Bob Knight stopped coaching his Indiana team with some 15 minutes remaining, down by 23 points to St. John’s. Knight played with his socks, snapped his chewing gum, stared at the ceiling, scratched his forehead, pinched his nose. To hurry things along, he would stand, hitch his pants and sit down again.
What could the most famous coach in college basketball do?
“Sometimes a game gets away and you have no chance to win it,” Knight said, resorting both to philosophy and the passive voice to cover another tournament failure.
Wasn’t Knight’s fault, wasn’t Indiana’s fault, losing by 25 points, the worst tournament loss for a Knight team. Ever. Sometimes, stuff just happens.
“Sometimes,” the old philosopher said, “the other guys just play better than you.”
By actual count, everybody has played better than Indiana in the opening rounds of the last five NCAA tournaments. Knight’s teams have not made it into the second week since ’93. This was only the second time since then that Indiana has won an opening-round game.
But never in the 28 years Knight has been coach at IU had anyone beaten his team this badly in a tournament. The Hoosiers would have lost by 31 if Knight’s scrubs hadn’t run off six in a row at the end of the game against St. John’s scrubs. Twice before in tournaments Indiana had lost by as many as 18.
“It’s the play that matters,” Knight said. “That’s what interests me. It’s not the score or even the outcome of the game.”
Knight can get away with that sentiment. Institutions can get away with almost anything, even persistent losing. (St. John’s coach Mike Jarvis bubbled on about how happy he was to beat two institutions, “Indiana and Bob Knight.”)
Saying how winning isn’t everything sounds very noble and smugly superior, way above the rutting to win of most college coaches. Coach the kid and not the scoreboard. Oh, brother, has it come to this?
A curious questioner wondered if Knight is at all concerned about antagonists of his who might take pleasure in his recent inability to get beyond the subregional.
“A lot of people have never been to a subregional,” Knight said.
My goodness, has Knight even lost his sneer? Is that the best he can do?
“When I start listening to my antagonists, then I’ll be in trouble,” Knight said, trying to recover some of his familiar belligerence.
Too late. Knight loses the game and loses the interview room, a double dose of humiliation.
Knight seems these days less an ogre than a historical figure, an old bull behind a high fence, more to be gawked at than feared. Jarvis had said that the first basketball book he ever bought was Knight’s “Let’s Play Defense.” Cost a buck fifty. “I’ve used it as my . . .” Jarvis almost said bible, but being a devout sort, said instead, “my test.”
Knight was asked how it makes him feel to hear younger coaches tell such stories. “I’m damned old,” Knight said.
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Age is what Knight meant, but the truth of it is that his basketball is old, his methods are old, his expectations are old. Indiana runs an offense that looks like something the Syracuse Nationals first put in. His team was still running those weaves and making too many passes as St. John’s kept getting further and further ahead.
“Our zone offense couldn’t match their zone defense,” Knight said.
That’s the other thing about being old. Knight not only wrote the book but set the standard for man-to-man defense, and Jarvis, an actual customer, beats him using a zone.
As for Knight’s man-to-man against St. John’s, it might as well have been a traffic cone-to-man defense.
“They tried to press us and they were just too slow,” St. John’s forward Ron Artest said.
Knight was full of praise for Artest, for the whole St. John’s team, a quick, athletic bunch. Knight said St. John’s was the best team Indiana had played all year, so take that, Big Ten. Said that if they played five more times, St. John’s would win five more times.
What can a coach do when the other team is so much better? Well, he can lie, of course, since St. John’s is not that much better. And how hollow is Knight’s envy when he could not recruit or coach anyone with Artest’s individual instincts?
Nobody plays for Indiana, or stays at Indiana, who does not bend to Knight. So what he ends up with are good soldiers who can run that weave all day at the top of the key but can never get their own shots.
“The way kids have changed hasn’t made coaching easier today,” Knight said.
Knight will not change. And he does not have the same vigor in recruiting he once had, proudly relaying a story about how he got freshman center Kirk Haston to Indiana without ever having to lay eyes on him.
The last question to Knight was whether he had given any thought to his legacy in college basketball and how he might be remembered.
“The only thing I’ve ever given a lot of thought to is where I’m going fishing next,” Knight said.
Once again, he has plenty of time to think about it.