“That’s fine,” I said. “Maybe you can call me, or Rick can call me, because I won’t be here. I have to drive back tonight since Maryland plays at noon tomorrow.”
He looked puzzled. “You mean you drove down here just to talk to me?” he said.
I nodded.
He smiled. “I wish I’d have known that. I’d have had Rick buy you dinner.”
To this day Rick and I still laugh about that line. Because I’d driven to Charlottesville to see Dean, Rick should get stuck taking me to dinner. I told him that, as much as I liked Rick and as much as I enjoyed the Aberdeen Barn (a great steakhouse in Charlottesville), my only mission that night was to get him to say yes.
The next day, shortly after Virginia and Ralph Sampson had beaten North Carolina, my phone rang. Hearing Rick’s voice, I expected bad news, since I had just seen the end of the game a few minutes earlier.
“Dean says if you can come down the Friday of the North-South doubleheader, you can drive with him to Charlotte and talk then. That’ll give you at least two and a half hours.”
“That’s a start,” I said.
Rick laughed. “It’s not a start,” he said. “It’s a miracle.”
I really didn’t care who was playing the two-day North-South since I wasn’t staying for the games. The plan was for me to drive to Charlotte with Dean—who almost never traveled with his team, in large part because he thought the players would be more relaxed without him around, but also because he didn’t like to smoke around them—and then drive Dean’s car back to Chapel Hill, where I had left my car.
It was a fascinating two and a half hours. Dean talked about how he had always wanted to play the positions where you were in charge as a kid: quarterback, point guard, catcher. He talked about his dad and how proud he had been when he realized years after the fact that he had coached the first integrated high school basketball team in the state of Kansas. He was as open and unguarded as I’d ever seen him. At one point when he was talking about archconservative North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, I asked Dean if he had ever considered running against him. He shook his head.
“I could never get elected in this state,” he said. “I’m too liberal.”
The highlight of the trip came when we stopped at a gas station. It was February and cold, so the windows were rolled up and Dean was smoking. When he asked if I wanted to stop to get a Coke, I practically screamed, “Yes, dear God, yes!” The smoke was killing me. We pulled into a gas station and walked inside. There was an elderly gentleman in red overalls behind the counter. Just as we walked in he spit a large wad of chewing tobacco into a pail next to him.
When he saw Dean, his eyes went wide. Dean noticed and was instantly embarrassed. “Please don’t write this—” he started to say just as we heard the man say, “Oh my God.” Dean was waving him off, trying to get him to stop, when the man added, “It’s Norman Sloan!”
I’m honestly not sure who laughed harder, Dean, the old guy, or me. As we walked back to the car, Dean said, “You see, I told you I’m not that big a deal around here.”
When we got to Charlotte, Dean showed me where the car’s registration was after explaining to me for a fourth time that the only reason he drove a BMW was because one of his ex-managers ran a BMW dealership. I laughed when he showed me the registration.
“Dean, if I get pulled over by a cop and I say that Dean Smith gave me his car, what do you think the chances are I’m not going to jail?”
“Yeah, and with your luck, it’ll be a State fan,” he said.
I was really proud of the story I wrote. I was able to talk to Dean’s sister, to lots of his ex-players, and to coaches and friends. The most telling anecdote came from his pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church, Reverend Robert Seymour, who Dean described as one of his closest friends.
Reverend Seymour told me that, shortly after Dean arrived in Chapel Hill as Frank McGuire’s assistant coach, he and Dean had gotten into a conversation about segregation. This was 1958 and restaurants in the South were still segregated. The two men agreed it was wrong and decided to try to do something about it. And so, one night that summer, North Carolina assistant basketball coach Dean Smith and an African-American member of the church walked into one of Chapel Hill’s best-known restaurants, the Pines, and sat down together at a table.
One can imagine the conversation that went on among the employees and the management that night. They all knew that the man sitting at the table was Frank McGuire’s assistant. On the other hand, he wasn’t Frank McGuire—he was an assistant. Someone made a decision: dinner was served without anyone saying a word. That night was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.
“You have to understand,” the pastor said to me, “Dean Smith wasn’t Dean Smith in 1958. He was an assistant coach. It wasn’t out of the question that management might have complained to the university and he might have gotten in serious trouble. But he never hesitated to do it.”
When I asked Dean to tell me what he remembered about that night, he looked at me with some anger in his face. “Who told you that story?” he said.
“Reverend Seymour,” I said.
“I wish he hadn’t.”
“Why? That’s something you should be proud of.”
Dean shook his head. “You should never be proud of doing the right thing,” he said. “You should just do it.”
I knew he meant it. I can’t tell you how much I admired him at that moment. When I interviewed John Thompson, who had been a close friend of Dean’s for years, I asked him if he knew the story. “No, I don’t,” he said. “And I’m not surprised. It’s not Dean’s way to take bows for anything.”
The first part of the story ran the day before the start of the ACC Tournament, which was played in Washington that year. When North Carolina came on the court for its practice session that afternoon, I was standing courtside. Dean walked over to say hello. “I haven’t read the paper today,” he said. “Am I speaking to you?”
A couple of weeks later, I got the answer, in the form of a note from Dean. Typically, he started by saying he still wished I hadn’t done the story. But since I’d done it, he thought I’d been very fair and thorough, although he wished his sister hadn’t told me quite so much about his boyhood. I wrote back and thanked him for the note and for the time and his patience. Then I added another sentence: “I think you know how much I admire and respect you. Someday there will come a time for a book to be done on your life. I would love it if you would consider me as the person to write that book.”
It was probably pretty audacious for me, at the age of twenty-five, to write that, but I did it anyway. Dean wrote back very graciously and said, “Of course, when the time comes, I would be happy to talk to you about a book. But I hope that I will be coaching for a long time to come.”
One year later, North Carolina won the national championship, beating Georgetown and John Thompson in a classic game. Michael Jordan hit the famous winning shot and Fred Brown threw the infamous losing pass. Now Dean had officially done it all: he had won an NCAA title (and been to seven Final Fours), he had won the NIT, and he had won at the Olympics.
Now, I thought, with Jordan and Sam Perkins both coming back, was the time to strike. My plan was to write the book during the ’82–83 season and make it a combination biography/story of a season. I had no idea how much access Dean might give me or how much access I would ask for; I just wanted to see if he would agree to a book.
I called him. I told him I knew he was a long way from retiring but, now that he had the national championship monkey off his back and his team had a legitimate chance to perhaps win again the next year, I thought this was the time. I promised I would come down during the summer and get all the long interviews out of the way before school even started. I already had a lot of the background work done because of the Post story.
“Let me think about it,” he said. “I want to talk to Linnea [his wife] and give it some thought.”
That was all I
could ask for. He called back within a week. “I seriously thought about it,” he said. “I understand why you want to do it now, and I know you’d do a good job. But there are some things I know you’re going to want me to be frank about that I’m just not ready to talk about yet. [I’m sure he was talking about his opinions of other coaches.] It’s just too soon.”
I understood. I was also disappointed. “I really did seriously consider it,” he said. “I feel bad about it. Is there anything I can do for you? Maybe get you some tickets?”
I laughed. I didn’t need tickets. I told him I hoped someday his answer would be different. It would be twenty-seven years before we would discuss a book again.
THAT LEFT BOB KNIGHT. And when he invited me to the Final Four dinner, the thought crossed my mind that he might—might—just go for it. After all, he was inviting me into his inner circle at dinner and he had allowed me a glimpse of day-to-day life inside his team back in February, at a time when things could not have been worse.
Dinner was well under way by the time I arrived. I had hoped to maneuver myself someplace close to Knight, but that option wasn’t available. Everyone was in the middle of their entrées when I sat down, and a waitress came and I ordered quickly. I was close enough to Knight that I could hear him explaining that he didn’t understand how Lou Carnesecca and Bobby Cremins had won most of the coach-of-the-year awards and John Thompson had been shut out. Somewhere along the line he began addressing comments to me for most of the table to hear.
“You see, it’s the writers like you, Feinstein, who just don’t understand the game or coaching,” he said. “John Thompson had the hardest job in the country this year because everyone picked him to win again and he doesn’t have the same team. I know he’s got Ewing, but he lost the kid [Michael] Graham, who was a big part of that team, and the other kid, the guard.”
“Gene Smith,” I said.
“Yeah, him. Ewing finished their defense last year but that kid started it. Now here they are without those two kids about to win a second national championship, and you people are giving all the awards to those other guys.”
“Those awards are all voted on during the regular season,” I started to say in defense of my brethren.
Knight waved a hand in my direction. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
I did… sort of.
At that moment I wondered if his hostility might mean this was a bad night to bring up the book idea. I also wondered if he’d had a few drinks, a notion I would come to learn was laughable. Knight doesn’t like to drink. Every so often he will mix a little sangria into lemonade or ginger ale, but that’s rare and is usually done more for show than anything else. I would also come to understand that the hostility I had sensed wasn’t hostility. It was just Knight showing off for his pals. They knew he liked me, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there. But he needed them to know that I was still one of them, “you people” as he liked to put it. By next season, when he would go into that routine, I had learned to sit back and enjoy the show. That night, it made me nervous.
When dinner was over and everyone was standing to leave, Knight came over to me and put out his hand. “I’m really glad you could make it,” he said.
“I’m sorry I was late,” I said.
He waved his hand. “It was no problem, you had to work. As you could see you didn’t hold us up any.”
I was now beginning to understand—at least a little—that the riff on writers had been just that, a riff. I took a deep breath and decided to dive in. “Have you got a few minutes to talk?” I asked. “I want to ask you about something.”
Knight shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you come back to the hotel with us.”
When we got to the hotel, we went straight to Knight’s room. We consisted of Knight; Pete Newell, the Hall of Fame coach who Knight traditionally shared a room with at the Final Four; and Mike Krzyzewski. At that point in his career, Krzyzewski was a long way from being the icon he is now. Although he had not been involved in the growth of my relationship with Knight, his name had often come up in conversations I’d had with Knight—since Knight knew I covered the ACC, had graduated from Duke, and was friends with Krzyzewski.
During my visit to Bloomington in February, we had talked at some length about how relieved he was that Krzyzewski seemed to have Duke headed in the right direction. The Blue Devils had made the NCAA Tournament that March for a second straight season, even though Krzyzewski still hadn’t gotten beyond the second round.
Knight and Krzyzewski were driving to Bloomington the next day to do a clinic together. Krzyzewski was coming back to the room so they could go over some of the details of the clinic. So the four of us piled into the room. Knight stretched out on one bed, Newell the other. Krzyzewski and I pulled up chairs. I talked to Coach Newell—one of the all-time good men in sports—while Knight and Krzyzewski went over what they were going to do at the clinic. Finally, Knight looked up and said to me, “Okay, John, what can I do for you?”
I had no set speech or pitch. I’ve never really done that. I just sort of wing it. I think pretty well on my feet and have a good memory, so that makes it easier. I don’t remember everything I said, but I remember the basics.
“Next year is going to be an important year for you,” I said. “You’re going to do a lot of new things. You’ve recruited the junior college kids, and you’re going to play some zone.”
“Might play some zone,” Knight interrupted.
“Okay,” I said. “At least you’re thinking about it. We’ve talked about how tough this season was on you. You’ve never been under five hundred in the Big Ten before.”
“I never wanted to see a season end more,” Knight added.
“Exactly. Anyway, I know you have a lot of hopes and a lot of fears about next year, and I think there’s a hell of a story there.”
I paused because I had now come to the punch line. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think if I came out there and spent the season—you know, just stuck around the way I did for those couple of days in February—that I could maybe write a really good book about what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.” (The last line I had thought of in advance; Knight talked often about how the public didn’t understand why he did the things he did.)
Knight looked at me and said, “Have you ever done a book before?”
I shook my head. “No, never. Always wanted to.”
“Do you have a publisher for this book?”
I shook my head again. “I didn’t think there was any point in talking to a publisher until I had talked to you.”
“Probably smart thinking,” he said, smiling. “Do you think you can get a publisher?”
“Bob, I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. But I would think if I told them I had access to Bob Knight for a season, someone would be interested.”
“You know I might know a guy in Chicago,” he said.
“Well, I might want to call him,” I said, having no idea who or what he might be talking about.
“Okay,” Knight said. “If you can get a publisher, let me know. If you can’t, call me. Maybe I can get you to this guy in Chicago.”
I was tempted to jump up and say, “Really? Seriously? That’s it? No negotiations? No ground rules?”
I didn’t think that was the right response. I wanted to get the money issue out of the way though, one way or the other. “Bob, if I get a contract, I don’t know how much money it would be for—”
He waved a hand. “I don’t need any money. If I get money then the book’s not legitimate. If you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it right.”
I’m guessing my mouth dropped open. The fact that he understood that so clearly was remarkable. Krzyzewski was standing up. “Coach, we have to get an early start in the morning.”
I had lost track of the time. I looked at my watch. It was close to midnight.
I stood up too. “Bob, thanks for even considering this.”
/> “Let me know what happens,” he said.
I shook hands with Coach Newell, and Krzyzewski and I walked out of the room. The instant the door shut, Mike looked at me and said, “Are you out of your f—ing mind?”
“What?”
“You just volunteered to spend a season with him? What are you thinking?”
“Look, I know what it’s like. I was there in February—”
“No, you don’t. You haven’t got a clue what it’s like. You can’t. I was with him five seasons.”
“So, you spent five seasons with him, why shouldn’t I spend one?”
“I spent four so I could go to college, one because I needed a job. You’ve been to college and you have a job.”
I waved a hand at him. “Chances are I won’t even get a publisher,” I said. “But I do want to give it a try.”
“In that case, you’re crazier than he is,” Mike said. “And he’s crazy.”
Little did I know how prescient those words would turn out to be.
2
No, No, No, No… and No
AS IT TURNED OUT, my prediction that I wouldn’t get a publisher almost proved true. I even had a hard time getting an agent.
Two nights after my conversation with Knight, Villanova won the national championship in one of the most stunning upsets in college basketball history. The Wildcats shot a remarkable 79.3 percent from the field for the game, including going 9 of 10 in the second half of the last college basketball game played without a shot clock. After the game, Rollie Massimino invited me to fly home early the next morning on the Villanova team plane. He also invited my friend Dick “Hoops” Weiss, who was and always will be the dean of Philadelphia basketball writers.
On almost no sleep, we flew into Philly with the team and were actually in the parade. Everyone on the plane was loaded onto flatbed trucks at the airport for the trip to City Hall. Since I was there to cover the parade and the scene, I certainly wasn’t going to say no. I don’t remember anyone screaming my name as we went up Broad Street.
One on One Page 3