, Knight can probably count a lot of people on his side, probably wondering where he gets his nice red sweaters.

Do not include Louisiana State Coach Dale Brown, who can scarcely hide his dislike of Knight.

How does he loathe him? Listen, you can’t count all the ways. Brown, in fact, is emerging as the chief anti-Knight spokesperson. At the Final Four this week, Brown sounded more and more like someone who would love to open a Bourbon Street hangout, call it the Knightclub and serve only one drink, Bobby Wallbangers.

Brown has been angry with Knight since Indiana eliminated LSU in the regional final when Knight once again stoked his reputation as something other than Mr. Cool.

In that game, Knight got a technical, so he banged his fist on the scorer’s table. Then Knight slammed down a telephone on the same table, perhaps wishing only to reach out and touch someone, but having to settle instead for a substitute.

It was after watching all this that Brown decided not to renew a subscription to the Bob Knight fan club. Brown was highly critical of Knight in an ESPN interview, but he really blasted him in a short segment on local television station WWL.

“His thing is fear and intimidation,” said Brown, who went on to call Knight a “menace,” a “school bully,” and someone who “has to be stopped.”

Brown also said that many people want to have Knight behind them, “like the USDA Grade-A stamp of approval, but sometimes the meat is rotten.”

But first, meet Bob Knight, who is not a rotten person, according to the man himself. Knight said that his referee-baiting image is largely overblown and hardly worth the effort to maintain anyway because it doesn’t get him anywhere.

“I have the image of going after the officials,” Knight said. “How do you intimidate officials? That’s b.s.

“People say I intimidate officials. When you try to intimidate them, all you do is antagonize them. I guarantee you, 99.9% of those guys love to go back and say, ‘I stuck it to Jones. I sent him back to the bench.’

“I’m obviously a target for criticism of one kind or another. Sometimes justified, sometimes b.s. But we’ve been here and won three times with three entirely different teams. If you look at our record in the NCAA tournament play, it’s pretty good. That’s a pretty good testimony to the fact that we’re doing things in the way they should be done.”

Then there is Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim, who brought his team a lot further than nearly anyone expected, but who acts as though he still cannot escape criticism of his coaching, even if he probably shouldn’t worry about it in the first place.

Keith Smart’s game-winning shot and his 17 second-half points, plus Steve Alford’s 23 points and Dean Garrett’s inner defense, were simply too much for Syracuse. And although Derrick Coleman had 19 rebounds, and Sherman Douglas and Rony Seikaly came through with nice offensive games, the Orangemen still finished only a point short of Indiana, despite all the late mistakes--the two missed free throws, Douglas’ airball, Boeheim’s free-throw strategy and the phantom timeout.

In Boeheim’s opinion, the media makes too much out of getting to the Final Four, then winning it, as a validation of a coach’s ability.

“We almost lost our first-round game to Georgia Southern, and if we had, I still wouldn’t have been a crappy coach,” Boeheim said, speaking in something like Knightese.

But as in most Final Fours, only one coach and one team are going to look like geniuses this college season, just because they won.

Only Knight and Indiana were still standing at the end, when Smart picked off a last-second Syracuse pass and flung the basketball into the Indiana rooting section at courtside of the Superdome, although Knight had steadfastly insisted he never thought either he or his team would finish on their feet.

“When we got a piece of the Big Ten championship, I thought we could do some things in the tournament,” Knight said. “I didn’t necessarily think we could win the tournament, though. We went beyond what I thought our potential was. I thought all along we weren’t the kind of team to win a national championship.

“We will not go down in history as one of the dominant NCAA champions. We kind of snuck by by the skin of our teeth a few times. But when they write down the 1987 NCAA champion, Indiana will be to the right of it.”