Before Texas Tech’s basketball team traveled to an important game at Oklahoma State last season, coach Bob Knight summoned his son to his office.
Pat Knight, a Red Raiders assistant coach, assumed the meeting was to discuss strategy. Scouting duties are rotated among three assistants, and the Oklahoma State scouting report was Pat’s responsibility.
“Instead, I go in and he says, `I want to talk to you about your language,”‘ the younger Knight recalled with a grin. “I’m sitting there going, `What?’
“He said, `Don’t do what I do. I’m too old to change. I don’t know how I got in the habit.’
“He said there are a lot of ways to do something without using curse words. And he’s talked to the other guys about that too.”
Pat Knight leaned back in his chair in his small office at the United Spirit Arena, decorated with framed posters of athletic legends like cyclist Lance Armstrong and distance runner Steve Prefontaine. He shook his head.
“It’s things like that that just blow your mind,” he said. “Dad’s even talked with us about how to deal with the press. When I tell guys about that, they don’t believe it.
“He knows how to handle them, but he’s like, `Hey, I don’t need to change now. I’m almost done.’ He’ll be like, `Handle them different than I do.’
“It’s little stuff like that he really works with us on, so when we get a job we won’t screw it up and have some of the problems he’s had.”
His time is coming
For Pat Knight, the time for his own collegiate head-coaching post might be soon. He’s in his sixth season as a college assistant. He has paid his dues, he believes, and is prepared to move on and run his own program.
And he’s aware that when he does, he will not be simply the new head coach at Wherever U. He’ll be Bob Knight’s son, the new head coach at Wherever U. After living with that for his 33 years, not all of them tranquil, Pat Knight not only has come to tolerate the label but embrace it.
“The bad thing is everyone thinks you’re just like your dad,” he said. “I’m the closest thing you’re going to come to him, but we still have a lot of differences. We’re two very different people. But in basketball, I’m closer to him than any of his past assistants.”
Many sons follow their fathers into coaching. Just in the Big 12, Sean Sutton sits next to his dad, Eddie, on the bench at Oklahoma State. Baylor’s Scott Drew grew up around his dad, Homer, at Valparaiso.
But being Bob Knight’s kid and going into the family business presents unique challenges because Bob Knight is as singular as they come.
Few figures in sports are more polarizing than the silver-haired Knight. In 38 seasons as a coach, he has won 826 games, more than all but two coaches in NCAA Division I history: North Carolina’s Dean Smith with 879 and Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp with 876.
Knight certainly has done it his way, which hasn’t always been serene, most recently evidenced by his recent run-in with the Texas Tech chancellor. That is likely why he’s now chasing the all-time victory record from Lubbock rather than Bloomington, Ind., where 662 of his victories came over 29 years at Indiana before his stormy ouster in 2000.
Pat says he inherited his father’s famous temper, though, “I keep it more in check.” It briefly shows when the subject of the Indiana dismissal is raised. The younger Knight says he hasn’t forgotten, or necessarily forgiven, those who turned on his dad.
“The thing that drives me crazier than anything is disloyalty,” he said. “I hate those people. I think there are a lot of people at Indiana–coaches, administrators, ex-players–who said they were loyal while he was there and then proved they weren’t.
“Well, loyalty ain’t a part-time thing. It’s something you have till you die. That’s the one thing that drives me nuts.”
Pat Knight handles the relationship with his father well–now. Living with his mother after his parents divorced when he was young, he admits to being “a pain in the butt and kind of wild” growing up, and he and his dad often clashed.
But the younger Knight learned at an early age that he was living a unique life, a life in which legendary coaching figures like Al McGuire, Don Haskins, Mike Krzyzewski and Bill Parcells often were around.
“Everyone wants to call them old-school,” Pat said. “But to me, that’s the best way to be.”
Not always easy
But being Bob Knight’s kid had its drawbacks too.
Pat played for his father at Indiana from 1991-95 as a guard. His dad kicked him off the team as a sophomore after he was caught drinking.
“I drove him nuts, but he didn’t treat me any differently than anybody else,” Pat said. “He didn’t pull any punches with me.”
Another drawback of son following father into the business are the almost inevitable charges of favoritism. Pat Knight has heard them all.
“Everyone looks at you like, `He’s just doing this because his dad gave him the job,”‘ he said. “I don’t think people take you seriously.”
But Pat Knight has worked his way up the old-fashioned way, earning his stripes. His name might have gotten his foot in some doors, but he’s more than justified the trust others have put in him.
His first job out of school was a year’s internship with the Phoenix Suns. He got a chance to scout prospects at Arizona schools, as well as at a Southeastern Conference tournament in New Orleans. That was the glamorous side.
Knight also served as a mailman for a month, pushing the mail cart daily through the executive offices. He ran the shot clock in practice and worked out with players on the injured list. Every two weeks, he took CEO Jerry Colangelo’s Mercedes to be washed.
To make extra money on the side, Knight even worked for a time as a bouncer at a bar owned by Suns player Dan Majerle.
“It was the best job ever after college,” he said of the internship, “but I kind of got bored with not having anything to do with really helping the team win. I missed being competitive. Dick Van Arsdale told me coaching is the closest thing to competition you can get.”
Chance to reunite
After his year in Phoenix, Knight had coaching stints for various minor-league teams. He and his father were on an Alaska fishing trip in 1998 when Hoosiers assistant coach Craig Hartman unexpectedly resigned.
“Dad takes a call at the lodge, comes back and tells me that Craig quit. Then he goes, `Hey, you want to come back?’ I said, `Yeah, I’ll come back’ and that was it. We go fishing and nothing’s said about it the rest of the week.”
Pat was an assistant on Knight’s last two Indiana teams. After his father was fired, Pat was hired a week later as the third assistant at the University of Akron.
He went to a used furniture store in Bloomington, bought $200 worth of “stuff straight out of the ’70s,” piled it into the back of his pickup and headed to Akron.
“It was awesome,” he said of his season with the Zips. “Those kids appreciated the smallest things. To me, it was and is the purest form of coaching left.”
Bob Knight, suddenly unemployed, occasionally made trips to Akron to watch the Zips practice and even helped run a couple of practices. Akron coach Dan Hipsher said Pat is similar to his father, whom he calls “a role model and hero for me.”
“Pat’s got his own personality, but he’s got his father’s mind for the game,” Hipsher said. “He’s very bright.”
Texas Tech hired Bob Knight in 2001. Pat quickly joined his father in Lubbock. So did Pat’s brother, Tim, an assistant athletic director for special projects.
This is Pat’s third season with his dad on the South Plains, their fifth together overall as coaching colleagues and Pat’s sixth as a full-time collegiate assistant.
Since the Knights arrived, the Red Raiders have enjoyed considerable success. In their first two seasons, they posted records of 23-9 and 22-10. This season’s squad is 19-8 and ranked 25th.
“My only wish is I’d been a good enough player to help him win games,” Pat said of his dad. “I wasn’t. But I feel now I’m a good enough assistant to do that, so hopefully I’ve made up for it.”
He has. And not only for that reason, Bob Knight is Pat’s biggest fan.
“He’s ready to set things up and run things on his own,” the elder Knight said. “An older coach once told me that the difference between being an assistant and a head coach is the difference between suggestion and decision.
“So anytime a guy takes that step, there will be some changes in his approach he’ll have to make. But I think Pat has worked hard and has the background that will enable him to do an excellent job.”
`I just love coaching’
Some Tech fans have expressed hope that Pat will replace his father when the latter steps aside. But the younger Knight has other ideas, forged in equal parts by the sour ending at Indiana and his year at Akron.
After Indiana, he said, “I was like, `Why would I want to go to that big-time level?’ It’s all so political, getting pulled in every direction.
“Then I got to Akron and said, `Now this is coaching.’ All you had to worry about was coaching, not the other stuff that goes on at the higher levels. I just love coaching so much. I saw that midmajor coaching is the best.”
Pat Knight says he’d like nothing more than to be a head coach at that level, but many believe Knight is destined for bigger things.For better or worse, that is the expectation that comes with being Bob Knight’s kid.
“I don’t have any visions of greatness,” Pat Knight said. “I don’t want to be in the Hall of Fame. He [Bob Knight] is already there, so our name is there. I just want to go somewhere where I can win some games and have a nice life for my family.”
