Knight’s ‘Meaness’ Wearing on Many

You’re the president of a major American university and you have been asked to hire a basketball coach whose work will enhance the school’s reputation for excellence even as his teams win more than their share of games against the nation’s elite. Would you hire a coach who . . .

1. Is 59 years old and has 35 years’ head coaching experience, the first six at one of the nation’s military academies and the last 29 at a state’s flagship institution?

2. Has built teams that won three national championships and 11 Big Ten titles?

3. Has grabbed a player by his throat, has grabbed a player by his jersey, has butted his forehead against a player’s forehead and once kicked a player’s leg during timeouts?

4. Is in basketball’s Hall of Fame, has coached 16 All-American players and nine Big Ten MVPs and has changed the way the game is played both offensively and defensively?

5. Coached the 1984 U.S. Olympic team with Michael Jordan to a gold medal after cutting Charles Barkley because he didn’t like the young man’s attitude?

6. Has coached 14 first-round NBA draft choices?

7. Is credited with graduating more than 90 percent of his players who stayed in school four years?

8. Is hard-pressed to say two consecutive sentences without a phrase that is crude, profane or otherwise offensive?

9. Considers basketball a kind of combat for which players are best prepared not by sweet talk but by drill-instructor command?

10. Placed a tampon in a player’s locker?

11. In 35 seasons of big-time recruiting and competition has never been penalized by the NCAA for an infraction of the rules governing college athletics?

12. Has thrown a chair across the court in anger at an official’s call and later explained, “I saw a little old lady across the way without a place to sit, and I’d promised to get her a chair, which I was happy to do”?

13. Has been called “the best teacher in the university”?

Bob Knight is that man of many faces. We had a mutual friend, Louisville, Ky., newspaperman John Flynn, who once said, “Calling Bob Knight ‘Bobby’ is like calling George Patton ‘Georgie.’ It doesn’t fit. Bob is the meanest sumbitch on two wheels. And remember: Under that surface veneer of meanness lies a really thick layer of more meanness.”

Flynn meant it. Just as he meant it when he said, “And you know what? I love the guy.” When Flynn’s little newspaper began losing money, Knight wrote a column for the paper. He also drove a lengthy distance to speak at a fundraiser for the paper, not for $5,000 but for free.

Today’s bully and tomorrow’s sweetheart, Knight is a creature of extremes often expressed crudely, always expressed passionately. If you want the goodness, of which there is much, you have to put up with the meanness, of which there is much. At some point, you must answer the question: Is he worth the aggravation?

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski played for Knight at Army, coached with Knight as a graduate assistant and thought of the man as his mentor only to come to a painful parting of ways because Coach K no longer thought the good outweighed the bad.

Maybe he’s right. Knight’s misbehavior often is reprehensible. The latest “investigative” report by CNN/SI trots out familiar stories, including Neil Reed’s allegations of physical “abuse” (first made two years ago after the player was dropped from scholarship by vote of his teammates, some of whom considered him a selfish whiner).

The less sensational if fresher news, as reported in The Washington Post six weeks earlier, is that the Knight of the past two seasons is a shade or three more mellow than the raging martinet of old.

Not that he has become a lyric poet. He’s still a warrior. His language belongs in a foxhole, not a library. Former Louisiana State Coach Dale Brown was only one among many 10 years ago when he described Knight as “a despicable human being.” Yet Knight is capable of the random act of kindness described in a letter written this week by Bill Hammerle, a reader of The Sporting News.

“A personal experience with Knight: I’m an Indiana native who spent 26 years in the Marine Corps. My mother still lives in a small town not too far from Bloomington. My dad was buried a year and a half ago on the day of an Indiana-Kentucky basketball game.

“During the Gulf War, I was stationed near Kuwait. My dad, a World War II veteran, grew increasingly depressed over the prospects of his son becoming involved in a violent tank war--something he’d experienced himself.

“To lift Dad’s spirits, I wrote Coach Knight from the Gulf, explained the situation and told him how Dad lived for Indiana basketball--and asked if he could have his public relations folks send Dad a program.

“Coach did one better. He sent a signed, hard-bound history of IU basketball with a very personal inscription.

“That book still occupies a special place in my mother’s house and my heart. Dad died without knowing that Coach did this on a request from me--he just thought he was being recognized as a fan. But the fact is, from that day on, Dad’s outlook completely turned around.

“The night of Dad’s funeral, in the quiet of my family’s house as I sat alone with Mom, I asked her if there was anything she wanted to do. She didn’t hesitate. She said, ‘We’re going to watch IU and Kentucky because that’s what Dad would want.’ We did--IU lost in overtime.

“No doubt Coach Knight has a dark side--but I could care less. He gave me my father back.”