RIP Bobby Knight

A good read about Knight from Pat Forde:

https://www.si.com/college/2023/11/...ations&utm_source=pushly&utm_campaign=3753372

 

From all accounts, Knight was a terrible person. He choked a player at practice, for crying out loud. Fuck him. The world's a better place without him.

 

This hits a bit too close to home ... I don't mix SJ and work.

I will say this ... every viewpoint expressed in this thread is valid, the supportive and the negative. That's the paradox of Knight.

 

Also the paradox of dementia - you don't remember the good or the bad.

 

My understanding was that Bird didn't last long enough on campus to actually talk with Knight more than a smattering of times; he left before practice even opened and Knight actually did adhere to NCAA rules that banned coaches from monitoring offseason pickup games.

IU was one of the preseason favorites for the NCAA title the year Bird arrived on campus so Knight probably took little interest in dealing with the acclimation problems of freshmen; his attitude was always that the players had to figure all that stuff out on their own.

Every quote of Bird's I've ever seen on the subject, he has always said he had no particular problem with Knight personally, just had problems adjusting to the semi-big city environment of Bloomington (at least compared to French Lick).

A more sensitive and nurturing coach probably would have picked up on Bird's problems and tried to smooth things out, but Knight was never that kind of guy.

 

We had a player who played for IU in the 90's. He transferred before he finished college.

What was the tipping point? According to the player's father, Knight held excrement in his hands while addressing the team and compared players to it.

Fuck him, indeed.

Is that kind of asshole being allowed to hold a high profile public position why, 30 some years later, it's considered socially acceptable behavior to the point some elected officials act as bad or worse?

 

He got away with his behavior - obviously - because he won. But I never bought into the idea that his teams won because of his behavoir. Was he always like that? Or did the success just allow him to "live his true self."

 

Coach Bob Knight will always be remembered as a legend in Texas Tech and Indiana

 

Bird and Knight were generally mutually complimentary of one another. Starman nailed it in the third graph. Bird couldn't handle Bloomington, and there were family issues at the time, and he (literally) bolted.

Knight can be accused, justly, of many things, but running off Bird is not one of them.

 

I don't have a dog in the Knight hunt, but I've known some that had interactions with him.

Bob Knight on with BaD Radio

 

I don’t think he’s the cause, but Knight’s style absolutely lit up the pleasure center of authoritarian brains, more so because he was seen as bringing order to the sport that became heavily identified as black during his peak years. If you take today’s MAGA senior citizens and roll back the clock 35 years, I bet a disproportionate amount were Bobby Knight fans.