Shortly after 2 P.M., with a crowd about 1,000 below capacity in the building, the season finally began. It took thirteen seconds for Kent State to score. It took three minutes for Robinson to miss a box out; it took about one half-second for Knight to leap from his seat screaming, “Stew, that’s yours,” as Robinson went by. It took seven minutes for Indiana to gain control of the game. Daryl Thomas, who six days earlier had been deemed totally incapable of playing, swooped into the passing lane, grabbed the ball, and went the length of the court for a dunk. Indiana had the lead at 17-9 and Knight was on his feet, clapping his hands. Knight’s handclap is often imitated around the Indiana locker room. He turns his hands perpendicular to one another and brings them together almost like two cymbals. He almost never claps more than once and the clap is usually the capper to a rousing “Let’s get ’em,” or an equally rousing “What the hell is wrong with you?” By midseason, Murry Bartow was doing Knight’s clap every time he stood up on the bench without realizing it. It was both distinctive and addictive.
Thomas’s steal put the Hoosiers in command, and they didn’t really give up that command for the rest of the half. Robinson got yanked after Kent State guard Mike Roberts beat him on a drive to the basket. Brooks subbed for him. Calloway came off the bench and hit his first six shots. In the press box, Hammel, feeling comfortable as the lead built to fourteen points, cracked, “I wonder if anyone has ever gone an entire career without missing a shot?”
Sitting near Hammel during an Indiana game was worth the price of admission in itself. Hammel had missed exactly two games in Knight’s fifteen seasons at Indiana. Although he had not graduated from the school, he was about as loyal to it as any alumnus could be. This was especially true in the case of his relationship with Knight.
They were an interesting couple, Knight and Hammel. The writer was four years older than the coach and was as gentle as the coach was vitriolic. Even though other writers knew how close the two were, Hammel was rarely disparaged for this relationship in a business where that kind of relationship is always frowned upon.
Part of the reason for their tolerance was the simple understanding that no sports editor in Bloomington could survive if he was ever cut off from the Indiana basketball team. If you can’t cover that which interests your readers more than anything else, you aren’t going to be valuable to the paper for very long. And everyone who knows Knight at all knows that one is not allowed to be neutral in a relationship with him. You are either for us or against us. Hammel, whose sympathies were bound to lie with Indiana and Knight in most cases anyway, had made the decision years ago that he was with Knight.
The other reason few people disparaged Hammel was Hammel. Not only was his basketball knowledge respected, but he was generally considered a true gentleman in a business often sorely lacking in them. Some hometown writers allow their prejudices to affect what they write about other teams. Hammel never did that. He wasn’t about to attack Knight, but he didn’t run around attacking other people unfairly either.
Hammel is a good newspaper man. He is one of those people who can write the entire paper—his prolificness is legendary—lay it out and write all the headlines if necessary. It bothered him sometimes that he wasn’t as objective as he should be. In fact, he had been angry with himself the previous season when someone had written him a letter about his column on the chair throw, commenting, “It read like a legal brief prepared on behalf of the defendant.”
“Probably,” Hammel said much later, not without chagrin, “he was right.”
Hammel’s friendship with Knight was quite real—on both sides. Knight respected Hammel’s knowledge of the game and would often solicit his opinions. Only rarely did Hammel disagree with Knight—partly because they generally thought alike, partly because disagreeing with him was usually a waste of time. It had to be very important and Hammel had to be quite certain he was right and Knight was wrong before Hammel would actively disagree with Knight’s position on something.
Because he was very much a part of the inner circle, Hammel had as much stake in the outcome of the games as the players and coaches. If Indiana lost or played poorly, he was going to be subjected to late-night phone calls and a depressed and angry companion. Hammel didn’t want that any more than Alford, Daryl Thomas, or Tim Garl did. His face during games was a mask of indifference, but when something went wrong, he would very quietly agonize: “Oh no, oh goodness no, Jiminy Christmas, no. Oh no, I don’t think I want that.” He never called Indiana “we,” and he never changed expression. But in tight situations he got very quiet and noticeably nervous. Usually with good reason.
On this day, the half ended poorly. Leading 52-38, Indiana gave up the last two baskets of the half, a huge sin since Knight had fifteen minutes to vent his anger about this regression. First, though, Knight stopped the officials at center court to tell them what a lousy job they were doing. This was not a good sign. Knight was still finishing the one-year probation that had accompanied his suspension after the chair-throwing incident, and getting upset after twenty minutes of the first game with a ten-point lead was not an encouraging signal to those hoping Knight would cool his act this season.
The first halftime was not encouraging, either. Even with the lead, Knight was not happy. Once the game started, Kent State had ceased being the Celtics. Now they were just the goddamn Golden Flashes from the goddamn Mid-American Conference, not capable, probably, of beating anyone in the Big Ten. And here it was halftime, and the lead, which could have been sixteen or eighteen, was only ten.
He blistered Harris and Jadlow. “This is not f—— junior college,” he told them. “You guys have something go wrong and you sulk and pout. That doesn’t go over very big with me. Jadlow, you are just flopping around out there on the boards like a great white whale. You let them get five rebounds that you had your hands on.”
Knight’s distress was very real—not because he thought this game was in serious jeopardy, but because he was looking ahead to a week that included games against Notre Dame and Kentucky, with Louisville not long after that. “We got outrebounded 17–9,” he said. “Do you know what it’s going to be like rebounding against Louisville if you get outrebounded by this team? You’ll never see the basketball.
“They’ve scrapped and fought and played hard, and we’ve whined and bitched. Robinson, you get beat twice in the first four minutes. Brooks, you are two plays behind all the time. We gave up forty-two points—forty-two points!”
Like the pregame ritual, halftime was almost always the same: Knight would come in and talk to the players, telling them what he thought of the first half—in this case not much. Then he and the coaches would retreat to the private hallway just outside the door, where they would review the first half and make decisions about the second. Felling, as the junior man on the staff, was in charge of knowing how much time was left before the second half started. Generally, Knight would ask him three or four times—sometimes more—how much time was left. Waltman was responsible for knowing the time-out situation, and Smith was responsible for knowing who on both teams was in foul trouble.
The coaches’ pow-wows consisted, more often than not, of Knight’s analysis of the first half. His commentary on different players was often brutal. Today, Brooks, who had only played briefly, and Robinson were his targets. “They cannot play, simple as that,” he said to the coaches, using a phrase he would use to describe every player on the team at some point before the season was over. “Robinson can’t see anything and Brooks can’t think out there.”
The coaches listened. Often they agreed with Knight’s assessments. Almost as often, they knew he was being too harsh, reacting emotionally in an emotional situation. They were not likely, however, to interrupt and say, “Coach, you’re probably being a little too emotional.”
What was important was to get through the complaining and decide what to do in the second half. Knight has been through this so many times that he seems to know just how long he can afford to let
off steam before he has to start making decisions. This day was easy. He wanted to make two changes: “Let’s set our defense up at the top of the key. They’re just too quick for us to get out and try to guard them.” This admission disturbed Knight because he hated nothing more than having to play containment defense. Second, he wanted to start Calloway over Robinson. That made sense; Calloway had six field goals, Robinson none.
Once the coaches finish their initial meeting, they return to the locker room to tell the players what changes will be made. Sometimes Knight will diagram a play or a defense he wants to use. Almost always, he will reinforce his initial comments. Then the coaches will go back to the hallway once more. “Anything else?” Knight will ask. An idea might be discussed, or everyone might just look at each other and shrug.
The second meeting produced shrugs. There were four minutes left. Knight was calmer now, but as the coaches turned to go back into the locker room for a final word, Knight slumped against the wall in the hallway. “I’m just not sure,” he said softly, “I can take another year of this. I’m really not sure I can take it.”
Back inside for a final word, Knight was upbeat again. “You’ve done some good things offensively. You’ve found people, you’ve run good plays. You’ve had some good moments in the first twenty minutes. Let’s go out now and play twenty good minutes.”
With those words ringing in their ears, they proceeded to play horribly for six minutes. A Roberts jumper with 14:07 left in the game drew Kent to within one, 55-54. Assembly Hall, which is not very loud at best, was like a morgue. Knight had already called one time-out. He would not call another. “Oh my,” was Hammel’s murmured comment. If this game were to get away, it would be, as Hammel often put it, “a major disaster.”
But it didn’t happen. Calloway made a textbook cut and Harris found him for a layup. Thomas stole an inbounds pass and Alford swished a twenty-footer while he was being fouled. His free throw made it 60-54. Kent got a bucket, but Indiana scored the next eleven points, the last of them coming on a gorgeous pass off the fast break from Alford to Calloway.
The 16-2 run took less than four minutes. The rest of the game was academic, Indiana coasting, 89-73. As the band played “Indiana,” Knight walked off the floor, shoulders hunched, head down. He almost always walks off the floor this way, even when he is happy. This time though, he wasn’t happy.
The locker room would not have been much quieter if Kent State had won the game. “You just played a team that played so much harder and smarter than you, it’s not even funny,” Knight told them. “You didn’t play smart, you weren’t where you were supposed to be. This team has a long, long way to go. You struggled like hell to beat a team that last year finished 17-13 and lost its two leading scorers. You don’t scrap, you don’t see things. You got little chance of winning. This team was probably one of the five weakest we’ll play on our twenty-eight-game schedule. Harris, you and Jadlow gave us nothing. This is not junior college, boys. It’s a different ball game.”
When he was finished, Knight asked Hillman and Smith to come into the hallway. “I can’t redshirt you two,” he told them. “I need you to play this year. We just haven’t got enough players without you. I’m sorry.”
Smith, who had no desire to be redshirted, was delighted. Hillman, still injured, wasn’t sure if the decision would stick. “We’ll see what happens,” he said.
Mentally, Knight had decided he needed Hillman and Smith in place of Robinson and Brooks. They were deep in the doghouse. Twenty-four hours earlier, Knight had called Brooks aside in practice to tell him how pleased he was with the way he had worked and the way he had progressed. He had honestly believed what he had said then, and he honestly believed what he was saying now.
After they showered, he blistered them one more time. Only three players had pleased him: Alford, Thomas, and Calloway. “Do you know how different it’s going to be for you people trying to play Kentucky and Notre Dame? They’re so much better than these teams, it’s not even funny. If you got outrebounded by these people do you know what Darrell Walker is going to do to you?”
Knight meant Kentucky All-American Kenny Walker, but he had a mental block and continually referred to him as Darrell Walker, a former All-American at Arkansas who now played for the New York Knicks. “Be back here at six o’clock,” Knight finally told them. “We’ll go through the film. We’ve got no time to waste because I guarantee you we aren’t ready to play Notre Dame this way.”
The players dismissed, Knight began his postgame ritual. It began, always, in the small room off the locker room. He retreated there with Ed Williams, Ralph Floyd, and any other close friends who might be at the game. Occasionally one of the coaches joined the group. Often, Knight sent for Hammel. Then he repeated what he had already said to the coaches. In this case it was more on Brooks, more on Robinson. “It’s so disappointing,” Knight said, “to sit there and not see them play the way we want them playing.”
Everyone nodded. Kit Klingelhoffer, the long-time sports information director (SID), came in. Knight looked at him. “Are they ready?” Klingelhoffer nodded.
Klingelhoffer was another person who had long ago adjusted to Life With Knight. He had as difficult a job as any SID in the country because he had to deal with a coach who said no far more than he said yes, who was apt to become upset at any moment, who might blow up at him at any second.
Klingelhoffer, like everyone else who had been at Indiana for any extended period, had been through Knight purgatory. One season Knight had not spoken to him. Another season Knight had not spoken to the press after games, instead speaking only to Klingelhoffer, who would then type up Knight’s quotes. Most writers that season took to reporting what Knight “reportedly said” after games, since none of them actually heard him say anything.
Knight had come a long way in his press relations over the years. He almost never ducked a postgame press conference, and the Indiana locker room was almost always open to the press following games. In fact, in a league full of paranoid coaches, many of whom never allowed writers in their locker rooms, Knight was now viewed as not uncooperative by most in the media. At times he was downright entertaining, and he was almost always quotable. Knight still viewed most of the media with disdain, but he had learned not to go off the wall every time someone criticized him, and he had also learned to stay calm through most of his press conferences.
Klingelhoffer never said anything when he came to get Knight after a game. Years of experience had taught him that when Knight was ready, he was ready. Not before. Usually, though, Knight was ready when Klingelhoffer came in because he was just as happy to get the postgame press conference over with.
Knight almost never told the press exactly what he thought, but that hardly made him unusual; few college coaches tell the press what they really think after a game. If the play of Brooks, Robinson, Harris, and Jadlow disturbed him, the media never knew. Knight talked at length about Daryl Thomas, Steve Alford, and Rick Calloway. He lauded Kent State for playing hard. He said he saw a lot of things that he had liked. All of this was true; it was just incomplete.
Press conference over, Knight drove crosstown to tape his weekly TV show. The assistant coaches began to go through the tape of the Kent State game. Waltman and Salazar were on their way back from Notre Dame, where they had flown for Notre Dame’s game that afternoon against Butler. Waltman had gone to the game to put together a scouting report, while Salazar had checked into a local hotel to tape the game off a local telecast.
As Knight drove away from Assembly Hall, his mind was totally focused on Notre Dame. The Kent State game existed now only as a tool to get ready for Notre Dame. “We’ll beat Notre Dame,” he said. “In fact, I think we can pound them. They don’t play very good defense and this game was absolutely perfect for us in terms of preparation. Now we’ll have their attention the next three days. They won’t get bigheaded because they’ve blown somebody out.”
Knight had a faraway look in his eye as h
e drove as if he was seeing the game in front of him. “The best defense to play against them would be a two-three zone. That way [David] Rivers can’t penetrate. Make them play a halfcourt game and they’re not that good.”
Knight was not likely to put in a zone defense in three days after twenty-one years of coaching man-to-man. But he would set up his man-to-man to pinch inside so hard that Notre Dame would feel as if it was playing against a zone. “The only thing that worries me,” he said pulling the car into the TV station, “is time. I wish we had more than three days to get ready.”
Although his assistants prepare two or three games ahead, looking at and preparing tape, Knight never begins to think specifically about an opponent until that is the next game. In six weeks of preseason practice he had often talked in the abstract to the team about Notre Dame, Kentucky, and Louisville, the three truly tough December games on the schedule, but was never specific. Now, Knight and his players would walk, talk, eat, and sleep Notre Dame for three days.
Knight’s TV show was always an adventure. He taped it after Saturday games for airing on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes this meant a taping session at three in the morning after returning from a night road game. The host was Chuck Marlowe, a gentle, sweet-tempered man who had learned over the years to let Knight run the show. If Knight was in a bad mood, Marlowe made the questions as soft as possible. If Knight was in a good mood, Marlowe just got out of the way because Knight was apt to say or do anything.
That fact had been best illustrated in 1981 when Knight had brought a jackass wearing a Purdue hat to the show. He had introduced the jackass as “someone who is here to represent Purdue’s point of view.” Naturally, the show caused an uproar, especially among Purdue people. Knight was so pleased with himself that he wanted to bring the jackass back for the Indiana basketball banquet, which is televised statewide. Ed Williams, who knew better than anyone Knight’s penchant for pushing a good thing too far, had called Nancy Knight to ask if there was anyone who could talk Knight out of repeating the jackass act. “Only Pete Newell or Fred Taylor,” Nancy Knight told him.
A Season on the Brink Page 13