Bobby Knight Did it His Way

Bobby Knight, who passed away yesterday at the age of 83, coached the Indiana Hoosiers to three NCAA basketball championships (1976, 1981, 1987) en route to setting the all-time record with 902 career wins. Knight held that mark for four years (2007-11), and he now ranks sixth on the career wins list behind only Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Bob Huggins, Jim Calhoun, and Roy Williams. Although Knight will be remembered most for his time as Indiana's coach, he also won an NCAA title as a role player for Ohio State's 1960 team led by future Hall of Fame players Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. Knight coached at West Point after finishing his college playing career and before coaching Indiana.

Knight's 1976 Indiana team went 32-0 and is the last NCAA team to post a perfect record en route to winning the championship. The 1975 Hoosiers went 31-0 before losing to Kentucky in the Elite Eight as Indiana's star Scott May scored just two points while playing with a broken arm after scoring 25 points during Indiana's 98-74 regular season win versus Kentucky. Knight later insisted that his 1975 team was even better than the 1976 championship team. Knight won his second NCAA title with sophomore Isiah Thomas leading the way in 1981, and he won his third NCAA title in 1987 after Keith Smart hit a famous baseline shot versus Syracuse. John Wooden (10), Mike Krzyzewski (five), and Adolph Rupp (four) are the only coaches who won more NCAA titles than Knight, who is tied with Roy Williams and Jim Calhoun.

Knight was inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1991, even though he previously asked to not be considered after he was offended that he had not been elected in his first year of eligibility, calling that slight a "slap in the face." Knight is the only coach to win an NCAA title (1976, 1981, 1987), an NIT title (1979), an Olympic gold medal (1984), and a Pan-American Games gold medal (1979).

Knight won without cheating, and he emphasized the importance of academics. He reportedly said that the fun part of coaching is not cheating to get top recruits but beating the schools that cheated to get top recruits. The great success of Knight's teams is even more remarkable considering that just one of Knight's players became an NBA All-Star: Isiah Thomas. 

Wooden and Knight are fascinating character studies: Wooden's demeanor was much more gracious than Knight's, but the irascible Knight ran a clean program while Wooden's program will forever have the shadow of crooked booster Sam Gilbert hovering over it. Great men--or men who accomplish great things--also often have great flaws.

ESPN's multi-part, 20 hour documentary "Basketball: A Love Story" prominently featured Knight, including his success coaching Team USA to the 1984 Olympic gold medal. Knight was a master basketball tactician whose teams played stifling man to man defense and ran a precision offense featuring crisp ball movement. Knight and Dick Schaap co-wrote a 1998 article detailing Knight's ideas about how to reform college basketball; the basketball wisdom that Knight displayed 25 years ago is still relevant today, as he criticized the proliferation of unstructured summer leagues, the malign influence of the sneaker companies, and the overuse of the three point shot.

One of Knight's assistant coaches for the 1984 Olympics was Don Donoher, who coached at the University of Dayton from 1964-1989. Donoher led UD to the 1967 NCAA Championship game, the 1968 NIT title, and the 1984 NCAA Elite Eight. Knight was outraged after UD fired Donoher in 1989, declaring to Ritter Collett (a Dayton sports columnist), "When I was named coach of the U.S. Olympic team, nobody could have wanted to represent the United States better than I did. So why did I pick Donoher to help me? Because I couldn't get a better coach. I may not know a lot of things, but I think I know basketball and I know I know more basketball than (Tom) Frericks and Brother (Raymond L.) Fitz. Donoher has maintained a very good Division I basketball program during a period when his salary was probably $25,000 under the average Big Ten coaching salary. Over the years, I've had a lot of people call me and ask me if I thought Don would be interested in another coaching job. When I called him to ask if he was interested, he invariably said, 'No, I don't even want to talk to them.' He was content to stay in Dayton. He has had a love affair with the school and the community. I think that is what burns me the most. Here is a man who had chances to leave, and I'm talking about some major jobs that have come open. He has never gone in to Frericks and said, 'Look, I've got this opportunity and it will pay me such-and-such.' He's never tried to use that to improve his earning power."

In 2007, Knight spoke at the "Celebration of Flyer Basketball" and said, "There's nobody that I've enjoyed more as a friend, respected more as a coach and thought did a better job in coaching in the circumstances that developed throughout his tenure at the University of Dayton."

In 2013, I reviewed Knight's book The Power of Negative Thinking:

Knight explains that there is "a large helping of my version of humor in the title chosen for this book" and adds, "I am not arguing for being a strict negativist, for walking around with a sour look, for always seeing the dark side, always expecting failure. That's not my intent at all. Quite the opposite."

Knight's thesis is that instead of blindly believing/hoping that an endeavor is going to be successful, "being alert to the possible negatives in any situation is the best way to bring about positive results." Knight believes "Planning beats repairing" because "There are so many unintended consequences in any important action that we need to at least consider, like the best chess player, how our next move could produce an unexpected chain reaction down the line."

Knight observes, "most basketball games are not won, they are lost," so therefore Knight constantly reminded his players, "Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes." Considering his confrontational reputation, it is not surprising that Knight also put a twist on a famous advertising slogan when he declared to his teams, "This ain't Burger King. We'll do it my way."

"Negative thinking" in Knight's parlance is analogous to what the great chess player/theoretician/writer Aron Nimzovich called "prophylaxis," which in chess means overprotecting a strategically important square, thus ensuring the overall safety of the position and also providing for smooth, harmonious deployment of one's forces.

Of course, there was another, much less savory side to Knight: he was a bully whose inability to control his temper cost him his job at Indiana. Knight infamously threw a chair onto the court during a game, choked one of his players, and committed battery versus a variety of people, including a Puerto Rican police officer. The final act of Knight's legendary coaching career happened at Texas Tech, where he landed in 2001 after being fired by Indiana in 2000. After Knight set the NCAA record for career wins, he retired in midseason, thus practically forcing Texas Tech to hire his son Pat as head coach. Texas Tech went 4-7 down the stretch of the 2007-08 season, and Pat Knight lasted lasted just three more seasons before being fired after posting a 50-61 record. During a televised interview, Knight lashed out at Dick Schaap's son Jeremy--declaring that Jeremy had a long way to go to be as good as his father--and Dick Schaap rightly fired back at Knight that Knight would have been "outraged if someone had used him similarly to criticize his son Patrick, his assistant coach."

Knight had no filter. Dan Patrick asked Knight what he thought about the Indiana University officials who fired him. Knight replied, "I hope they're all dead." Patrick then noted that some of them had in fact died, and Knight said, "Well, I hope the rest of them go." 

The paradox with Knight is that he taught his players to be disciplined yet he often lacked discipline in both his deeds and his words. "Complicated" may be the adjective most frequently used to describe his legacy, because there is no denying that he was a great coach who did not cheat and there is also no denying that he often treated people very shabbily. ESPN's Jay Bilas summarized his take on Knight: "He was OK with reasonable disagreement, as implausible as that seems to those who didn't know him. But when he believed he was right, even when he wasn't, there was no talking him out of it." Knight's intelligence combined with his stubbornness in a way that was both a great strength and a great weakness.

If you are familiar with some of Knight's most memorable quotes, then you know that there is only one way this obituary can end, namely with the last wishes he expressed in a 1994 speech: "When my time on Earth is gone and my activities here are past, I want they bury me upside down and my critics can kiss my ass."