One on One

by John Feinstein

  We’d had two battles, for lack of a better word, during the season. The first had come in Minneapolis, the morning after a bad loss at Iowa. It had ended that seven-game winning streak and had been a blowout from the start. Knight was upset about being blown out, but also about losing to George Raveling—who had been one of his assistants on the Olympic team but had somehow become another name on Knight’s bad guy list. I don’t even remember George’s specific crime other than the usual: he had started winning games against Knight.

  The team had flown through a snowstorm from Iowa City to Minneapolis and, even though it was two o’clock in the morning, Knight made everyone watch tape for about ninety minutes. He was still, to put it gently, cranky at breakfast the next morning when Sid Hartman, the long-time Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist and another of Knight’s confidant/pals, walked in. Knight, as he often did when upset, ignored Hartman. Sid understood. As we were walking out of the breakfast room, Sid turned to me and said, “So what are you going to do all day in the snow here?”

  I shrugged and said, in what I thought was a self-deprecating way, “Just do what I do every day: follow Knight around.”

  Almost fifteen years later, when Knight got himself fired for grabbing a kid who walked by him and said, “Hey, what’s up, Knight?” I thought back to that morning in Minneapolis. Knight was walking a couple of steps ahead of us, going on about how awful Daryl Thomas had been the night before, when he heard my comment. He stopped, whirled, and pointed his finger at me.

  “Don’t you ever call me Knight,” he said, his face red. “You call me Coach, you call me Bob, you call me Coach Knight, but you don’t call me Knight!”

  “Bob, I wasn’t calling you anything,” I said, somewhat stunned but also understanding in the back of my mind that this was a reaction to exhaustion and a bad loss. “I was making fun of myself…”

  “I don’t give a goddamn what the f— you were doing. I’m a lot older than you and one hell of a lot more important than you in the game of basketball, so you show me some respect!”

  I hadn’t realized that our places in the basketball pantheon had ever been at issue. What I really wanted to say at that moment was “It’s not my fault the team played poorly last night.” But a little voice in my head was saying what it had said to me on several other occasions: finish the season. We were almost in the home stretch—this was the end of January.

  “I’ll see you at practice,” I said and turned and walked off before saying anything I’d regret. I went for a walk in the snow before it was time to leave the hotel for practice. I really had to give myself a talking to at that moment. One thing was for sure: Krzyzewski had been right. I’d had no idea what I was getting into. It wasn’t just being screamed at for referring to Coach as Knight, it was the constant anger at everyone and everything. The good news was I was seeing Knight up close and personal day after day, morning, noon, and night. The bad news was that I was seeing Knight up close and personal day after day, morning, noon, and night.

  “Every minute you’re with him you’re on the brink of a disaster,” I said to myself as I plowed through a snowy park near the hotel. That was when I pulled up short and knew I had a title for the book: A Season on the Brink.

  Knight and I didn’t speak to each other the rest of that day or the next day. I just showed up the way I always did: for practice, for coach and player meetings, for walkthrough, for meals, and for the game. Hammel, who was very supportive of me throughout the year, was nervous: “They lose this game he might not let you back on the plane.”

  I shrugged. At that point I honestly believed I was connected enough with the other people on the team—coaches, trainers, doctors, and players—that I would be able to finish the book even if Knight threw me out. I knew it wouldn’t be ideal, but I thought I was far enough along and had enough material that the thought didn’t panic me the way it might have in November.

  What’s more, it was a game Indiana should win with ease. Several Minnesota players had been arrested the week before during a trip to Wisconsin and were thrown off the team. Coach Jim Dutcher had been fired and the Gophers had been forced to add several football players to fill out their roster. All of which made Knight very uptight before the game.

  He was right. Indiana could have lost the game. Minnesota played inspired basketball, fueled by a loud crowd in creaky old Williams Arena—one of two buildings in the Big Ten (the other being at Purdue) where the benches and press row are actually below court level. As it turned out, the two schools were ahead of their time. In 2009 the NCAA began setting up Final Four venues the same way—the better to sell more high-priced courtside seats so the money people could look over the heads of the teams on one side and the media on the other.

  Down by five at halftime, Knight went ballistic in the locker room. “This is the same shit as last year,” he railed. “Anytime things get a little bit tough, you guys wilt.”

  Inspired by that talking-to, Indiana proceeded to fall behind by eleven. Knight called time-out and pretty much threatened to leave all the players off the plane home if they didn’t get their act together. That got their attention. They rallied and won and all of us got to fly back to Bloomington.

  The next afternoon, when practice was over, Knight walked over and sat down next to me. I was prepared for a lecture on showing respect for one’s elders. What I got was entirely different.

  “How long have you been at the Post now?” he asked.

  “Eight years,” I answered.

  “So since you got out of college.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I was lucky…”

  “No, you weren’t, John. Look, here’s one thing I know about you: you’re a smart sumbitch [Knight never said son of a bitch, he always said sumbitch]. You know you’re smart and you know you wouldn’t have done the things you’ve done if you weren’t smart.

  “But let me give you some advice from someone who’s also pretty smart and is a lot older and more experienced than you are: you don’t have to prove you’re the smartest guy in every room you walk into. Not everyone needs to know that about you. Let them figure it out by reading what you write.”

  I had no idea what any of this had to do with what had happened in Minneapolis on Friday. I also knew that Knight was right. I had always felt—and still do—the need to be right (the Penn bet was a good example), which is a way of proving how smart I am. I had—and still have—a bad habit of interrupting people when I think I know what they’re going to say next and I’m ready to respond. I wish I could say that since that talk I’ve never acted that way, but since that talk I have tried to cool my act, to listen more, especially when smart people are talking, and to not try to prove I know more than everyone around me, whether it is at a dinner table or in an interview room.

  In fact, I almost never ask questions in interview rooms. My old friend and mentor Dave Kindred pointed out to me years ago that if you get a good answer in an interview room, everyone else has it too. If you wait and ask your question—and get a good answer—either in private or in a small group, the answer is either yours alone or yours and a handful of others’.

  I told Knight I understood what he was saying and that I thought he was right. The irony of Knight telling someone they didn’t have to always prove themselves—as smarter, tougher, meaner, whatever—wasn’t lost on me, but I knew that what he was saying about me was still right. Twenty-five years later I’m still not cured, but I’m at least in recovery.

  Although we never addressed what had happened in Minneapolis, that conversation ended our “dispute.” He and I were back at the Ground Round that night eating buffalo wings while the assistant coaches, exhausted by the forty-eight hours in Iowa and Minnesota, got to go home and get some rest.

  OUR SECOND “FALLING OUT” occurred a month later, just prior to Indiana’s last home weekend of the season, which was again against Minnesota and Iowa. The specter of the Goph
ers and Hawkeyes always seemed to cause trouble for me one way or the other.

  Throughout the season, I had been the subject of a fair bit of media attention. Needless to say, the notion that Bob Knight was giving a reporter complete access to his program surprised a lot of people. Actually the best line came from Dean Smith, who seriously couldn’t believe what I was telling him.

  “He lets you into the locker room before and after practice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Team meetings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Coaches’ meetings?”

  “Yes.”

  “You travel with the team?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re in the locker room before games and at halftime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you sit during the games?”

  “On the bench.”

  “On the bench? He lets you listen to him during time-outs?”

  “Sometimes I make substitutions.”

  Dean looked long and hard at me at that moment to be sure I was kidding.

  “But the rest of it, sitting on the bench and everything, is true?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head in amazement. “I wouldn’t let my mother into my locker room,” he said.

  “Why not, Dean? You don’t even curse.”

  “No, but I do get angry.”

  There had been a number of stories written about my access and the book I intended to write. Most people found it harder to believe that Knight had no control over the content than that I was making substitutions. It was another coach, Jim Valvano, who simply would not believe it.

  “He’s going to tell you he has to have control,” Valvano said. “He’s an even worse control freak than the rest of us are. No way you write everything you see and hear in that book.”

  Nothing I said could convince Valvano I was going to write an honest book.

  Sometime in mid-February I got a phone call from Mark Heisler of the Los Angeles Times. Heisler wrote a basketball notes column once a week, and he wanted to lead the column with a few paragraphs about my season with Knight. That was fine with me. Jeff Neuman had told me not to get too excited about the publicity I was getting. “It doesn’t mean anything until the book comes out,” he said. “In fact, I would low-key it as much as possible.”

  I had followed his advice. I told no stories about the tantrums I had witnessed, or the touching moments I had also witnessed. I stayed generic. What I told Heisler was pretty much what I had told the other guys who had written about the book: “I think Bob was willing to do it because he thinks an honest book, written by an outsider, will show what his program is really all about. I think he’s hoping it will give people a better understanding of what he does and why he does it.”

  Pretty mundane stuff. Heisler quoted me accurately. It was the headline that caused the trouble: “Knight Hopes Book Will Change His Image.”

  Remember this was pre-internet, but someone Knight knew in Los Angeles sent Knight the clip, thinking he’d like the story. I’m not sure he ever read it. I wasn’t there—as I recall I had gone on a Patrick Knight pickup run—when he opened the envelope that had the story in it, but the assistant coaches were. They told me later that when he read the headline, he went ballistic.

  Knight loves to say that he doesn’t care what people think of him, especially people in the media. He once proudly told David Israel for a piece in Playboy that on his tombstone he wanted the following inscription: “He Never Cared What Anybody Thought.”

  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone cares what people think about them, and Knight is no different—except he may care more. The angriest I think I saw him get all year—and that takes in a lot of ground—was after Indiana lost a very good game at Louisville, which would go on to win the national championship. It was exam week at IU and Knight told Kit Klingelhoffer, his sports information director (SID), that he wasn’t going to go into the media room because he wanted to get back to Bloomington as fast as possible.

  Knight could have gone in while the players showered and dressed, but he opted not to, knowing that needing to get the players back home so they would be rested for their tests would be an acceptable excuse for not talking to the media. The only problem was that the reason he didn’t come in never reached the media. Even though Klingelhoffer told the Louisville people Knight wasn’t coming in because of exams, the media was simply told, “Coach Knight isn’t coming in.” Given Knight’s propensity through the years for blowing the media off, the assumption was made that Knight was pouting about the loss. In fact, he was quite happy with the way his team had played.

  He was not happy the next day when he picked up the Indianapolis Star and saw that he had “refused” to speak to the media. Klingelhoffer was summoned. “Why the hell am I getting attacked by these people for not coming in when I had a goddamn good reason for not coming in?” he shouted.

  There was nothing Klingelhoffer could say. He had done as he was told but the message hadn’t been passed on. When he tried to explain that to Knight, he was cut off and subjected to a speech about how this was his fault. Knight was so angry that he kicked a telephone sitting on the floor with his bare foot and then began hopping around, screaming in pain, demanding that everyone get out of the Cave and leave him alone. Everyone gladly did so—because the sight of Knight screaming and waving his arms while trying to balance on one foot was making it almost impossible for any of us to keep a straight face.

  On the day that Knight got his hands on Heisler’s story, I came back to the Cave shortly before practice and knocked on the door. Knight had actually given me a set of keys to get into the building and into the Cave, but I always knocked first rather than use my key. Kohn Smith opened the door and, before he moved aside to let me in, said softly, “Be ready.”

  Now prepared for something but not knowing exactly what, I walked into the room and saw Knight sitting in his chair with a newspaper in his hands. “You better have a goddamn good explanation for this, John,” Knight said, waving the newspaper at me.

  Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about. “For what, Bob?” I answered.

  Knight held the paper up and read the headline aloud. “Where the hell do you come off telling someone—anyone—that I’m letting you do this goddamn book because I want a better image?” he said. “When the hell have I ever said anything along those lines to you? Tell me one time.”

  “Bob, I never said anything like that,” I said. “If that’s in the story I was misquoted, but I can’t believe Mark would misquote me. Can I see the story?”

  Knight threw the newspaper at my feet. I picked it up and looked through the story quickly, just in case Heisler had somehow misquoted me, and to see if there was even a line from Heisler about Knight’s image. There was nothing. He had quoted me accurately and in context. Somehow the headline writer had come up with the line about image.

  “Bob, there’s nothing in this story about your image,” I said. “Someone wrote a bad headline.”

  “I don’t want to hear any f—ing excuses. This is your fault.”

  “How is it my fault?” I asked instinctively, which was probably a mistake.

  “It’s your fault because if you hadn’t talked to that sumbitch he wouldn’t have had a story, and then the goddamn headline never would have been written.”

  Okay, now I knew why it was my fault.

  “Bob, I’ve been talking to the media all season, and I’ve said the same thing in every story. You’ve even been quoted in some of the stories. I’m sorry the headline got written that way.”

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t really do any goddamn good right about now, does it?”

  No, it didn’t.

  I had already let the argument stretch longer than I should have, given the presence of the assistant coaches. Knight stalked off to the bathroom. Smith, Royce Waltman, and Joby Wright stood there silently, shaking their heads as if to say, “This is go
ing to be a long day.” Ron Felling, as always, managed to find the humor in the situation. “Well,” he said, “at least he’s stopped talking about Alford for a few minutes.”

  Knight had been railing about Alford’s inadequacies since Sunday (this was now Tuesday) after Indiana had been routed at Purdue in a game that was over by the second TV time-out. Alford had saved the first meeting between the two teams, an overtime win for Indiana in Bloomington, but he had been blanketed by Purdue’s quick guards in the game on Sunday and simply couldn’t get any decent looks at the basket. Knight had spent most of the last forty-eight hours ranting, saying at one point, “We will never be any good until Alford is no longer on this team.”

  Now Alford was off the hook, at least for a little while. On the other hand, Knight—who didn’t care what people thought about him—was so upset that he was about as angry during the first hour of practice as I’d seen him all year. No doubt the Purdue loss and the team’s need to win two home games that week to ensure an NCAA Tournament bid were part of it. But I was part of it too, because I had talked to that sumbitch.

  The thought that I should just leave practice so Knight would have one less visible thing to be angry about crossed my mind after about thirty minutes. But I was torn. I had tried to show Knight respect at all times during the season, but I didn’t want him to think he could intimidate me. I knew that was how he liked to operate: he believed that if you intimidated people, you controlled them. If I left practice because I had been yelled at it might appear I was intimidated.

  It was Tim Garl, the head trainer, who helped me make my decision. “Hey, come on in the back for a second,” he said while the team was shooting free throws. “I need to show you something.”

  I walked back to the training room with Tim. He came right to the point. “I think you need to take the rest of the day off,” he said. “Go home. You’re like red to a bull for him right now. If anything at all happens that you should know, we’ll let you know about it.”