Bob Knight, right, celebrates an Indiana win during the 1976 NCAA tournament.
Associated Press
No matter how many flowery sendoffs are penned regarding Bob Knight, nowhere will the words middle and ground be paired together.
Lifelong residents of this state loved or loathed him, leaving the fence-straddling shoulder shrugs to outsiders and transplants.
Growing up a brainwashed Purdue fan (I have two older siblings, both Purdue grads, to thank for the decades of banner-less torture), I despised everything about Knight.
Didn’t know him. Had never met him. But hey, if you rooted for Purdue, it’s just what you did.
And nowhere was coach Knight more reviled than inside the boundaries of Tippecanoe County.
Deep down, though, I always respected the discipline his teams played with, the fact IU players attended class (or else) and, for the most part, eventually graduated.
And yes, those three championship banners.
Even all these years later, the undefeated 1975-76 squad led by Quinn Buckner, Scott May and Kent Benson remains one of my favorite sports teams of all time. Sorry, Purdue fans, but that team of Knight’s was a coaching clinic in progress every time it stepped on the court.
But success in Knight’s program wasn’t just about basketball. It was about the rest of a young man’s life.
As I grew older and began working as a sportswriter, I didn’t appreciate Knight’s bullying of some of those in my profession. Sometimes, this meant Knight picking on co-workers of mine which, in my eyes, started to form a shadow that in time eclipsed his coaching brilliance.
The rolled-up red sweater … the two-handed frisbee-like chair toss across the Assembly Hall hardwood … the fist slam on the press table against LSU in the Elite Eight game of the 1987 NCAA tournament, which today would get a coach sent straight to the locker room.
And, worst of all, the constant I’m-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room mentality.
Eventually, I began to look at Knight in a different way, particularly while covering high school basketball games throughout the state early in my career.
Prep coaches who might be better suited to steer their team’s talent toward a zone defense insisted on stubbornly playing man-to-man because that’s what Knight, their idol, incorporated.
In the 1980s and 1990s, I witnessed this many, many times. The same is true for high school coaches mimicking Knight’s pregame lineup routine of lowering himself to one knee (or a crouched position), facing the bench, and slapping each player on the back of the calf as he was introduced.
No matter the methods, the potential controversy and the enemies made along the way, Knight won a heck of a lot more than he lost. And when people are successful the way the coach was, they are replicated no matter how many toes are stepped on along the way.
Then there is the other Bob Knight.
The less-seen, extraordinarily charitable version shoved way into the background by the reputation formed by the chair toss, technical fouls, postgame blowups and comments made public that probably should’ve remained behind closed doors or not spoken, at all.
Knight’s good deeds, most of which will probably never be revealed, demonstrated that his heart was every bit as big as the invisible chip residing on both shoulders.
And on Wednesday, that heart stopped beating.
Indiana is not a state known for producing legends in assembly-line fashion, whether it’s athletics or any other endeavor. Therefore, those of us born and raised here tend to embrace the ones we have — warts and all — no matter how much grief we might catch.
Bob Knight is and always will be a legend.
Rest easy, coach.
Mike Beas is a sportswriter for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
