The question isn’t only whether Bob Knight has changed.
It’s whether he feels he needs to.
“I’m not sure why I’d want to change,” Knight said, reeling off the list of his accomplishments in a way not only unnecessary but somehow unbecoming for a Hall of Fame coach.
There were the three national championships at Indiana, of course in 1976, 1981 and 1987 the high graduation rates, the virtually unblemished record of NCAA rules compliance.
“So you tell me why I’ve got to change,” Knight said as he sat courtside in a red v-neck after practice in the Texas Tech arena that, oddly enough, sits on Indiana Avenue. “Why do I need to change?”
There is a list that goes with that question too.
Leave it at the well-known final straws a 1997 videotape of Knight grabbing the neck of Indiana player Neil Reed, and the episode that led to his firing last year for violating a “zero-tolerance” policy by seizing a student by the arm to lecture him on etiquette for saying, “What’s up, Knight?”
Is all that behind now that Knight has found a home under the big West Texas sky?
“Let’s just wait and see,” Knight said. “If I have to stop some kid and teach him a lesson in courtesy again, I’ll do it tomorrow If that’s an incident, then I’d do that tomorrow.”
That is not quite the spirit that seems necessary to carry him through his stint in this city of 200,000 that will serve as the Last Chance Saloon for one of the greatest and surely the most controversial coach in college basketball history.
But he is back in the setting where he has had both his finest and his foulest moments: on a basketball court.
“You’ll get a hell of a lot more done reversing the ball than dribbling it,” he instructed his team during a Texas Tech practice last week, a few days after 9,400 turned out for a first glimpse of Knight coaching the team at Midnight Madness. “Ability has nothing to do with you being a player. Not the first thing!”
“He’s eating you alive!”
“Who’s got him? How’d he get so open?”
After Knight arrived in March, four players were either dismissed or chose to leave the team, but those who remain seem caught up in what they consider the privilege of playing for him.
“There’s always those people who are going to say what they have to say about him,” senior center Andy Ellis said. “But those people haven’t been around him. Once you’re around him, you understand he’s a great guy and an awesome coach.
“He’s great out there on the court. You just listen. Take what he’s saying and not how he’s saying it. And try to correct your mistakes. He doesn’t want to put up with your screwing up the same thing more than once. He’ll give you one time, but when he corrects it, you need to fix it.”
Ellis inherited Knight as coach after James Dickey was fired last season.
Will Chavis, a slight point guard who transferred from Panola (Texas) Junior College, chose him.
“I had an opportunity to play under Coach Knight, and I knew he was one of the best coaches of all time. I couldn’t pass it up,” Chavis said.
Let it be said that Knight his own protestations aside does at times seem different. He turns 61 Thursday, and looks refreshed, no longer angry and tired.
He raves about Lubbock in a way that sometimes seems to perplex even its citizens, praising the hospitality of the locals, the weather and the absence of traffic.
“I’ve got enough invitations to go hunting that I don’t have a life span long enough to take them up,” Knight said.
He was even charming on his many fund-raising outings most of them with women’s Coach Marsha Sharp, with whom he has formed what some would consider an unlikely alliance given his dismissive attitude toward the Indiana women’s team.
In Lubbock last week, 975 waited in a long line outside a Civic Center exhibition hall to pay $20 each to eat tamales and refried beans off paper plates and hear Knight and Sharp speak.
The traveling road show drew 600 in Odessa, 700 in Amarillo, 800 in Houston, 1,175 in Dallas, 400 in Austin and 200 for an invitation-only event in Midland.
“I wish I had a dollar bill for every person in America that has asked me questions about Coach Knight since last March,” Sharp said. “We’d have enough money to fund the entire athletic department.”
Athletics director Gerald Myers, the former basketball coach and friend of Knight’s for three decades who spearheaded his hiring, is pleased.
“He’s been great. He has done everything I’ve asked him to,” Myers said.
Also more than satisfied is Texas Tech President David Schmidly, who had to quell a mild faculty protest that resulted in a petition against Knight’s hiring last spring. He urged the faculty to withhold judgment and give Knight a chance to boost an athletic program that has struggled financially and turn around a team coming off four consecutive losing seasons. “He’s been so positive. He’s been an absolute delight,” Schmidly said. “There probably is still some opposition. It’s been ex-tremely quiet. I suppose everyone is waiting to see how the season plays out.”
That is the question.
It is not so much the record the remnants of a 9-19 team can muster as how Knight will handle himself, both with his team and in the public eye.
The media Knight believes persecutes him might not often visit West Texas.
Nevertheless, there will be dramatically increased coverage of Red Raider basketball. Last season, none of the games were broadcast nationally. Now that Knight has arrived, more than half of Texas Tech’s games will be on national TV 11 on ESPN, two on Fox Sports Net, one on CBS and one on ABC.
Schmidly said he doesn’t expect any “so-called incidents.”
“I would be completely flabbergasted if it turned out to be the case,” he said. “Now, will Coach Knight after a rough game have a rough interview with a reporter? Probably so.”
Despite the past, Knight has no special conduct clause in his contract.
“Zero tolerance” is not on the agenda at Texas Tech, but neither is carte blanche, Schmidly said.
“Probably the one thing that would concern me the most would be any of our coaches doing anything physical to a player. We couldn’t have that.”
As for the video of Knight with his hands around the neck of an Indiana player, Schmidly said “that may have been a one-time anomaly,” and added that he talked to many former Indiana players before Knight was hired.
“I sense this: He’s very excited about having a fresh start. I think this has renewed his enthusiasm for coaching.
“I heard coach Knight was profane. I’ve heard very little profanity since he’s been here,” Schmidly said. “I’ve been out to these practices and never heard so much as the word ‘hell.’ “
Whether “hell” still counts as profanity in American society is debatable. Whether Knight still uses it in practice is not, even a 10-minute visit can prove.
Changed?
Knight contends he is who he is.
