“Sometimes,” he said softly, leaving the restaurant, “you see what it really means to have guts.”
Several hours later, Landon Turner wheeled himself into the Indiana locker room. Turner had graduated the previous spring, and Knight had helped get him a job working in minority counseling at the Indiana-Indianapolis campus. Turner said hello all around the room. When Knight walked in, he looked at the gaudy sneakers Turner was wearing. They were Air-Jordans, the Michael Jordan-sponsored shoe that had become the rage among kids.
“Where did you get those?”
“Mike Jordan sent them to me . . . . Airmail.”
“Yeah, well they make you look like a fag.”
A moment later, after the team had gone out to warm up and the locker room was virtually empty, Knight walked over to shake hands with Turner. “Your grip, Landon, it’s really getting stronger.” Turner beamed. The two men talked for several minutes, Knight’s arm around Turner the whole time. As they left the locker room, Knight asked Turner if he was coming to Bloomington for the Michigan game. “I’m going to try, Coach,” Turner said.
They had reached the door now. People were milling around outside, finding their way to seats. Knight changed his tone as soon as they were outside. “You better get your fat ass down there or you’re going to be in trouble. You got it?”
Turner grinned. “I got it, Coach.”
He wheeled off to find his seat. Knight went off to watch his team rout Mississippi State. When it was over, there wasn’t much he could say. “I don’t think we can play much better than that,” he told the coaches. “They’ve done just about everything we’ve asked of them so far.”
So far. One year ago the record had been 8–2 going into Big Ten play. Now, it was 8–2. There had been hope then. There was hope now. But there was also a hint of fear. No one could even bear the thought of déjà vu. In three days, 1985 would be over. If 1986 was anything like 1985 had been, there might not be a 1987.
10.
Déjà Vu
The day after the Mississippi State game was about as close to a day off as Knight gives the team during the season. They met for about thirty minutes to go over Michigan’s personnel, but that was all. The next day, Monday, would begin a four-day period that would burn with intensity. Classes did not start for another two weeks, so Knight expected his players to think nothing but basketball.
It is impossible to overstate how much Knight wanted to beat Michigan. He wanted this game to send a message to the basketball world that Indiana was most definitely back. Notre Dame had offered a clue, and the near misses at Kentucky and Louisville might have caught some people’s eyes. But to beat Michigan, the top-heavy favorite in a conference where Indiana had been picked anywhere from third to fifth in preseason, would most certainly get the attention of basketball people.
What’s more, the game was at home. In Knight’s first thirteen years at Indiana, the Hoosiers had compiled a record of 99–12 in Big Ten games played at Assembly Hall. In 1985, they went 3–6, losing their last four home games. This was unacceptable to Knight. Now, the Big Ten season would open with home games against Michigan and Michigan State—both teams that had won at Indiana the previous season. Knight wanted to get things back to normal quickly, and he felt that to have any chance to win the Big Ten, Indiana had to win these two games.
They practiced twice on Monday and twice on Tuesday, New Year’s Eve. Knight was in a barely controlled fury in each workout. On Monday morning he told them they had practiced well, were doing just what they had to, and were going to win the game. On Monday afternoon, he threw them out. On Tuesday morning, he told them that this was the first game he had ever gone into as a coach believing his team had no chance to win. On Tuesday afternoon, he told them if they just played hard Michigan would fold down the stretch.
Up and down he went, the team bouncing along with him. Someone made a good play and he knew Michigan was going to lose. Someone made a bad play and he couldn’t see any point to even showing up for the game on Thursday.
Knight was so intense about the game that he even made a plea to the fans on his TV show, pointing out that the students were still away and their support, their noise, would be badly needed on Thursday. He was distressed because there were still some tickets left. He wanted a sellout, day after New Year’s or not.
The only time Knight took a break from coaching, looking at tape, or asking the assistants over and over, “Do we have any chance?” was to watch football. When Army beat Illinois in the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Eve, Knight was delighted. “It just proves,” he said, “that God does watch football games sometimes.”
It was on New Year’s Day that Knight put his game face firmly into place. There was only one practice that day, in the afternoon, but it was a war. When the white team spurted for a few minutes, Knight was furious. “Reds, you are getting eaten alive by the white team. You play like this tomorrow, it’s gonna be 20–25 points and you’ll never be in the f—— ballgame.”
This was normal day-before-a-big-game stuff. Everyone understood. Everyone knew how much Knight wanted to beat Michigan. If it had stayed that way until the end of practice, everyone would have gone home feeling good, feeling ready. But then the simmering antagonism between Knight and Alford, that feeling of rivalry that seems to exist just below the surface in their relationship, exploded in everyone’s face.
It started when Knight decided that Alford had not picked up quickly enough on defense. “Goddamn it, Alford, how many times do I have to tell you about finding your man on conversion?” Knight said. “How many f—— times?”
What Knight had not seen—what he would see later on tape—was that Alford had been accidentally bumped going down the floor by Daryl Thomas. He had been with his man until Thomas sent him flying. Alford started to explain. “I don’t want to hear it,” Knight broke in. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. I’m sick of them.”
Knight threw his most withering glare at Alford. To everyone’s surprise, including Knight’s, Alford glared right back—if only for a moment. That was enough, though. From that point on, Alford could do nothing right. Indiana players are not supposed to glare back.
The only Knight player who had ever made a habit of glaring back at Knight was Ted Kitchel. Now, Knight grudgingly admitted that Kitchel was one of the toughest, most stubborn players he had ever coached. Then, he made Kitchel’s life miserable. Players still told the story about the postgame tirade that Knight had ended by glaring right at Kitchel. Kitchel glared right back. The two of them had stood there glaring for what seemed like an hour while everyone else just sat and watched them.
Alford was a little bit like Kitchel. Not as openly stubborn or rebellious, but like Kitchel, he had a definite love-hate relationship with Knight. “I can’t tell you how important my relationship with him is to me,” Kitchel said of Knight. “It makes me feel like I’m special just because I had a chance to play for him. I still care what he thinks of me. Probably too much, but I do. And yet, he makes me feel uncomfortable when I’m around him, and I can vividly remember times when I hated him. Really hated him.”
The one that most people remembered most had happened in 1983. Knight had just finished blistering the team, telling them how awful they were, how they would probably never win another game. Finished, Knight stalked out the door. Or so Kitchel thought. What Knight had done was walk around the corner to the door where he could not be seen and stopped.
Thinking Knight was gone, Kitchel turned to the team and said, “Just ignore him. He’s full of shit. We aren’t nearly that bad.”
With that, Knight roared around the corner. He grabbed Kitchel’s red notebook and tore it up, throwing the pages all over the locker room. Kitchel, he vowed, would never play again, he would suffer for this. Kitchel just sat and stared at Knight. For two days he didn’t practice and when he did practice again, Knight chased him up and down the court kicking him in the rear end, yelling, “Move, Kitchel, move!”
&nbs
p; Several weeks later, Kitchel, who had undergone back surgery as a freshman and then come back to lead Indiana in scoring as a junior and senior, played what turned out to be his last game. It was at Iowa. His back had been getting worse and worse, and he had soaked it almost the entire night just so he could walk on the floor.
“I played five minutes and I could barely walk, much less run,” Kitchel remembered. “I had to come out. That night he [Knight] came to see me. ‘I know how hard you tried, Ted,’ he said. ‘You gave this team everything you had and I want you to know I know that and appreciate it.’
“It was as if he knew it was over and he didn’t have to get all over me anymore. He had done what he had to do.”
Someday, Knight would tell Alford how much he appreciated how hard he had tried. But not on New Year’s Day, 1986. He picked on Alford and picked on him and finally, when Alford shot him another look, he threw him out. “You go take a shower,” he screamed. “And if you ever give me another rotten look like that you’ll never f—— play here again.”
Alford left. The last thing the team needed twenty-four hours before playing Michigan was a Knight-Alford feud. Or for Alford to miss any practice time. Knight realized the latter. Five minutes after bouncing Alford, he went into the locker room after him. His angry words could be heard from the floor. Both reappeared a few minutes later. Alford made it to the end of practice without further incident, but the focus had shifted: On a day when the team truly needed to feel like a team, everyone was wondering what would happen next between the coach and his best player.
Knight would not have been Knight if the end of practice had marked the end of the incident. He called Alford outside the locker room after dismissing the rest of the team for the evening. “I want to tell you just how mad I was at you after that Kentucky game,” he began. The Kentucky game was now twenty-four days ago. No matter. Knight was still getting the last word.
As always, even amidst the feuds and the blowups, Knight had done a superb job of getting his team ready to play a big game. He even had the crowd—a sellout finally—ready to play. They were louder and more into the game than at any time all season.
During the afternoon walk-through, Knight kept reminding the players that Michigan was going to come in overconfident. “We’re going to have a hell of an opportunity, because they’re going to come in here fatheaded,” he said. “They haven’t played anybody tough to play in a month. We will be tough to play.”
Knight casually mentioned during the walk-through that he had noticed on the tape that Alford had been knocked flying by Thomas on the play that had started the flareup the previous day. It was as close to an apology as Knight was going to come with Alford.
Everything Knight wanted was there. The players were wound tight. “I’ve never seen us like this in a walk-through,” Kreigh Smith said to Joe Hillman. “We’re going to win this game.”
They began as if they intended to win by fifty points. It was 8–0 Indiana before the game was three minutes old, and Frieder had to call time. The place was rocking. Alford shook his fist at the crowd in his excitement after a Michigan turnover. Harris began the game with a thunderous dunk off a gorgeous pass from Morgan. Calloway hit twice. Harris hit again. Michigan couldn’t find the basket.
All was right with the world.
But it didn’t last. Poised and experienced, Michigan methodically came back. It outscored Indiana 11–2 to take the lead, and just kept building the lead. Indiana couldn’t keep Michigan from getting the ball inside. Alford was being blanketed by Michigan guard Gary Grant. The frustration quickly built inside Knight’s head. It was last year all over again. During a time-out he screamed at Calloway. “You can beat all the f—— Mississippi States in the world with your bullshit but you can’t beat anybody any good with it. Get in the game or get the hell out.”
Dakich grabbed Calloway leaving the huddle to soothe him. The game was ten minutes old and things were getting out of hand. A moment later, Thomas was called for charging by London Bradley, perhaps Knight’s least favorite official. It was Bradley who had made the call that had led to the chair throw. Knight certainly hadn’t forgotten. Neither had Bradley.
When Bradley called Thomas for charging, Knight was off the bench, yelling at him. A few seconds later, when Thomas missed a shot inside, Knight was certain he had been fouled. Bradley, on the play, made no call. “You stupid sonofabitch, can’t you see anything?” Knight railed.
Bradley could certainly hear. He stopped and nailed Knight with a technical. The score was already 23–14. After the technical, it was 25–14. It could have become a complete disaster at that point, but Michigan, on a 25–6 run, finally cooled, and Indiana limped to the locker room trailing 35–27 at halftime.
There were no tantrums at halftime. Knight was angry, but not hysterical. Thomas (zero rebounds) had backed down from Michigan center Roy Tarpley. Alford had taken bad shots. Calloway had forgotten what he was supposed to do. “You are going to play teams like this for eighteen straight games,” Knight said. “You can’t play like this and beat anybody.”
They decided to try Jadlow on Tarpley to start the second half and Robinson in Morgan’s place. They wanted Robinson’s quickness and Jadlow’s size. Harris had played well, but Jadlow’s extra height and bulk were needed against Tarpley.
It took less than three minutes to get the lead down to 39–37. It took Michigan another three minutes to punch the margin back up to 50–39. It was almost as if the Wolverines were toying with them: let them get close, then pull away again. The lead was 56–44 when Alford finally got going. He hit from twenty feet to cut it to ten. He hit again to cut it to eight. Calloway hit twice. Alford made a steal and fed Morgan for a layup and suddenly it was 60–56 with more than six minutes left to play.
Richard Rellford hit one free throw to make it 61–56. Alford promptly bombed again. It was 61–58. The crowd was berserk. But Michigan was not going to fold. Grant hit from the baseline. Alford answered. Butch Wade hit two foul shots. Alford answered again. Alford now had twelve points in six minutes. Michigan still led 65–62.
“Defensive possession,” Knight screamed. “One time on defense.” But they couldn’t. Rellford, a nonshooter, hit a ten-footer. There were still more than three minutes left. Steve Eyl, playing for the fouled-out Thomas, flashed open inside. His layup rolled around the rim. Harris went up as if to tip the ball, but pulled back. The ball rolled in to cut the lead to three again.
But no. Charging into the lane came London Bradley, waving his arms. Harris, Bradley said, had touched the ball on the rim. Harris had not touched the ball, in fact, he hadn’t come close to touching it. The official with the best view of the play, Phil Bova, had watched the play and turned to run downcourt. Bradley had made a horrendous call, and one had to wonder if at least subconsciously—like Tom Rucker at Kentucky—he hadn’t been saying, “Take that, you sonofabitch.”
Knight had to be physically restrained by Wright and Bomba. “Grab me, Brad,” he said, “because if you don’t, I’ll hit the sonofabitch.” They grabbed him.
Bradley’s call ended Indiana’s chances. The Hoosiers never got closer than four after that call. Would they have won if he had not made that call? Probably not. Michigan had taken every shot Indiana had thrown and never looked shaken. But there was no telling Knight that later on.
The locker room was a morgue. Knight didn’t scream, but he railed. Daryl Thomas had somehow played the entire game without getting a rebound. “You might as well not have even shown up tonight,” he told Thomas. Alford’s first-half fist-shaking rankled. “What kind of bullshit was that, Alford? You can take that bullshit and go straight back to New Castle High School. We don’t need that kind of crap here.
“Boys, is this going to be last year all over again? Are we ever going to win a game that means something again?”
The sense of dread hung heavy in the locker room. Five straight losses at home in the Big Ten. Five. Hammel’s concern about putting too much e
mphasis on one game now loomed as reality. The coaches’ tape session was stormy, Knight getting up and leaving several times to walk off his frustration. Finally, just after 2 A.M., they went to the Big Wheel to eat. Knight never said a word until he stood up to leave.
He looked at his four assistants, each of them bleary-eyed with exhaustion. “I waited nine f—— months to play this game,” he said. “Nine months. I can’t tell you how sick of basketball I am right now. If I never see another basketball game in my life, that will be just fine.”
By noon the next morning, Knight wasn’t the only one feeling that way. The day after at Indiana is always a nightmare. Knight has seen the tape and then seen the mistakes in his sleep—or nonsleep—all night. Losing a Big Ten game at Indiana is, in the words of manager Jim Kelly, “like having someone die, only worse. Much worse.”
Knight cannot stand to lose. Not in the way that most competitors cannot stand to lose; it goes far beyond that. It tears him apart emotionally, largely because he somehow equates losing a basketball game with his self-worth. He seems to believe that people will think less of him if his team doesn’t play well. Because he is a man whose emotions know no perspective, losing is like death to him—to steal a line from football coach George Allen. He doesn’t merely brood over it, he rages at it. Everyone is to blame: the players, the coaches, the system, and anyone else who happens to wander into view.
Exactly why Knight is so destroyed by defeat isn’t easy to understand. Certainly, part of it stems from his competitiveness. Knight competes at everything he does, every day, and enjoys the fact that he wins most of the time. But even though he will rationalize the loss and seemingly not blame himself, always, ultimately, he blames himself. Somewhere, he failed. That failure may have taken place four years earlier when he failed to recruit a certain player or did recruit another one. It may have taken place with thirty seconds to go when he made an incorrect substitution. Somewhere, somehow, he failed. Somehow, that failure is just that—failure—and it tears at Knight’s gut. It leaves him angry, frustrated, and unable—or at least unwilling—to deal with the world on civil terms for hours, perhaps days, sometimes weeks, depending on the dimensions of the defeat.
A Season on the Brink Page 20