Just about every Bob Knight critic this side of Butch Carter has weighed in on Tuesday’s big interview, and not surprisingly, the vote has achieved virtual unanimity. Most of the amateur psychologists who are absolutely sure the beleaguered Indiana basketball coach won’t be able to control his anger much longer acknowledge he controlled it rather well during an hour before ESPN’s cameras.
Of course, Knight controlled everything about the telecast, or so the morals militia insists with customary indignation. Even when Knight is stickhandling around interrogators with a smile on his face, he is fair game for piling on by the self-appointed apostles of virtue.
At one time during the witch hunt Carter volunteered to join that lynch mob, but currently he is otherwise occupied trying to save his job as coach of the Toronto Raptors. Carter, you might recall, leveled a number of serious accusations at Knight. The charges created headlines, but received little corroboration.
Now it turns out that Carter allegedly attempted to involve one of his star players, Tracy McGrady, in a devious plot to remove Glen Grunwald as Toronto’s general manager. So when it comes to being a character witness, Carter seems better suited as an international backstabber. Why anyone besides a psychiatrist would listen to him is a mystery.
Some of Knight’s bashers believe that’s where he belongs, on a couch and removed from his job, or at least in treatment before he resumes his job. Knight might indeed benefit from counseling, but since when is it his duty to announce on national TV that he will seek help? If Knight has something confidential to say, he might want to save it for his superiors, not Roy Firestone.
Knight’s most ravenous detractors do tend to have this blurred version of reality, however, which is why they were so distraught about his failure to show up on ESPN wearing handcuffs instead of that smirk. The lynch mob demanded that Knight unbutton his shirt and let his heart fall out, all the better for another stomping.
But after being vilified in public, Knight had an opportunity to state his case, and he would have been stupid to consent to a live interview without certain parameters. Knight is not stupid. Why wouldn’t Knight stage it so he literally had the home-court advantage? Knight has created many of his own problems but he could have simply replied to the ESPN request the easy way: No.
Likewise Knight could have avoided considerable abuse–again, some of it deserved–by quitting Indiana for the highest bidder. He chose to stay, out of loyalty or spite, take your pick. A few other coaches have departed since the witch hunt began, among them Lon Kruger, who probably whispered those magic words–I’ll be here for a long time–to at least one Illinois recruit.
Does that make Kruger a hypocrite, or just one of the coaching masses who tell little white lies? The same scolders who demand perfection from Knight, in life or during a TV show, are among the people who slobber over the phonies in sports and deceitful exercises such as the Olympics.
How many lives has Knight really ruined with temper tantrums directed at his athletes? As many as the Summer and Winter Games have by exploiting youth for profit? I don’t think so. Nor did Knight, as unfulfilling as his ESPN performance was to the lynch mob, say “I don’t remember” 54 times or “I don’t recall” 15 times.
However, Knight isn’t in the White House. He’s only a basketball coach who has made mistakes during 29 years at Indiana. But one of them was not Tuesday night, when he acted the way he felt like acting during an interview he didn’t have to do.
That infuriated his critics, but that happens often. Some of them are some of the maddest people you’ll ever wish you never met, with not nearly his record for success or his sense of humor or his legion of supporters. In fact you wonder. Will Bob Knight’s enemies ever be able to manage their anger?