RIP Bobby Knight
- Thread starter knickslions
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Yupp one of the best ever. Knowledgeable and direct. There's no better style of coaching to get the best from your players.
Over the years lots of great coaching. However, couldn't coach Larry Bird. Also, sometimes was an ahole. In some ways I think he was a smart Woody Hayes. (Woody I think, accurately, said he won because of working hard not because of coaching brilliance. ) Both Bobby and Woody had irascible personalities.
IU needs to erect a statue of him with a folding chair in hand, in mid toss. Now THAT would be awesome. It would be a fair memorial to a guy who was a good "X's and O's" coach, who really cared (and put in the years to evidence it), but who also got a bit wound up at times. Nothing wrong with that depiction. A statue like that would draw fans and picture takers in BIG numbers. It will never happen, but that strikes me as a fair depiction of the man.
Not sure I understand your second sentence. Hasn’t Bird himself said he left Indiana because he was overwhelmed by the large campus and wanted to go home?
You are right. However, it was Bobby Knight's job to make him feel comfortable and do what was necessary to keep him on the team. Larry was so unhappy at Indiana that he went home and had to work a menial job.
Bob could be a bully. Just call it what it is. But many of his former players just loved him and would do anything for him.
to make an omelet, you need to break some eggs. More seriously, sports is a bottom line game. Coaches don't get to sit around and pretend that their goals are to keep everyone happy (the next time HR tells me to fill out a "best places to work" survey I'll scream, or when they call our company "family" only to ax several people that aren't performing the next week). And, yeah, coaches take it too far sometimes. Knight certainly did. Not so much by throwing a chair but by grabbing a kid by the throat. The chair incident is a game issue and dealt with by the officials and league. grabbing a kid by his throat is a potentially criminal matter.
I was shocked last night. I flipped on CNN who had on Christine Brennan. She gave a few sentences about his accomplishments and then went on for ten minutes about his off the court issues. She had the biggest problem with his quote saying "I think if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." She misquoted him, BTW. IMHO, not great timing to bring these things up but that is Brennan. That is how she rolls.
Larry Bird left Indiana because he couldn’t handle the big city and couldn’t afford living there. He’s said that many times. Athletes didn’t have the money luxuries they have today. Had nothing to do with Bobby knight
Right...and at the end of the day, it is about success. Knight is in the top five basketball coaches of all time.
Some context from Seth Davis' book...
The start of classes only intensified Bird’s feelings of isolation. Here he was, a poor, sheltered, intensely introverted teenager who had barely set foot outside his hometown of fewer than three thousand people, and he was stuck without any friends on a campus of more than thirty thousand undergraduates. He couldn’t get over the fact that he had to walk several miles just to get to class. And, as he often said half-jokingly, “I ain’t no genius in school.”
If he thought he might get some emotional support from the coaches, that notion was quickly dispelled as well. One night, while walking down the street with Jan Condra, who had also enrolled at Indiana, at Larry’s behest, and her sister, Larry looked up and saw Knight walking toward them. He stiffened and readied himself to speak to his head coach for the first time since arriving on campus. Knight walked toward Bird; Bird said hello — and Knight blew by without saying a word. “Larry didn’t say anything, but I could tell with his demeanor that his feelings were hurt,” Condra says. “Larry was used to people being a lot nicer to him. He didn’t like Coach Knight’s personality.”
Knight would later regret treating Bird so coldly. “Larry Bird is one of my great mistakes,” he said. “I was negligent in realizing what Bird needed at that time in his life.”
Yeah that is so low class horse crap to bring that up. Bob was tough love and his tough was borderline to over the edge at times like the choking incident. No place in sports for that. In the big picture he was one of the all-time greats and a genius basketball mind.
I saw an interview with Dane Fife last night on BTN. Dane played for him at the very end of his Indiana career. He said when he would see Bob later on such as when Bob was broadcasting a game and he was a MSU assistant Bob always wanted to know how his family was doing and then always asked him if there was anything he could do for him.
Never talked about himself. He will be missed tremendously and probably no one like him again.
Imagine if Bird came into the NBA at 19 YO like they do today, or younger, rather than being a 24 YO rookie in the NBA.
The man had the patience of a saint:
While at Ohio State he took a class with Woody Hayes as his teacher. Knight was 6th man on Ohio States national championship team with Lucas and Havlichek
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