Knight: My Story - Hardcover

Knight, Bob; Hammel, Bob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312282575 ISBN 13: 9780312282578

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002

Synopsis

Bob Knight was a head coach in college basketball at twenty-four, coach of an unbeaten NCAA champion at thirty-five, coach of the last amateur team to win the Olympic men's basketball gold medal at forty-three, and out of a job at not quite sixty.

His shock, disappointment and anger over Indiana University's manner of firing a twenty-nine-year employee comes through clearly in his account of his last turbulent year there.

And it is his account. Few people in sports have had more books written about them. This is the first by Bob Knight - one of the most literate, candid, quoted and outspoken men in American public life telling in this first-person account of his full, rich life.

Much of that life has been in basketball, most of it because of basketball, but it also has brought him forward as a coach who has proved academic responsibility and production of championship college athletic teams not only can co-exist but should.

His excitement as things start anew for him at Texas Tech is matched here by his characteristic frankness and remarkable recollection of a life he clearly has enjoyed. You'll see why, as he tells story after story - some delightful, some hilarious, some poignant, none of them dull.

Knight, as a sophomore front-line reserve on the Ohio State team that won the NCAA championship, became the first man to play on and coach a championship team when he led his 1975-76 Indiana team to a 32-0 season that was capped by an 86-68 victory over Michigan in the NCAA championship game at Philadelphia.

His Indiana teams in 1980-81 and 1986-87 also won NCAA titles, making him one of just four coaches in history to win as many as three championships. Twenty-six years later, the 1975-76 Indiana team still stands as the last unbeaten team in major- college men's basketball. Knight's coaching career includes six seasons at Army, where his teams - during the years when the Vietnam War made recruiting for West Point difficult - won 102 games and lost 50. He is one of five coaches who have won seven hundred games, and the only coach whose teams have won championships in the NCAA tournament, the National Invitation Tournament, the Olympic Games and the Pan American Games.

During all that he has been at the heart of more controversies while running a winning and squeaky-clean program than any coach of any sport any time or anywhere.

His excitement as things start anew for him is matched here by his candor and remarkable recollection of a life he clearly has enjoyed. You'll see why, with story after story - some delightful, some hilarious, some poignant, none of them dull: the story of Bob Knight's life.

About this title

About the Author:

Bobby Knight has proven over and over again that he is the finest basketball coach in America. No other coach can cite NCAA and NIT championships, and Olympic and Pan American gold medals among his achievements. He is one of only 13 coaches in college basketball history to record 700 or more victories. During Knight's 27-year stint at Indiana, the Hoosiers won an amazing 618 games, including 19 seasons of 20 or more wins, while losing only 220, a remarkable .737 winning percentage. His coaching achievements were honored in May of 1991 when he was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

Bob Hammel was sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Time for 30 years before he retired following the 1996 Olympics. He is the author of nine previous books, six of which were on Indiana basketball. Selected by his peers as Indiana Sportswriter of the Year 17 times, he has been president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Assn., the Football Writers Assn. of America, and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Assn. He received the National Basketball Hall of Fame's Curt Gowdy Award (1995), the Silver Medal of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame (1996), the Jake Ward Award of the College Sports Information Directors Assn. (1996), and the Bert McGrane Award of the Football Writers Assn. of America (1996). He was inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Assn. Hall of Fame in 1990, the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1997, and the Indiana Sportswriters and Broadcasters Assn. Hall of Fame in 1998.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Knight
ONE:The Eight Greatest WordsFor the first time in thirty-six years, I don't have a basketball team.I remember very clearly the thought going through my mind that day:Only in America ...I'm a pretty appreciative guy, especially where my country is concerned. It's nothing I have to think about. I've always felt that way. In the summer of 1984 when I was coaching the U.S. Olympic team, every stop I made, every group I talked to, I mentioned the eight greatest words any American ever put together: America, America, God shed His grace on thee ...Through the winter of 2000-01 when I was speaking to different groups across the country, I made it a point virtually every time to ask World War II veterans to stand, then all people who had served in the military in service to our country. I did it because I enjoyed seeing those people stand and hear applause, and I enjoyed being one of the people applauding. I strongly feel we are all blessed by being where we are when we are, and there are some specific people and generations who deserve to feel proud and appreciated--like the New York City firemen and policemen of September 2001.But this late-summer day in 1991 when I was pleasantly into my "only in America" reverie, I was wading in a river, fishing. The river was the Umba, in northern Russia. What I was thinking was that only in America could a guy like me, through a game like basketball, be standing there, having such a great experience.Because fishing that same day in that same river, just around a bend, was my friend, Ted Williams. Ted was as close to a lifelong hero as I had, outside my family. As a boy I sat in the stands at Lakefront Stadium in Cleveland and marveled at his swing. I was all for the Indians, but when I saw that classic Ted Williams swing send a baseball screaming into the stands and watched that head-down Williams lope around the bases, I felt privileged.The more I learned about him, the more I revered him--not only as a great baseball player but also as a genuine hero of two American wars; as a master fisherman; as one of the rare national figures who absolutely God-damned refused to knuckle under to a hostile press.Here I was, a kid from a small Ohio town, a town not far from Cleveland where my parents had taken me on a few special Sundays to watch the Boston Red Sox and the great Ted Williams play against the Indians. All these years later, I clearly remember the chill I felt when he just stepped into the batter's box, and when he swung, and the unbelievably special times when I was there and that swing and a loud crack sent the ball out of the park ... .And here I was, fishing with him ... because of basketball. I'm not too sure I've had another moment in my life when I felt more keenly, sharply aware of how much that game I loved had meant in my life.I met Ted Williams because basketball introduced me to some people who could make it happen--me, the son of two small-town Americans: an Ohio railroad man and a schoolteacher.I learned to fly-fish, my second-greatest sports passion, because of basketball. I was picked to make the trip, because of basketball. And I could afford to do it, because of basketball.I've spent most of my life trying to give things back to the sport, because so many people in it have given so much of it to me. That day, on that river, in that special company, I knew as I always had that I owed the game more than I could ever give back.But I was damned sure trying.Jerry McKinnis of ESPN's Fishin' Hole show lined up the Russian trip. I had fished several times in the United States for shows Jerry did. I enjoyed them all, because Jerry is a hell of a guy and the best fisherman (Ted would take exception) I've ever met.But he outdid himself by drawing up this trip. Jerry knew it, too. He's a big fan of both baseball and college basketball, a lifelong Cardinals fan who played the game well enough himself that he signed a professional contract coming out of high school. He knew from our previous travels and talks just where Ted Williams stood with me, and Ted had been Jerry's idol, too.I couldn't say yes fast enough when Jerry suggested the trip. And I couldn't have been happier when I called Ted and he said, yeah, he could do that--he'd be glad to. Ted and I had already met. I had mentioned to Minneapolis sports columnist Sid Hartman how much I thought of Ted Williams, and Sid got him to call me. The first time I met him face to face, Jimmy Russo set it up.Jimmy, an Indiana native who was the "superscout" for the Orioles during their great years in the '60s and '70s, was as strong an Indiana University basketball fan as I ever met. He lived in St. Louis and always got over to Bloomington at least once during the season, and I looked forward to those visits because we had some great baseball talks each time. Jimmy was still with the Orioles when I went to spring training after we had won the NCAA championship in 1981. Ted happened to be at a game both Jimmy and I attended, and Jimmy took me over and introduced me to him. We had maintained some contact over the years, so his agreement to go to Russia with me had some background.So did the trip itself. The summer of '91, baseball's All-Star Game was played in Toronto. President George Bush brought Ted and Joe DiMaggio to the White House for a ceremony, then the three of them got on a plane and went to the game. On the way, the president asked Ted about his summer plans. Ted told him about the fishing trip he and I were taking to Russia. "You and Knight?" the president said. "Jeez-us." History will record that we hadn't been out of the Soviet Union for a week before the government fell. We'd both like to take credit for that, but ...Ted and I met in New York for the flight over. We were sitting together on the airplane, not too far into the flight, when he said:"Okay, who do you think were the five most important Americans, in your lifetime?"The first thing that strikes you about him is how smart he is. You are not dealing with a guy with ordinary intelligence. He is well-read, extremely opinionated, and he backs up his opinions with reasons. A mutual friend, broadcaster Curt Gowdy, had told me to be ready to argue with him, because there was nothing Ted liked better than that. It wasn't the worst news I'd ever heard; I don't mind a little debate myself, now and then.And I knew from the way he asked me that question he had his own five.I mentioned Franklin Roosevelt, and he agreed, finally. I knew he was an arch-Republican, but I thought he'd have to come around on Roosevelt.He came in quickly with Richard Nixon, Joe Louis, and General Douglas MacArthur.I said Harry Truman, and he didn't totally agree. His contention was, "God-dammit, you have The Bomb. Anybody can decide to drop The Bomb." I'm a big Truman man. We argued about that point. Yes, anybody could have made that decision. I don't think just anybody would have.I picked George Marshall, the World War II general and the post-war secretaryof state who came up with the Marshall Plan that revived Europe. Ted didn't disagree with that.We both talked about Dwight Eisenhower. One guy I mentioned was Will Rogers.Ted was very big on Richard Nixon. He knew and liked Nixon. I wasn't inclined to argue. I think even some of Nixon's political critics feel he will go down as one of the better presidents. The negative was obvious: all the things represented by "I am not a crook."I mentioned, for personal reasons, William Simon. He knew Simon and thought he was a brilliant guy. We were talking twentieth century, so Henry Ford was another one we both picked. I don't remember if Thomas Edison came up or not, but he surely should have. This went on for a while.Then he wanted the five most overrated.I said John Kennedy, and I got out of the hole I had dug with FDR. "You're a hell of a lot smarter than I thought you were from our other discussion," he said.We both agreed that Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland were on that list of five--three out of the same era.And we discussed baseball. He thought the best player ever was Babe Ruth. Period. He didn't think anybody was even close.He called Joe DiMaggio the best player of his era. I heard him say that many times. However, I wasn't going to accept that one without raising a point.I told him in 1947 when DiMaggio edged him out for MVP because one Boston writer didn't even put Ted in his top ten, DiMaggio shouldn't have accepted the award. He didn't say anything, just went to talking about something else, which was all I needed to feel that was exactly the way he would have handled the '47 situation.That was the quality that stood out for me during that whole conversation and has in every one I've had with him: how genuinely unfailingly gracious he is to players of his era who were supposed to be his rivals. Stan Musial, for example--"a great hitter and a great person," Ted called him.Williams quit playing after the 1960 season--after he homered in his last time at bat and gave John Updike the material for what may be the greatest sports story I've ever read. Updike was a graduate student at Harvard when he attended that game, sitting not in a press box but in the stands, as a fan. In an article entitled "Kid Bids Hub Fans Adieu" that he wrote for The New Yorker, Updike described Williams's eighth-inning home run, on a one-and-one pitch, off the Orioles' Jack Fisher, and his run around the bases: "He ran as he always ran out home runs--hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of." Updike was part of the crowd roar that ran forminutes in an attempt to get Williams to step out from the dugout and tip his cap. "The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way," Updike wrote, "but he never did and did not now."Gods do not answer letters."What a perfect line.Updike also said Williams, by declining to go with the team to New York for a meaningless three-game series closing out the season, "knew how to do even that, the hardest thing. Quit."But that almost wasn't Ted's last at-bat. In Russia he told me the Yankees tried to get him to play the next year, as a pinch-hitter and part-time outfielder--for the same salary he made with the Red Sox. Imagine what that would have been. "The next year" was 1961, the year Roger Maris hit sixty-one homers, and Mickey Mantle hit fifty-four. Now factor in Ted Williams, playing eighty-one games in the perfect stadium for a left-handed power hitter.I thought about all that and had to ask him, "How could you not play a year in Yankee Stadium?" He just decided he had played enough."It was really tempting," he said. "But I'd had my day."I had met Maris and become good friends with him. I think it's a shame that he died without ever being admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I still think he will be, some day. Ted liked Maris, thought he was a great player, and worked hard to get him elected to the Hall of Fame.He's proud that he has the highest on-base percentage in baseball history--"so I got on base all the time, but I hit 500 home runs." That's why he liked Musial and DiMaggio, because they hit for average but hit with good power, too. Lou Gehrig also. Ted played against Gehrig, and he saw Ruth in batting practice a few years after Ruth's playing career ended in 1935.His teammate when he first came to the majors, Jimmy Foxx, was "a hell of a powerful hitter," Ted said. "There was a different sound to it when Foxx hit a baseball--like a cannon going off. Mantle was almost like that. He was a great player."He called Bob Feller the best pitcher he faced. I couldn't resist saying: "Yeah, sure--I listened to those Indians-Red Sox games and you must have hit .500 against him." He just glared.Feller, Virgil Trucks of Detroit, and Bob Lemon of Cleveland were his top three. The Yankees' Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi, he said, were good pitchers but they played on a great team. He thought the Indians' Herb Score had a chance to be a great pitcher, until a line drive hit him in the face and he never was as good again.I just listened most of the time, fascinated. But occasionally I'd make a comment. And sometimes he would say, "God-dammit, you're not dumb. You aren't dumb."I told him of a conversation I had with Bill Dickey, the Hall of Fame catcher for the Yankees. I asked Dickey who was the fastest pitcher he faced. Before I could say the name, Ted cut right in: "He told you Lefty Grove was." He was right.And I was right in crediting basketball for providing me with this opportunity with Ted, one of the richest experiences of my life. 
Ten years later, I still feel indebted to basketball. My address has changed, but not my gratitude toward the game. In fact, in the months after the initial shock of being fired in my thirtieth year as Indiana University's basketball coach, I still was thinking of the next step I wanted to make, the next experiment I wanted to try, in the search for improving my basketball team.I was fired September 10, 2000. I had already begun working with my team--a maximum of four players at a time, under NCAA rules, before full practice begins. October 15 was the first day that college basketball teams could practice in the 2000-01 season. The evening of October 14, the thought ran through my mind:For the first time in thirty-six years, I don't have a basketball team. ...It was the first time in a lot longer than that since a new season approached and I wasn't excited about getting it started. Add two years as an assistant coach at West Point; a year before that as a high school assistant at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; four years before that as a player at Ohio State; four years before that as a varsity high school player at Orrville, Ohio; and two years before that in junior high.I hadn't quite turned sixty, and it had been forty-nine years since a fresh, new basketball season arrived without my being involved with a team.The truth is I resented it like hell. I knew what I had set out to build at Indiana University. Winning games and championships was part of the dream going in, and not just as a by-product. I wanted to win those games and build those championship teams the way some people, primarily in the press, were saying could not be done anymore--by following NCAA rules; by recruiting kids who could and would be genuine students and four-year graduates as well as excellent basketball players and teams. I wanted to make the INDIANA they wore across their chests an identifying symbol that meant to people throughout the state, the Big Ten, and the country that inside that jerseywas a kid who would compete like hell and represent his school on the court and off it, during his college years and after them, in a way that would make the most important judges of all, that kid's parents, as proud as they could be.To do all that and to win was the goal.To win without doing all those things would have been to fail.When they took direction of the Indiana University basketball program away from me, it didn't change my feeling about those twenty-nine years.I had met my goal.And...

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312282575
• ISBN 13: 9780312282578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400