There's absolutely nothing new that I can add to the subject of Bob Knight. To say that he's a polarizing figure is a vast understatement. Take for instance...with him resigning. The people/media pundits that don't like Knight are saying that he quit on his team...that here's another example of him wanting respect but not giving any...that it's just another example of him being completely self-absorbed. And then the Knight-apologists are taking him for his word...that he was tired...that the fire was gone...that he wants Pat to coach sooner than later. The way I see it is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. I'm at neither extreme when it comes to Knight...and that's probably the smallest contingency. I'm not going to get into his accomplishes but the bottom light is that he was one of best coaches in NCAA history. In my estimation he's only behind John Wooden. When it comes to simply X's and O's...he's the best ever. The guy knows basketball. And as an IU fan I appreciated everything Knight did on the court.
BUT...and there's always a but with Knight...he had a tragic flaw in him that bordered on self-destruction. Just like with his accomplishes, I'm not going to get into the list (and it's long) of his zippiness (and that's putting it mildly). As an IU fan...I can say that his act...while humorous at first became sad in the end. A grown man of his stature just shouldn't act like that.
What intrigues me the most about hearing all this Knight talk is pinpointing exactly when Knight let his anger (and other negative attributes) take control. It's my belief that it started to happen after IU lost in the final four in 1992 to Duke (and coach K). After that, Knight regrouped...earned a number one seed but lost to Kansas in the Elite Eight. I don't think that Knight or IU...for that matter...ever recovered. That was by far his best group that didn't win a national title. If Knight would have won the title in '92 or '93 it would have fit his cycle of winning a title...taking 5-6 years to regroup and then win again. Except this time...they didn't win. I don't think Knight ever got over that. The disappointment of those two years just wore him down. He just lost something and whatever replaced it was not good. Although I didn't realize it at the time...whatever affected Knight...affected the program. Looking back on it...one can see that IU after '93 was just not the IU of old under Knight. Those were certainly not the glory days.
In essence both notions...both sides of the coin can be true...that Knight was a helluva of a coach and that more times than not he was a complete ass about it. I don't see the point in getting worked up one way or the other in either defending Knight or railing against him. Because boiling Knight down to either extreme is inaccurate.
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That might be the finest analysis of Knight I've ever read anywhere, Dux. The people (like Pat Forde on espn.com who just compared Knight's leaving midseason to Bobby Petrino quitting on the Falcons) who obviously hate Knight and just have an axe to grind piss me off; but the people who just blindly worship all things Knight piss me off too.... He's a brilliant basketball coach, and he did wonderful things with regards to education and raising money and donating his own for the libraries at IU and TT, but he was extraordinarily self-destructive and, in the end, pretty much forced Indiana University to fire him. And frankly, by the time it finally ended at IU, I was as tired of him being here and ready for him to move on as it seemed like he was.
On a sort of related note, tonight is Dickie V's first game back from throat surgery (the UNC/Duke game, who would have thought...). How many times do you think he says it's a travesty that the court at Assembly Hall isn't called Robert Montgomery Knight Court? In spite of the fact that it's already called Branch McCracken Court, named after a coach who won two national titles at IU and was responsible, at least as much as, if not more so, for Indiana's reputation as a traditional basketball powerhouse. I'd put the over/under at 2 1/2.
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