Bob Knight's Bodyguard of Lies
by Bob Cook

Whenever a coach or player is approaching a hallowed record, or has just died, plenty of hagiography is written or stated about the mix of brilliance and humility that is the record-holder or holder-to-be. Except in Barry Bonds' case. This was true for Bob Knight as much as anybody. Knight winning his record-setting 880th game as a men's college basketball coach is a huge accomplishment. The mark is a reflection of his unquestioned abilities as a coach as well as his longevity. But surrounding his record-setting victory, an 80-78 squeaker over New Mexico on Jan. 1, were three Big Lies, only one of which, to be fair, Knight overtly sought to perpetuate. Those Big Lies were: he didn't care about breaking Dean Smith's record; he never had talent, and it is a stain upon Indiana University that he isn't in that school's athletic hall of fame.

Knight himself professed the first Big Lie — that he didn't care about the record: "Doesn't mean anything to me. It means I've coached a long time. You guys think too much about records."

This is the kind of Big Lie told by every athlete nearing a record. In any team sport, it's verboten to get outwardly excited about an individual accomplishment, lest it make you look like you don't care about team goals. If Bob Knight doesn't care about winning, about numeric goals, about being objectively measured as the best in anything he does, then Paris Hilton is a homebody. It works both in success and failure — this was the coach who, after all, gave back his salary after a lackluster 2003 season with Texas Tech because he didn't think he deserved it.

Knight says he doesn't care about his critics, but a man with an ego as large as his can't help but to be able to yell "Scoreboard!" when anybody knocks his temper or personality. What was playing "My Way" after the New Mexico victory but a message from Knight that anyone who doesn't like him can kiss his ample, record-setting posterior? Knight, like the singer who made Paul Anka's song his own (Frank Sinatra, or Sid Vicious), is going to make clear he's earn the right not to care what you think, even if he really does.

The second Big Lie, the most pernicious over Knight's 40-year career, is that he has won without talent. It's more accurate to say that Knight can bring out the most in someone moderately talented, that Knight works best with players who aren't established talents, that Knight's prototypical player is a hard-working grunt ready to drink at the font of Bob. Do a Google News search for "Bob Knight" and "talent," and you'll see scores of columns about how Knight won with lesser players.

But Knight has hardly lacked talent on his teams over his career. In fact, Knight's most accomplished teams also were the ones with the most talent. His 1976 Indiana team, the last to go undefeated throughout the regular season and NCAA tournament, featured six future NBA players, including Quinn Bucker and Kent Benson, both highly regarded coming out of high school, and both of whom played more than 10 seasons in the NBA. His 1981 championship team at Indiana included such no-talents as Isiah Thomas, as well as three other players who lasted more than five years in the NBA — Randy Wittman, Ray Tolbert and Jim Thomas.

Knight's 1973 and 1992 Final Four teams included four future NBA players each. Two of the players from his 1992 team, Calbert Cheaney and Alan Henderson, are still in the NBA. Knight's least "talented" team might have been his 1987 title winner, his last championship. Dean Garrett probably had the best NBA career out of the four players who saw time in the league, and he didn't even make it to the NBA until 10 years after that title run. However, Garrett and Keith Smart, who hit the championship game-winning shot, represented Knight's first trip into recruiting junior colleges, a vow he had to break to infuse his teams with a little more oomph.

Granted, Isiah Thomas is the only one of Knight's players to be considered Hall of Fame stature. But like his former point guard and assistant, Mike Krzyzewski, at his peak Knight got just about any top player he wanted, even if those players didn't end up setting the NBA on fire.

That Knight had talent on his best teams doesn't diminish his coaching ability. As Phil Jackson as shown, the ability to handle so-called talented players, and their huge egos, can be as challenging a task, and as rare an accomplishment, as a coach taking a less-talented team deep into the playoffs. But it's no sin to acknowledge that Knight wasn't exactly coaching Division II-caliber players, particularly at Indiana. No coach wins without some talent on his team. The third Big Lie, which has come up only in recent days, is the shame of Indiana's Hall of Fame not including Knight, who has been eligible for induction since 2005. That's five years after Indiana fired him for violating its no-tolerance rules in regards to his temper. (Note that "no tolerance" became an issue only after years of Knight not being able to recruit enough talent for another Final Four run.)

ESPN basketball analyst Dick Vitale, no surprise, has been all over lamenting about how it's scandalous that Indiana University can't put aside its differences with Knight and put him in the school's Hall of Fame. John Laskowski, who played for Knight in the early 1970s and has been the team's longtime TV announcer, told The Associated Press: "For what he's done for Indiana, absolutely, he belongs. I'm not sure what the qualifications are, but he's certainly won enough games."

One qualification might be that people who sue the school have a little harder time getting into its Hall of Fame. Knight sued Indiana to collect back pay over his firing, a case that was dropped in February 2004. Also people who bad-mouth school employees might have a harder time getting in as well. When Texas Tech made its Sweet 16 run in 2005, Knight took the opportunity to impugn the reputation of then-Indiana coach Mike Davis, with Knight saying that had he stuck around, he probably would have fired Davis.

For Knight to make the school's Hall of Fame, both the school and the coach will have to find a way to reconcile their grudges toward each other. That probably will never happen, not while Knight is alive and kicking.

Indiana, still trying to mollify angry alumni steamed over Knight's firing, is taking a few baby steps toward reconciliation. Though Indiana did not send a representative to Texas Tech for victory No. 880, its president did send a congratulatory note. The school also now has a huge picture of Knight up at Assembly Hall.

Knight, meanwhile, is not going to let go of his grudge — not easily, that's for sure. When I arrived as a reporter at the Indiana Daily Student in the late 1980s, I heard immediately about Knight not having given a one-on-one interviews with the school paper since 1978. The apocryphal story was that he got peeved when a student reporter wrote about what happened in a closed practice, or that he got peeved when a student photographer caught him giving the middle finger to a cyclist he ran off the road on campus, or both, or something else. Knight kept up that grudge until 1994. So that should be one piece of evidence showing that no one should expect Knight to let bygones be bygones with Indiana anytime soon.

One thing is true — as the song said at Knight's victory celebration, he certainly has accomplished his record his way. Also true is that Knight is and will remain a mythical figure in sports, a love-him-or-hate-him guy who, it can't be denied, knew how to win. But even though Knight is a mythical figure, that's no reason to let him be clouded by myths.

This article originally appeared on CultureCloud.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.