As Always, Knight Will Do What Suits Him

When it comes to clothes, Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight knows exactly how he wants to look.

He proved it after a Lexington, Ky., department store, offered to make him, gratis, a designer suit.

The store, which outfits power-dressing Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino, wrote Knight to offer him a designer double-breasted suit with “appropriate shoes, shirt and tie.”

Knight responded by letter, saying: “I think I will stick to my designer Starter sweater over my designer Riceland Country Club golf shirt, along with my designer Haggar slacks and my designer Foot-Joy teaching shoes.”

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Trivia time: Who has the best free-throw percentage this season in professional basketball?

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Wait a minute: In the Wednesday Morning Briefing item about Las Vegas oddsmakers challenging Donald Trump’s claim he made a 20-1 bet on Evander Holyfield over Mike Tyson, one oddsmaker said the odds were never wider than 17-1.

Wrong, says M.R. Rosenlof of Carson.

Rosenlof faxed to Morning Briefing his Stardust wager receipt, showing that on Oct. 9 he placed a $10 bet, at 25-1, on Holyfield to win by knockout. He collected $260.

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Remembering Pete: Longtime track and field promoter Al Franken recalled recently a 1993 day at the races with former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who died Friday.

“Pete and I first knew each other at Compton College, when we were both track nuts,” Franken recalled.

“I was with him all afternoon that day at Del Mar and all he wanted to talk about was track or what I was doing. The subject of football never came up. And he never said a thing about himself.

“He had a way of making you feel that what you were doing was more interesting to him than what he was doing.”

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Get a calculator: The crack investigative staff at SportsLetter, the newsletter published by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, reports Atlanta Olympics people employed sloppy addition in news releases crowing about ticket sales.

It cites newspaper reports--obtained from the Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games--as reporting Atlanta Olympic ticket sales, 8.6 million, were more than Los Angeles and Barcelona combined.

Not so, SportsLetter reports.

“Official reports of the 1984 and 1992 Olympic Games show that 5,720,000 tickets were sold at Los Angeles and 3,021,740 at Barcelona,” reports SportsLetter.

“You can do the arithmetic.”

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Trivia answer: Niesa Johnson of the Atlanta Glory of the women’s American Basketball League. She was shooting 92.7% as of Wednesday. The NBA leader: Terrell Brandon of Cleveland, 92.3%.

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And finally: Florida Panther Coach Doug MacLean, fired by the Detroit Red Wings a few years ago when he was an assistant, thoroughly enjoyed the Panthers’ recent victory at Detroit. But he was quickly humbled, when a security guard there called him “Don.”

Said MacLean: “Obviously, I didn’t make that big an impact around here.”