RIP Bobby Knight

there was a high school kid in Fairbanks, Alaska who recently doped out a way to heat a room at half the cost.
That guy is a genius, not Bob fuckin Knight.

 

I came of age when Damon Bailey was getting recruited by Knight…as like a 6th grader lol. I gotta say, with the weather getting cold and college basketball about to burst, now is a great time to re-read “A Season on the Brink.” My first thoughts in thinking of that book are of a coach sitting in his car waiting for it to heat up before he drives through a snowstorm to watch a recruit in some church gym.

 

The 1981 championship team had four first round NBA picks and two second rounders.

Knight used to brag about how the 1987 team was the first team to win a title without a first round NBA pick. 1987 was the first year of the tree point line and initially the NCAA had it only 19 feet 9 inches from the basket. That was Steve Alford's senior year and there may have never been a finer shooter. He went seven for ten from three as Indiana won by a point.

Knight was a tremendous coach. They played with discipline and tenacity. Defensively I watched them stifle a lot of good teams. But Knight had talent.

 

Wasn't Buckner an All-Star? Hmm.

I'm trying to think of any dictatorial Knight-type coaches in the NBA since Bobby was in his prime. Not too many.

 

As I SAID last night, I made the mistake of just looking at the a/t top 10 wins list at College Basketball Reference, where Wooden only has 600-plus wins for some reason. For the temerity of making me repeat myself, I challenge you to a fight at Penn Station, fucker!!!!

 

I saw that video too - I assumed it might have been BS.

 

Dan- I was mesmerized by that video. My sister told me it was real but I will investigate further.

 

Quinn Buckner tried it ... and nearly had a mutiny on his hands in Dallas.

Buckner was one of the many good NBA players Indiana generated. Mike Woodson, Randy Wittman, Calbert Cheaney and Alan Henderson were among the others who had long careers.

Oddly enough, Indiana's best decade for producing pros was the pre-Knight 1960s. Walt Bellamy, the Van Arsdale's and Jon McGlocklin. All likely better than any Knight players outside of Isiah.

 

Frank Isola being mentioned and being corrected for something he was wrong about in a thread about an anachronistic figure who could never be told he was wrong or behind in the times when it came to treating people the correct way. Oh yeah that's the good stuff.

 

There can be different degrees of import for geniuses. Bobby Knight was certainly a genius at what he did, even if being a genius at what he did isn't nearly as important at Jonas Salk being a genius at what he did. (But did Jonas ever throw a chair and if not, why not?)

 

Threadjack. Jonas Salk never won the Nobel Prize for the polio vaccine, but when asked if he minded being overlooked, he said, no, because most people assumed he had won it anyway. Love that.