I’m really starting to feel sorry for Bob Knight. Here’s a guy who has won countless basketball games at a big-time school, along with three national championships and goodness knows how many Big Ten titles, and he’s not going to be remembered for any of it. What he’ll be remembered for is the tantrums, the verbal abuse he has handed out to players and officials, the chair incident and the like.
He is throwing away all that he has earned. He’s becoming a cliche and he’s embarrassing himself, along with his team, his school and the fans.
But the fans–did you see them at the Illinois game? (Tribune, Feb. 25). They were cheering him, as if he’d done a good thing by receiving three technicals. For every technical assessed, the other team gets two free throws and the ball out of bounds. The call that he was questioning was a judgment call, certainly not worth getting ejected over. And it was Senior Night.
Knight has been turning into a tyrant for years, and now he’s hurting himself and those around him rather than helping them. Rather than harass the officials, Knight would have been better off looking to the other end of the court where Lon Kruger sat. He would have observed a man with more class, less ego and a better grip on reality, not to mention a superior team and the presence of sportsmanship.
