Out of Touch? Not Bobby Knight

Because Bob Knight is again in the news, negatively, I want to say this directly. I’ve known him 26 years. I like him. I respect him. Few people come to their work with such integrity and such passion for excellence. If Knight isn’t the best basketball coach ever, he’s in the top three. And I say this as a sportswriter whose tender ears have been burned by The General’s heated declamations.

“As a kid, I wanted to be a political cartoonist, because you only need one idea a day,” Knight has said. “But then I decided to be a sportswriter because you don’t need any ideas.” He first snarled at me in 1974 when his Indiana University basketball team won by 24 points over a good Kentucky team. That day he cuffed the Kentucky coach, Joe B. Hall, on the back of the head at midcourt late in the game. So at a press conference I asked, “What happened between you and Coach Hall?” Angry, the coaches had left their benches. After a minute at midcourt, Knight put out his right hand and brought it up quickly behind Hall, slapping his head hard enough to move it forward. Then they shook hands.

Eyes narrowed, Knight said to me, “We’re here to talk about basketball. Any basketball questions?”

Someone did as he was told, asking a basketball question.

Then I said, “Now could you tell us what happened with you and Coach Hall?”

“I said basketball questions. Any basketball questions?”

Another one came. Nervous but determined, I jumped in again. “Coach, 17,500 people saw you hit the Kentucky coach at midcourt with the game going on in front of you. What happened?”

Knight actually smiled. “Patience, David. We’ll get to that. Any basketball questions?”

Finally, he answered me. Slapping Hall’s head was a friendly tap, he said, the same thing he does with players. Later, as I wrote a column calling Knight’s behavior condescending, here he came across the court. Uh-oh. But all he did was sit by me and ask, “How do I get myself into these things?”

More “things” would come, as we now know, so I’ve wrestled with that question for years. I don’t know the answer. I suspect he wants to win so badly it distorts his judgment. I know only this: There’s a hell of a price to be paid for hanging with Bob Knight, but it’s a bargain at twice the price. Which gets us to the latest “thing.”

Seven-foot sophomore center Jason Collier quit Indiana in December because he found Knight’s manner discomfiting: “Certain people can play for him, but not me. I have nothing against the man, but I couldn’t adapt to his coaching style. I tried different tactics -- blocking out the yelling, like people told me to -- but when people yell at you, you take notice. After a lot of that, you just snap.”

It’s that simple? No. Life is too complex to be explained in a sound bite. Could Collier have met frustration for the first time? Maybe against players his size and quicker rather than smaller and slower, Collier chafed because he no longer was the unimpeded star he’d been in high school. Maybe, as Ohio’s Mr. Basketball, he grew so accustomed to softly sung valentines of praise that Knight’s scoldings drew from him blood when intended to draw from him talent.

Other players, yes, he grew weary of their failures and suggested they leave. But not this time, not with a 7-foot center recruited by every elite program. This time Knight spoke of himself as a coach who failed a player.

“I hate like hell to see the kid leave,” Knight says. “I think he just wanted a different approach to playing and coaching than what we have.

Showing no improvement over his freshman season, Collier in nine games this year averaged 10.7 points and 5.2 rebounds. Even two months ago Knight said, “I’ve talked to him about how aggressive he has to be. He has to work because he’s not a really good jumper and he’s got to work taking the ball to the basket.”

Instead, Collier preferred to move outside for midrange jump shots. As a freshman, he was 6-for-13 on 3-pointers; this season, he didn’t take a single 3-pointer. Collier’s most obvious deficiencies came on defense, where he often was slow to react to the changing geometry of Indiana’s switching man-to-man defenses.

In any case, Collier’s decision was another log on a fire built by Knight’s critics. They have declared Knight, at 57, a man out of touch with today’s athletes, who, whether Knight likes it or not, are coddled and pampered for years before they come to him.