Ole’ Bob Knight has decided to ride off into the sunset. You probably know this already, but I thought somebody should warn the sunset.
Bob Knight could never quite figure out why you didn’t get the death penalty for failing to recognize a zone defense. In Bob Knight’s camp if you were five minutes late for practice that wasn’t the end of the world, but it was certainly the end of your college basketball career.
He had standards. If you played for Bob Knight you went to class, you turned in every assignment, you graduated, and you kept your nose clean. And you kept your shoes shined and your teeth flossed and your buttons buttoned and your desk drawer organized. He once threw a three-sectional couch at a player who failed to control his paper clips. Missed him with the second section.
Intimidation; that was what he did really well. Bob Knight could scare the sap out of a maple tree. When Bob Knight went bear hunting, the only reason he took a gun was in case a reporter tried to follow him. His temper tantrums were listed by Al Gore as the fourth-leading threat to the polar ice caps.
Referees regarded Bob Knight the way a chicken regards a vat of boiling grease. They used to burn witches because the milk would curdle when they passed the house. When Knight walked by the milk would curdle, but it would ask permission first.
He chain-smoked reporters. You asked a stupid question of Coach Knight, you’d want to check the local gun regulations in advance. There was a time when people appreciated a man like Bob Knight, but then, you know, somebody had to go and invent the concept of mutual respect. Bobby Knight represented the values of a bygone era, and he made you glad they were gone.
He wouldn’t try to intimidate just anybody. Just players, referees, reporters, opposing coaches, and school officials. And policemen. And students. And foreigners. And Americans. You had to be over three years old and breathing. If you weren’t afraid of Bob Knight, there was something wrong with you. Of course, you could say the same thing about John Gotti.
He made Dr. House look like a casino greeter. He frightened players so that they were afraid to make a mistake. I guess it worked, at one time. At one time that was how a lot of people coached, leadership by abuse. He was a relic of an era when powerful executives screamed at their secretaries, and fired them if they didn’t put out. As long as everybody was doing that, he was a great coach because he was better at it than anybody else.
His efforts to intimidate anybody and everybody were a transparent cover for his own self-loathing—and he’d have known that, except that he had rejected pop psychology along with the rest of the twentieth century He was a fantasy general, the Napoleon of the hardwoods, pretending to be Patton slapping around some worthless soldier and roaring defiance at a press corps that dared to question him about it. He was Idi Amin with a plastic whistle in his mouth.
He admired Ted Williams, because Ted Williams embodied for him the uncompromising pursuit of absolute excellence, and in turn he was admired by Tony LaRussa because LaRussa is losing his grip on reality.
He screamed at reporters for asking stupid questions, when very often they weren’t stupid questions at all; they were just questions he didn’t feel like answering. He screamed at players for making stupid plays, when very often they weren’t stupid plays at all; they were just ordinary human mistakes. He screamed at officials who made stupid calls, when very often they weren’t stupid calls, at all, they were just calls that went against Bobby Knight’s team.
The term “martinet” doesn’t begin to do him justice; he was a full-fledged Martin.
He thought that by screaming at everybody else he was proving how stupid they were, when in reality all he was proving was that he was a screamer. He was a bully and a braggart, self-righteous at the top of his lungs.
The fact is, Knight was a petty, insecure man whose time had come and gone before he put on his first garish sports coat. He deeply resented the fact that he had to share this planet with dipwads like you and me. He was the biggest winner in the history of college basketball, and the biggest Loser in Texas. He could never quite grasp what was wrong with treating his college President with undisguised contempt.
He won 900 games and, before long, somebody will win a thousand. That’s the wrong thing to say; I don’t mean to diminish his accomplishments. It might be a long time before somebody wins four NCAA titles. We will miss him, not in the way that you miss grandfather, but more in the way you miss your cranky old neighbor who poisoned your cat. Time marches on. Bob Knight has abandoned his efforts to stop it.