A Season on the Brink

by John Feinstein

  After Knight’s sophomore year his grandmother died. He came home from picking up groceries to find her in her favorite chair—asleep, he first thought. Her death crushed him. “For at least a year,” Hazel Knight remembered, “he would not talk about her and wouldn’t let anyone else mention her. It hurt too much to even hear her name.”

  Knight’s senior year was perhaps his most frustrating because he began the season as a starter and ended it playing very little. His best statistics were as a sophomore, when he averaged four points a game and had his career high—fifteen points—in a game against Delaware. It was a disappointing finish, and when Knight graduated he and Taylor were anything but close.

  Knight got a job at Cuyahoga Falls High School in the eastern part of the state coaching junior varsity basketball and teaching freshman history. He worked there for a man named Harold Andreas. Andreas was about ten years older than Taylor, and he understood the frustrations of both the coach and the player. He encouraged Knight to mend the relationship. Knight respected Andreas enough to listen to what he was saying.

  That winter he went to a clinic that Taylor was holding. He sat quietly in the stands listening until Taylor spotted him and asked him to come down and help him with the drills he was demonstrating. Shortly after that, Knight wrote Taylor a letter saying, among other things, “I think every player should have to be a coach before he is allowed to play.” He was telling the coach that he understood. Taylor understood, too.

  That spring, Taylor heard that West Point was looking for an assistant basketball coach. He and Knight had already talked about the possibility of Knight going to UCLA the following season to do some graduate work and to be a part-time assistant under John Wooden. But with Vietnam heating up there was a good chance Knight would be drafted. If that was going to happen anyway, perhaps Knight should volunteer and become the number one assistant at West Point under George Hunter. Knight thought that was a good idea.

  There was nearly a hitch. Hunter got fired. Knight had already volunteered for the Army. Fortunately, Tates Locke, Hunter’s replacement, agreed to honor the commitment that he had made to Knight. Two years later, Locke left West Point to become the coach at Miami of Ohio. The new West Point coach was Bob Knight, who would not turn twenty-five until ten days after his first practice that fall. He was the youngest Division I coach in the country, and he quickly became a star. His teams were extraordinary because of their defensive tenacity and consistently stayed right with—and often beat—teams with far more talent. Army was not allowed to recruit anyone over 6-6, but that didn’t seem to matter to Knight. He found players willing to play his style and quickly built a reputation as one of the hot young coaches around.

  He also earned an enduring nickname when one of his guards, Jim Oxley, a good shooter who played in the backcourt with Mike Krzyzewski, began calling him “the mentor.” All of Knight’s assistants have called him “the mentor” ever since. Tim Garl sometimes shortens it to “the ments.”

  His temper drew a great deal of attention, too. The New York media quickly nicknamed him “Bobby T.” He was often crazed on the bench, kicking chairs, throwing coats, and generally wreaking havoc. But he won more games than anyone had ever won at Army, reached the NIT four times in six years, never once lost to archrival Navy, and had schools lining up to offer him jobs. The one he finally took was Indiana. It was in the Big Ten, it was near home, and it had a great basketball tradition.

  In his second season, Indiana reached the Final Four. In his fourth season, Indiana won thirty-one games before losing in the regional final to Kentucky, a defeat that Knight still broods over. The next year there were no defeats, just thirty-two straight victories and the national championship. Indiana won the final 86–68 even though Bobby Wilkerson suffered a concussion in the first half. Walking out of the Spectrum in Philadelphia that night, an excited Hammel said to Knight, “Bob, you did it, you won the national championship!”

  Knight turned to Hammel and said simply, “Shoulda been two.” The memory of 1975 invaded his thoughts even at that moment.

  That same spring, Fred Taylor was forced out as coach at Ohio State. Knight never forgave the school. Taylor had become, along with Pete Newell, Clair Bee, Joe Lapchick, and Henry Iba, one of the older coaches who Knight believed could do no wrong. Now his alma mater was pushing Taylor aside. Knight never forgot.

  In the fall of 1985, Ohio State organized a weekend to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1960 national championship team. All the players and coaches from that team were invited back to be honored. Knight refused to go because he was still angry about what had happened to Fred Taylor. It was Taylor who called him and asked him to change his mind.

  “Don’t even ask, Fred, you know I won’t come,” Knight said.

  Taylor went. The rest of the team went. Knight stayed away. They sent him the ice bucket, complete with a plaque and team pictures that were presented to each member of the team. Knight mailed it to Boop. “Doc,” he wrote, “I want you to have this because if it were not for you I never would have gone to Ohio State and played on this team.”

  Knight certainly carried some pleasant memories from that team and those days. But his overall feeling toward Ohio State was anything but warm. He had absolutely no interest in the Ohio State job. But when Miller was fired and the rumors began flying, few people understood this. Including the members of the Indiana basketball team.

  Ohio State was the least of Knight’s concerns that week. He was wondering if Harris was going to make it at Indiana. He was also thinking that Jadlow might transfer at season’s end. That would certainly put a damper on the junior college experiment.

  More than that, he was concerned with the two games that week. On the surface they were walkovers. Indiana had beaten both Wisconsin and Northwestern on the road without Daryl Thomas. But Knight worried that the players would be thinking just that, and with everyone fighting the flu, Knight was uptight.

  This week’s villains—outside of Harris—were the guards. Knight was convinced that Morgan and Robinson just couldn’t play anymore. They had been heroes against Illinois but had quickly become goats at Iowa when they failed to handle Iowa’s press. They weren’t much better at Minnesota. But what really hurt them was Damon Bailey.

  Bailey was the eighth-grade wunderkind from Shawswicke. The Monday after Minnesota, Knight and Hammel drove down to see him play. Knight’s presence in the tiny junior high school gym caused something of a sensation. But Knight didn’t even notice. He came back like a love-struck teenager, starry-eyed over what he had seen.

  “Damon Bailey,” Knight told the coaches on Tuesday, “is better than any guard we have right now. I don’t mean potentially better, I mean better today.”

  When Knight spoke of guards, he wasn’t talking about Alford. He thought of Alford less as a guard than as a shooter. To Knight, a guard was a creator. Damon Bailey, Knight seemed to think, was the Creator.

  The coaches were, to put it mildly, skeptical. They knew that this was Knight’s way, that he was bound to exaggerate. They cornered Hammel and tried to find out what he really thought. “He’s pretty good,” was all Hammel would say. In the meantime, Knight had invited Bailey and his family to Saturday’s game against Northwestern.

  Every time poor Morgan or Robinson screwed up in practice, Knight seemed about ready to put in a phone call to the NCAA to find out if eighth graders could be made eligible. Short of that, he put Hillman in the lineup one day. “Joe, I know you can’t play in the games and I know your knee still hurts, but this is for me. I’m just sick of this horseshit guard play. I can’t watch it anymore.”

  In the meantime, Morgan and Robinson suffered. They would survive, though. That’s what Morgan and Robinson were—survivors. They had played together in high school and had come to Indiana one year apart only to end up in the same class because of Morgan’s injury. They were the two funniest players on the team, the suppliers of most of the nicknames.

  This was
not a team full of lively nicknames. Courtney Witte was “Whopper,” partly because he was a fan of former NBA player Billy Paultz, and partly because he resembled the somewhat portly Paultz in both build and (lack of) quickness. Andre Harris had become “Grace” because of his Grace Jones haircut. Daryl Thomas was “D Train,” usually shortened to “Train.” Alford was “Fred,” which was short for “Alfred,” a nickname Dakich had put on him the year before. Among the players, Knight was often referred to as “the big man.”

  Robinson had a knack for keeping things loose. More than anyone around he could make Knight laugh. His timing could not have been better the night before the Wisconsin game. Practice had once again been tight. When the players returned for the evening walk-through, Robinson walked into the locker room wearing a T-shirt that said “Puerto Rico” on it.

  The other players were stunned. “Are you crazy?” Joe Hillman asked.

  “Only one I got clean,” Robinson said.

  When Kohn Smith saw the shirt he did a double take. “Oh boy, Stew, are you in trouble.” Everyone was beginning to convulse in giggles by now. Smith went outside to join Knight and the other coaches who were on their way in. “Stew is going to try to hide his shirt from you,” Smith said grinning.

  Knight walked in the door and before he even turned the corner he was yelling, “Stew!”

  “Right here,” came Robinson’s voice in reply.

  Knight walked around the partition. Robinson was holding his notebook up to hide the shirt. Knight walked over and pulled the notebook down. He looked at Robinson. Robinson looked at him. Calmly, Knight took the shirt by the collar and with both hands ripped it right in half. One side said “Puerto,” the other side said “Rico.”

  “Stew,” Knight said, “that’s exactly the way we left Puerto Rico.” He was fighting a losing battle with a huge grin. The players were falling off their chairs. As they went outside, Knight disappeared. A moment later he came back carrying a shirt to replace the one he had ripped. The team formed a circle around Robinson as he tried it on. It was a shirt left over from the Olympics, one Knight had been given right after the Russians announced their boycott. It read: “Let The Russians Play With Themselves.”

  “I like that one better, Stew, don’t you?” Knight said.

  “Absolutely,” Robinson said. “It’s not ripped.”

  It was as loose a night-before walk-through as the team had had all season.

  If they had come out the next night and blown Wisconsin back to Madison, the loose atmosphere might have prevailed for a few days. But in spite of Knight’s warnings that the crowd would be dead (it was), that Wisconsin would be ready to play (it was), and that the game would not be a walkover (it wasn’t), the Hoosiers just weren’t ready to play at their peak. Maybe Knight was a little bit to blame for this. For all his talk during the week about treating this game the same as Illinois or Purdue, he was not wound up the way he would have been on game day for one of those schools. He was even late for pregame meal because he was giving pro golfer and friend Fuzzy Zoeller a tour of the campus.

  There were warnings. At pregame meal the players’ note for the day read: “Wisconsin 69, Iowa 63; Iowa 79, Indiana 69 . . . And it wasn’t that close!”

  The players ate their spaghetti in silence.

  Father Higgins was in the locker room prior to the game. His presence reminded everyone of Knight’s now-famous “God business” line before the Notre Dame game. Now, when Knight walked in and saw Higgins, he thought about the horrid weather outside.

  “Padre,” he asked, “can God see through the rain?”

  “It was hard for anyone to see coming down from Indy,” Higgins answered.

  Knight was writing the lineups on the board. “You know,” he said, “I worry about you people. If we had a Methodist in here, we wouldn’t have any problems . . . . Right, Stew?”

  “Right.”

  Loose, everyone was loose. Then they went out and played atrociously. Todd Meier started in place of the benched Andre Harris, who would play exactly four minutes. After the game, when Knight was asked what Harris’s problem was, he answered simply, “Not going to class is Harris’s problem.”

  Just before the tipoff, Knight called Rick Olson, Wisconsin’s only senior starter, over to the bench. This was the continuation of a tradition. Each season, when Indiana plays its last game against a Big Ten opponent, Knight will call the seniors over before the game begins. He tells them briefly how much he has enjoyed competing against them, wishes them luck, and shakes hands. Occasionally, the sight of Knight waving them over will confuse a player. Later in the season, when Knight waved Illinois’s Scott Meents over for his valedictory, Meents walked away from him. That was too bad. Even in the darkest moments of 1985, Knight had stuck to this tradition.

  Olson was clearly delighted by Knight’s gesture. Then he went about the business of trying to whip Knight’s team. He came a lot closer than Knight might have anticipated. Indiana led early, 14–10, after a Robinson steal had set up two Morgan free throws. But Wisconsin came back, tying the game at 16–16, then taking the lead on an Olson jumper a moment later. The lead seesawed until the last minute when Wisconsin center Gregg Steinhaus twice beat Indiana players to rebounds. He was fouled each time and made all four free throws, the last two with three seconds left, giving Wisconsin a 34–31 halftime lead.

  Relatively speaking, Knight had not yet gone berserk at halftime. He had not quit his job, threatened to start a whole new team, or told them he wasn’t going to bother coaching them anymore. But now he was disgusted.

  He walked to the locker-room board and drew a heart on it. “Does anyone in here know what that is? Huh? I wouldn’t think anyone in here would know what it is because it’s a heart and no one in here has any. You just played twenty minutes of basketball that was totally devoid of any heart. No heart whatsoever. You’ve played like losers, you’ve acted like losers, you’ve wimped, you’ve whined, you’ve been sick, you cry, you’re hurt. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. I really wonder if you care about winning.”

  He left briefly, then returned.

  “How many national championships do I have to win before you people will listen to me?” he said. “Four? Five? How many? We told you and told you that you had to be ready to play tonight and look what happens. We told you nothing was automatic.

  “I cannot coach you boys when you play like this. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t. I’m so discouraged and tired of you people not playing like you can that I don’t know if I want to coach you anymore. I just can’t take it anymore. But I’ll do something about that after the game.”

  These last words genuinely scared the players. It was all timing. That afternoon, several of them had heard a report on television insisting that Knight was going to Ohio State. Now, he was standing in front of them telling them he didn’t want to coach them anymore—that was hardly new—but adding, “I’ll do something about that after the game.”

  “Do you think he means it?” Kreigh Smith asked Joe Hillman as they left the locker room. Hillman just shrugged. Indiana’s players may have moments when they can’t stand Knight, when they think he is crazy, when they wonder why they ever came to Indiana. But most of the time, they want to play for Bob Knight. The thought of Knight’s leaving scared them.

  Knight had just been talking, of course. He had not talked to Ohio State, nor did he plan to. Ohio State knew this. In fact, Rick Bay would call Knight to ask him for a recommendation. But he would not call him to offer a job.

  This was hardly the first time Knight had threatened to quit. In 1984, after a loss at home to Michigan State, Knight actually did quit. He walked in and told Ralph Floyd he didn’t want to coach anymore. The team went on to Purdue for their next game without Knight. Floyd kept phoning asking him to come back. Knight kept saying no. Finally, he relented. Indiana won that game.

  That had been a vintage year for mind games. Earlier in the season, after a loss at home to Purdue, Knight kicked the
entire team out of the locker room. He ordered Garl to have all the carpeting taken up, the signs taken down and everything removed from the players’ lockers because, “the SOBs don’t deserve a locker room the way they’re playing.” He ordered the assistant coaches not to prepare for the next game against Michigan State, and he ordered Garl not to make any travel plans. He refused to take part in practice, sitting on a stationary bicycle while senior Cam Cameron and Dakich ran practice. At one point, he called Dakich over and told him, “If I were running this f—— practice I’d put Blab in the middle of a circle and have everyone throw the f—— ball at him until he learns to catch it!” While this was going on, assistant coaches Kohn Smith and Royce Waltman had locked themselves in the players’ locker room so they could put together tapes because they knew that at the last minute Knight would want to prepare. When the team arrived in East Lansing, sure enough, Knight asked if the coaches happened to have any tapes with them. By golly, they just happened to have some. Indiana won that game, too. The players were restored to the locker room. Knight got off the bicycle and coached at practice again.

  Tonight’s ploy had the same end result. Indiana pulled together in the second half, but it wasn’t easy. An Alford jump shot with 12:18 to go put them ahead 50–48. One minute later, Olson fouled out. Heineman, who had again played well against the team from his home state, went a couple of minutes later. Wisconsin ran out of players.

  And Indiana got the boost it needed from Courtney Witte. This was the unlikeliest hero on the team. Once, during preseason, Knight had been so down on Witte that he deemed him not worthy of practicing with the team. Witte had been banished to the end basket to work on his own in scrimmage situations for several days.

  But Witte had slowly worked his way back. He was never going to be a great player and had been recruited as something of a desperation measure. One year earlier, he had broken his foot twice and had to sit out the season. His weight ballooned and coming back had been difficult. But with Harris benched and Knight angry with Eyl for a poor first half, Witte got his chance.