He still has the same boyish face as the kid Knight fell in love with back in 1986, but there are hints of gray now in his close-cropped hair. He married his high school sweetheart, Stacey, and they have three children—all basketball players—who are fourteen, twelve, and ten. “My oldest is very talented,” he said. “She wants to play at either Connecticut or Tennessee. We’ll see. You have to let kids choose their own path.”
Bailey’s path has led him back home. And like most who have been close to Knight and fallen out with him, there has been a rapprochement of sorts.
“Right after I stopped playing, I was home one morning and Stacey came in and said, ‘Coach Knight is on the phone for you.’ I was stunned. We hadn’t spoken once since I graduated. I picked up the phone, and in that way of his, he just said, ‘Bailey, I think it’s time you reconnected with the program. We have practice at ten o’clock this morning. I’ll see you then.’
“I hung up the phone, thinking, ‘Who is he to just tell me to show up at practice like that?’ Of course, I got in the car and went.”
There is no doubt in my mind what bothered Knight most about Damon Bailey. It was the same thing that bothered him most about Steve Alford: both were more popular in Indiana than he was. As much of a hero as Knight was, he always had detractors because of his behavior. Neither Bailey nor Alford had any detractors.
“I think that’s true,” Bailey said. “Coach Knight has a pretty big ego, and I think that did bother him. Plus, Steve and I didn’t need his help when we graduated. We didn’t need him to get us a job or into law school or into coaching. We were both just fine.”
He smiled. “The way I always looked at it was this: no matter how bad we had it as players, the coaches had it worse. I never could have worked for him. I respect the guys who did, a lot. I think all of us would say the same thing about Coach Knight: you learn a lot from him—some of it is what to do, some of it is what not to do.
“I watched what happened at Indiana when I graduated and then when he went to Texas Tech. In fact, when I coached the high school team here [for two years], I took my coaches down to see a game and watch practice for a couple of days. [Patrick Knight arranged the trip.] When we were going down, I said to my guys, ‘I almost hope they lose so you can really get a sense of what it’s like to be around him.’ Well, they won and he went off anyway, so it worked out fine.
“People ask me if the game passed him by. Absolutely not. He knows the game as well as anyone who ever lived. But I do think people passed him by. Fair or unfair, today’s players won’t put up with what we put up with. And it’s probably fair to say the guys before us put up with things we wouldn’t put up with. I just think it got harder for him to get the quality of kid and of player that he had gotten in his glory years.”
There are certain truths buried deep in Bob Knight’s soul that he will probably never let escape. One is that Season on the Brink did exactly what it was supposed to do: give people some semblance of an answer to the question “Why do the players put up with him?”
And then there’s this truth: there was almost no way for Damon Bailey to live up to the hype created by Knight’s trips to Shawswick in the winter of 1986. And yet, he came about as close to it as was humanly possible.
A LITTLE MORE THAN five months after my meeting with Damon Bailey, and about an hour after my pizza at John’s with Chris Spitler, I went in search of Bob Knight at Madison Square Garden.
As I’ve mentioned before, our relationship had thawed through the years to the point of civility, if not cordiality. I have often told the story about the first time we spoke after the book came out—eight years later. I was in Hawaii covering Maryland in the Maui Classic, and Indiana was also in the tournament. One night Gary Williams and I walked back into the hotel after a game and saw Knight and his old friend Bob Murray walking through the lobby on a direct path for us.
“Uh-oh,” Gary said. “Here we go.”
Knight and Murray stopped. To my surprise, Knight said, “Gary, John, how are you guys?” putting out his hand as if the last time any of us had talked had been at lunch earlier that day.
We all shook hands. Knight said something complimentary about Gary’s team. He asked how things were going with me, what I was working on. We chatted casually the way you do for about seven or eight minutes, I would guess. The coaches wished each other luck the next day and off they went.
“Well, you just witnessed history,” I said when they were gone.
Gary smiled. “After all the crap he said about you, why would you even talk to him?”
That was the first time I used the “built my house” line.
After that, when we saw each other, we would exchange hellos. And I had spoken to him for about two hours on the phone while researching my Red Auerbach book, Let Me Tell You a Story.
I had no illusions though about what our relationship was and would continue to be. He had spoken to me for the Red book because of his devotion to Red. I’d even said that to him as we wound up the conversation. “Bob, I know you did this for Red, but I want to thank you for doing it,” I said.
“John, you actually did me a favor,” he said. “You gave me a chance to do something for Red, and that’s almost impossible to do.”
He was right about that. Red was always doing things for everyone else, but doing something for him was almost impossible.
My last encounter with Knight had been at the Army Hall of Fame induction fourteen months earlier, when he had not been amused by the “built my house” line. When I told people I was going to New York to try to speak to him, they had all said, “He’ll talk to you. It’s been almost twenty-five years.”
Sadly, I couldn’t get anyone to put up the million dollars I was willing to bet that Knight would not talk to me. You see, this is who he is. By the very act of saying, “Bob, I’d like to talk to you,” I would be putting him in the position he loves most in life: one of control.
Later that same season, when Knight agreed to do an interview with CBS College Sports (he was extremely available in February and March, largely because he was being paid to be a spokesman for a company promoting prostate cancer awareness), someone asked me if I would like to do the interview. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“There’s exactly one way to get Knight to do the interview with me,” I said. “Tell him he can be interviewed by anyone who does work for the network except me. Tell him I won’t do it. Then there’s a possibility he might say, ‘I’ll only do it with Feinstein.’ ”
I was half joking. Maybe one-quarter joking, actually. My best approach to Knight that evening in the Garden would have been to say, “I’m writing a new book; you’re in it, but I have no interest in talking to you for it because, frankly, I don’t think you’ve got anything interesting to say at this point in your life.”
It probably wouldn’t have worked, but it would have had a better chance than just being straight up. Still, I knew I had to go with straight up.
I walked into the Garden at about five o’clock, trying to remember how much the building had meant to me as a kid. It’s old now, and the rafters, which were once reserved only for Knicks and Rangers championship banners, are now filled with so many cheesy banners for anyone who has ever walked in the front door that you can’t even pick out the ones that matter.
Still, it was the Garden, the place I had dreamed about getting the chance to work in as a kid. And I had work to do.
When I walked out to the floor area, Knight was standing in the entrance to the tunnel holding court with about ten people who were clearly hanging on his every word. I instantly thought back to 1996: Knight was standing on the exact spot where he had turned his back on Mike Krzyzewski to tell D. Wayne Lukas that story he just had to tell him at that moment.
I could see this would go on for a while, so I went in the back to see Gary Williams. Knowing I don’t go to that many games anymore, Gary asked me what had brought me to New York. When I told him, he laughed.
“What’s the over-under on how long that conversation lasts?” he said.
“I’ve got about a minute in the pool,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later, when I walked back out, the crowd had dwindled to Dick Groat, the baseball Hall of Famer who had been such a great athlete that he had played both Major League Baseball and in the NBA, and some kid from ESPN who was clearly there to get Knight over to the announcer table as soon as possible.
Okay, I thought, now or never.
I didn’t want to interrupt Knight and Groat, but I didn’t want Knight to escape. So I stood a few yards away and waited. Knight was telling Groat a story about Groat when I walked up.
“You see, I know more about you than ninety-nine percent of the people in the world,” he said. “For example, I know that you were such a good softball player that Fred Zollner [the owner of the Fort Wayne Pistons in the 1950s] actually paid you to play softball for his team in the summertime.”
Groat, who does color on the Pittsburgh radio network, shook his head. “No, he didn’t,” he said.
Knight was thrown off stride for an instant. “He didn’t? I heard that he did.”
“Not true,” Groat said.
At that point Knight glanced up and saw me. He immediately launched into a story about Seth Greenberg, the coach at Virginia Tech, calling him for advice after he had done Tech’s game against Kansas State a few days earlier. I wasn’t really listening anymore. Knight was slow-playing me just as he had done with Krzyzewski on the same spot. I knew how this was going to turn out, but I had to play it to the end.
At some point as Knight was explaining to Groat how he had explained coaching to Greenberg, Groat looked up and saw me. “John,” he said, breaking into Knight’s monologue perhaps in the hopes of ending it. “How are you?” He turned in my direction and offered his hand.
“I’m fine, Dick, great to see you,” I said shaking his hand. “Bob, how are you?”
“I’m fine, John.”
Knight was looking out at the floor as if studying the midcourt logo. I took another shot.
“I was really sorry to hear about General Murphy. I know how much he meant to you.”
Ray Murphy had been Knight’s boss at Army. He had passed away a few months earlier.
“Yeah.”
Groat now saw his chance to escape. “Bob, I have to go get ready,” he said. “It was great to talk to you.”
“Yeah, me too, Dick,” Knight said.
As soon as Groat walked away, he turned and, moving quite well for someone who had just turned seventy, began walking back into the tunnel. I had seen this act before.
“Bob, have you got a minute?” I said, falling in next to him.
“No,” he said, still not looking at me.
“Bob, I literally need to ask you one question which requires a yes or no answer,” I said. I was telling the truth. My one question would be: “I’m doing a book. It’s been twenty-five years since I wrote Season on the Brink. Is there some point this season when we can sit down and talk?”
Knight stopped and turned briefly in my direction, pointing a finger. “I told you no,” he said. “Do you speak English, John? No.”
He started to turn to walk away but I couldn’t resist a parting shot (I never can). “Bob, if you don’t like my next book, please don’t complain about it to me. Thanks for the time.”
I have no idea if he responded to that in any way. I had turned my back to walk away. To quote Krzyzewski, it was the period on the end of the sentence.
As I walked away, I couldn’t help but smile and think back to that hotel room in Lexington twenty-five years earlier. You see, Krzyzewski had it right from the very beginning: I was insane to volunteer to spend a season with Bob Knight. Krzyzewski’s advice was reasoned and sound.
But I’m very glad I didn’t listen.
EPILOGUE
The Best and the Brightest
WHEN I BEGAN THIS book, I planned to end it with the period on the end of the Bob Knight sentence—whatever that period proved to be. But as I closed in on the finish line, it occurred to me that I didn’t want the final scene of the book to involve Knight.
There’s no doubt that A Season on the Brink was the beginning for me—but it certainly wasn’t the end. As I wrote earlier, I don’t question for a minute the significance it had in my life. That said, the book I enjoyed the most and the book that still resonates most with me is A Civil War.
I still have to catch myself when I refer to “the kids” I wrote about in that book. Like it or not, they are all men now, well into their thirties. Some are still in the military, some are not. They all remain special in my eyes.
Of course, the first time I wrote about athletes from Army and Navy in a book was when I wrote about David Robinson and Kevin Houston in A Season Inside.
David was the unlikely superstar, the gawky kid who had gone to Navy as a 6-foot-7-inch future engineer and had emerged four years later as a 7-foot-1 future NBA Hall of Famer. He had gone on to win three NBA titles playing for the San Antonio Spurs and had become the role model for how one could be a superstar athlete and still be a truly admirable human being.
Kevin Houston was as admirable, just not as rich or famous. As an Army senior he had led the nation in scoring as a 5'11", 165-pound shooting guard. While Robinson was the number one pick in the NBA draft when he graduated, even though the Spurs knew they would have to wait at least two years to get him in uniform, all Houston wanted was a decent shot to make the 1988 U.S. Olympic team. He was invited to the team’s training camp in Colorado Springs, but was an early cut.
“John Thompson was the coach,” Houston said. “He liked guards who were tall and quick, long and defensive-oriented—not shooters. I was none of those things. My chance was to make the team because he wanted at least one three-point shooter to bring in off the bench. He obviously didn’t want that.”
Houston was on night maneuvers in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on the night the U.S. team lost to the Soviet Union in the Olympic semifinals. He listened to the game on a handheld radio. “All I remember is they couldn’t make a jump shot,” he said. “Believe me, it didn’t make me feel any better about things.”
Houston served in the Army until the downsizing in 1990. During his time in the military, he played with Robinson on the All Armed Services team. They knew each other from competing for four years, and there was great mutual respect between them. During their time as teammates, they became friends. After leaving the service, Robinson went to San Antonio; Houston had a couple of brief tryouts with NBA teams—first the New Jersey Nets, then the Washington Bullets.
He was a late cut both times and knew it was time to find a job. By then he had a family. He had married Liz, his high school sweetheart, right after graduation from West Point. Their daughter, Lauren, was born fourteen months later. Luke came along four years after that, and LeAnne came three years after Luke. Houston got a job working for Verizon in corporate security and has stayed with the company since then. Even after he settled into a real job, the basketball bug hadn’t completely gone away. He continued to play on weekends for the Scranton Miners in the Eastern League, getting a hundred dollars a game to play with quite a few former Division I players. He also coached for six years at a private school near Pearl River, the town where he had grown up, only a few miles from West Point.
During those years I would often see Kevin because he came to most Army home games. By the time Luke was about six, he was going to games with his dad and already seemed to have inherited his sweet shooting stroke. Kevin was always upbeat, someone who was completely happy with his life and comfortable with what he had been as a basketball player.
He stayed in frequent touch with Robinson. “Whenever David would come to town to play the Knicks or the Nets, he would leave tickets for me,” he said. “It was fun, especially when Luke got older because he loved going with me to the games. One night we met David afterward for dinner, and he brought Tim Duncan and Terry Porter. I thi
nk Luke was about seven and you can imagine how cool that was for him. David and Tim talked to him all night like he was a little brother.”
He smiled. “The best part was when David kept telling him what a great player I had been. Luke couldn’t believe that David Robinson was sitting there telling him that his dad was a great basketball player.”
Robinson ended up playing for fourteen seasons in the NBA and was selected as one of the top fifty players in NBA history during the league’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebration. He retired in San Antonio, where he has built and financed a school for the underprivileged. A lot of people would like to see him run for mayor.
“Not going to happen,” he said early in 2011. “Why would I get into politics? I’m happy doing what I’m doing right now, and I don’t need to ask anyone to vote for me for anything.”
Robinson was walking, talking, and signing autographs all at once as he discussed his political nonambitions. He was back at Navy for an alumni game and a twenty-fifth reunion of the 1986 team that he had led to the Elite Eight.
His teammates had urged him to come back for the weekend largely because the school was planning to honor Paul Evans, the coach who had seen something in Robinson as a high school senior that made him believe he could be a good college player. “A 7′1″ superstar? No, I never imagined that,” Evans always said. “But a good college player—yes. He really didn’t know how to play, but you could see the potential.”
Robinson’s growth spurt, along with the arrival of a tough little point guard named Doug Wojcik and the presence of talented, heady players like Kylor Whitaker and Vernon Butler—whose number is retired in the rafters at Alumni Hall right next to Robinson’s—made Navy into a special team. The Mids went to three straight NCAA Tournaments, including that magical run to the Elite Eight.
One on One Page 50