Bob Knight, polarizing longtime college basketball coach, dies at 83
Bobby Knight coach for Indiana men's basketball cuts down the nets to celebrate a big victory in an undated photo. Credit: Getty Images
Robert Montgomery “Bob” Knight, one of the most accomplished — and controversial — figures in coaching history, died on Wednesday at 83 after a long period of declining health, his family announced in a news release.
Few figures in sports traveled as mercurial a path as the iconic, old-school college basketball coach, who won three NCAA championships at Indiana but was fired by the school in 2000 because of a pattern of misbehavior.
Unlike many college coaches, it was not recruiting misdeeds that brought him down — he was famously clean in that regard — but rather a volatile temper that once led him to put his hands on the neck of a player in practice.
That was one of a series of events that prompted Indiana president Myles Brand to let Knight go. He landed at Texas Tech in the 2000s and later became an ESPN analyst into the mid-2010s.
Knight was born in Massillon, Ohio, a town with deep roots in the history of football more so than basketball, on Oct. 25, 1940, and he was a reserve for Ohio State’s 1960 national championship team.
His first college coaching job, as an assistant and later as head coach, was at Army. One of his players was future Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who eventually surpassed his mentor in both wins and championships.
Knight’s nickname later was “the General,” part of a militaristic image burnished by the likes of his friend, ESPN analyst Dick Vitale.
He left Army for Indiana in 1971 and was there for 29 seasons before going to Texas Tech from 2001-08. He finished 902-371, with NCAA titles in 1976, ’81 and ’87 and two other Final Four berths. His 1976 team went 32-0.
In 1984, he coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in Los Angeles. He also won an NIT title in 1979.
Among his stars at Indiana were Quinn Buckner, Scott May, Kent Benson, Isiah Thomas, Steve Alford and Calbert Cheaney.
His teams focused on a “motion offense” that relied on cuts and screens to create open shots.
Knight already was a coaching superstar by 1985-86, but he became even more of one with the publishing of John Feinstein’s best-selling book, “A Season on the Brink,” in which the author got extreme access — for better and worse.
The Hoosiers continued to win through the 1990s, albeit not at the rate they had earlier, but it all unraveled in 2000.
First came a story — and later video — about Knight placing his hands on the neck of player Neil Reed in 1997. Brand then announced a zero-tolerance policy for Knight. Later in 2000, he reportedly grabbed the arm of a student, Kent Harvey, whom he believed had not been sufficiently respectful to him, and Brand fired him.
Many students marched to Brand’s home in protest, but Knight was gone for good. He vowed over the years not to return to campus, but in July 2019, he purchased a home in Bloomington, three miles from Assembly Hall.
Knight had success at Texas Tech, a program with a far more modest history than Indiana’s. He led the Red Raiders to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2005, including a second-round upset of Gonzaga.
From 2008 through ’15, he worked as an ESPN analyst. Toward the end, his thoughts at times seemed muddled. By 2019, there were increasing concern about his mental acuity.
On Feb. 8, 2020, an ailing Knight returned to Assembly Hall for the first time in 20 years during a game against Purdue, greeted by raucous cheers, chants of “Bob-by, Bob-by,” and hugs from former players across generations. He led the crowd in a brief chant of “dee-fense, dee-fense.”
Knight had two sons, Tim and Pat, with his first wife, Nancy. Pat played at Indiana and succeeded Knight as coach at Texas Tech. Knight married his second wife, Karen, in 1988.
Among Knight’s many controversies, he was accused of assaulting a police officer in Puerto Rico while coaching in the 1979 Pan-American Games — for which he was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison.
In 1985, he threw a plastic chair across the court in protest of a call during a game against Purdue.
There were numerous occasions over the decades on which he had verbal or physical confrontations with administrators, coaches, players and journalists.
But at the same time, Knight could be charming company and was a repository of basketball history who could speak at length about — and with great reverence for — the coaches who came before him.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
