Coleman had been remarkable all evening, with nineteen rebounds. But here, he turned freshman, missing the free throw badly. Thomas rebounded—Syracuse kept all its players back to avoid fouling—and Indiana came down with the national championship hanging in the balance.
Once again, Knight didn’t call time. Whether it was Assembly Hall in October or the Superdome in March, it was just a matter of running the offense. Alford, who had twenty-three points, was the first choice to shoot. But Syracuse was in a box-and-one defense, with the very quick Douglas dogging Alford’s every step.
Thomas, looking to screen for Alford, finally stepped into the low post. Ten seconds were left when he took the ball and turned to find Coleman in his face. Instinct took over here—four years of developed instinct. It was almost as if Thomas could hear Knight’s voice inside his head: “Shot-fake Daryl, shot-fake!” He shot-faked. Coleman didn’t budge.
Almost any player in that situation, time running out, national title at stake, would have panicked. But all those dreary nights in Assembly Hall were at work now. The voice was inside Thomas’s head: “Don’t force a bad shot. Never force a bad shot.”
Thomas looked and spotted Smart cutting from the top of the key towards the baseline. Calmly, as if it were just another Sunday scrimmage, he flipped the ball back to him. Smart took one dribble to his left, flew into the air and shot. Triche, who had seen Smart come open, flew at him, arms waving. Smart was slightly off balance as he went up from sixteen feet, but the shot was true all the way. It hit the bottom of the net as the clock rolled from five seconds to four.
The Syracuse players were stunned. For almost three seconds, no one moved to call time out. By the time they did, only one second was left. It was not enough time. Smart stole the last desperate in-bound pass and hurled the ball to the heavens.
They jumped on each other, pummeled each other and cried. Alford kept screeching “Yes, yes” to anyone who would listen. Kohn Smith, who had soothed so many tears, shed his own unabashedly. Knight just watched it all, accepting congratulations all around, knowing he had become only the third coach in history to win at least three national titles. (John Wooden had ten; Adolph Rupp, four.)
When they gave him his championship watch on the victory podium he looked up at the thousands of red-and-white-clad fans and waved, a huge grin on his face. Truly, he was overjoyed by this championship.
Finally, they went back to the locker room. When there was quiet, Knight spoke briefly. “What you did,” he told them, “was refuse to lose. You’ve been that kind of team all year. I want you to know I would have been just as proud of you if you had lost.”
Then he left them to the celebration they had worked so hard to earn. The victory meal cost $3,500. No one at Indiana would mind a bit. It had been 765 days since Knight had thrown the chair. He had come a very long way from that moment to this one.
In the aftermath of victory, there was still the future. Alford, who finished his career with 2,415 points, would move on to the NBA and huge endorsement dollars. They were banging on his door from the morning he got home from New Orleans.
Indiana, even without Alford, Thomas and Meier, would be very good again in 1988. Two freshman guards, one a shooter, one a pure point guard (something the team has not had since 1981), had been signed from Marion High School, the three-time state champion. One of Garrett’s teammates from San Francisco City would also become a Hoosier. The JUCO experiment was now a part of life at Indiana. Already a JUCO from Kansas had committed to attend in the fall of 1988.
Knight had signed a contract extension at midseason that would keep him at Indiana until 1997—at least. If he averaged twenty-seven victories a year in those ten seasons he would have (a reasonable figure to hope for) 738 career victories at age fifty-six, and would only be 137 shy of Adolph Rupp’s all-time record.
There was one final irony at the end of the two-year road that had led from the chair-throw to Smart’s jump shot. Three days after winning the championship, Indiana was honored by President Ronald Reagan at the White House. This was standard fare for championship teams, but a thrill for Knight, a staunch Republican who twice voted for Reagan.
But a few days later, Knight received a letter from another Republican president: Richard M. Nixon. The former president congratulated Knight on his team’s victory and praised him highly. Finally, Nixon wrote, “This has been a great year for you. Not only did your team win the national championship, but your autobiography is No. 1 on the national bestseller list.”
The autobiography has yet to be written. But the story that Knight, his coaches and his basketball players wrote in the last two years is truly an extraordinary one.
Acknowledgments
When reading the acknowledgments at the start of a book I have often thought that it is absolutely impossible for all those people to have played a significant role in the creation of one book. Now, having gone through the experience, I think I understand. For me, there are a lot of people to thank.
First, my employers at The Washington Post, who graciously allowed me the leave time I needed to spend the season at Indiana. Specifically, I would like to thank executive editor Ben Bradlee and managing editor Leonard Downie, and give special thanks to my boss, George Solomon, who not only encouraged Bradlee and Downie to grant the leave but kept telling me throughout to be patient and to learn from the experience. I would also like to thank all the people at the paper who helped me while I was away: Barbara Lupica, Debbie Schwartz, David Levine, and Bob Lohrer were remarkably patient week in and week out and kept me in touch with the real world, while Deputy Sports Editor Leonard Shapiro and assistant sports editors Sandy Bailey and O. D. Wilson were generous with advice and encouragement.
The people I came in contact with during my five months in Bloomington could not have been nicer to me. Bob Knight’s four full-time assistant coaches—Ron Felling, Kohn Smith, Royce Waltman, and Joby Wright—were terrific to be around from start to finish. My memories of the time I spent with them will always be warm. The same is true of the three graduate assistants—Dan Dakich, Murry Bartow, and Julio Salazar—who all made the time I spent in Indiana much more pleasant than it would have been had they not become my friends. The same is true of trainer Tim Garl and his assistant, Steve Dayton. Tim cannot be given enough credit for the work he does at Indiana. He supplied me with aspirin, orange juice, bad stock tips, and endless patience. The four senior managers—Bill (Jim) Himebrook, Jim (Jim) Kelly, Mark (Jim) Sims, and Jeff (Jim) Stuckey—never lost their sense of humor. That in itself is an achievement. I can’t thank them enough for their help. The same is true of SID Kit Klingelhoffer, promotion director Chuck Crabb and the staff: assistant John Johnson, student assistants Eric Ruden, Mike Sobb, and Jan Brown, who is the office saint. I would also be remiss if I didn’t thank athletic director Ralph Floyd, whose loyalty to Bob Knight and Indiana goes beyond anything I can put into words here.
As for Bob Hammel, let me put it this way: without him I would not have survived the season. He was not just a friend, but a mediator when the mentor and I needed one. I can’t thank him enough.
Last, but certainly not least at IU, the players. If a man is a measure of the people he surrounds himself with, then Bob Knight must be all right, because the sixteen players who were on the 1985-86 team were as good a group of people as one could hope to find. That sounds corny. It’s also true. They could not have been nicer to me. Not once did I have the sense that having an outsider lurking around the locker room with an ever-present tape recorder bothered them. If they were 21-8 as basketball players, they were unbeatable as people, at least in this book.
Of course I never would have made it to Indiana if not for my agent, Esther Newberg, and my editor at Macmillan, Jeff Neuman. They both had faith in the project from the start and if not for them, there would have been no project. They also provided encouragement throughout, especially during the writing process when it was needed most.
Then there are the people
who know best what was involved in putting this book together because they were virtually forced to live through it with me: Keith and Barby Drum, Ray Ratto, Tony Kornheiser, David Maraniss, Lesley Visser, John Hewig, Michael Wilbon, Ken Denlinger, Dick (Hoops) Weiss, Sally Jenkins, Loretta Tofani, Lexie Verdon, Linda Reynolds, Dave Kindred, Bob DeStefano, John Caccese, Jackson Diehl, Fred Hiatt, Margaret Shapiro, Martin Weil, Tom Mickle, Mike Krzyzewski, Bud Collins, Juan Williams, and of course, my family. Special thanks to Keith Drum, Kornheiser, Maraniss, and Visser, who urged me to go ahead with the idea when it was just that: an idea.
Finally, a few words on Robert M. Knight. It will be readily apparent while reading this book that the access he granted me was extraordinary. The last thing in the world any basketball coach needs is someone trailing after him recording his every word and act. Yet that is exactly what he let me do. Without this access, this book would not have been possible. The book was not Bob’s idea, it was mine. He had little to gain by my constant presence and much to lose, and yet he never once backed away from the project even at times when he was undoubtedly sick and tired of turning around and seeing my face and my tape recorder.
That is why, as I finish this, I am reminded of an incident that took place in January. After the Indiana-Illinois game during which Bob kicked and slammed a chair, and kicked a cheerleader’s megaphone, Dave Kindred, the superb columnist for The Atlanta Constitution, wrote that he was disappointed to see Knight acting this way again. Kindred, a longtime friend of Knight’s, ended the column by writing, “Once again I find myself wondering when it comes to Bob Knight if the end justifies the means.”
A few days later, Knight called Kindred. “You needed one more line for that damn column,” Knight said. “You should have finished by saying, ‘And one more time, I realize that it does.’”
Kindred thought for a moment and then said, “Bob, you’re right.”
I agree.
One year ago I wrote that this book would not have been possible without the extraordinary access that he gave me. It should now be said that the success of this book was almost entirely the result of that access.
Shortly after the book came out, when Bob had made his disdain for it—and for me—clear, I wrote to him. In the letter I said that while I was disappointed that he didn’t like the book, I wouldn’t change a word of it because I believed it had done exactly what he and I set out to do: give people an idea of what living through a season with him is like.
I still feel that way. Throughout this past season I was asked repeatedly why I thought Knight had given me such remarkable access when he had nothing to gain, financially or otherwise. The reason, I think, is this: Knight honestly believed that a close-up coach who cared about his players and about education, a coach who played by the rules and who recruited players who not only graduated but were a credit to their school.
I think Knight’s assessment was correct because that is exactly what I discovered. I did not discover or write about a saint, but about a driven and brilliant coach: a flawed man, but a good man.
I felt that way about him when I started the project. I felt that way about him when I finished it. And, after all the name-calling, I feel that way about him now. A few profanities didn’t change the way most people felt about Bob Knight. Even when directed at me, they won’t change the way I feel about him either.
—John Feinstein, Shelter Island, N. Y.
May 1987
The young mentor: Bob Knight, in his first year at Indiana, chats with Adolph Rupp before Indiana’s 90-89 double-overtime win at Kentucky in December 1971. (Dave Repp photo)
The 1986 Knight, with athletic director Ralph Floyd at his feet, watches practice. (Dave Repp photo)
The assistants in the cave: from left, assistant coaches Joby Wright and Royce Waltman, Bob Hammel of the Bloomington Herald-Telephone, and assistants Kohn Smith and Ron Felling. (Dave Repp photo)
Knight and Hammel at practice. (Dave Repp photo)
Teaching, teaching, and more teaching: Knight brings home a point to Courtney Witte, Daryl Thomas, and Winston Morgan. (Dave Repp photo)
The 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team: (Bottom row) Todd Meier, Courtney Witte, Stew Robinson, Winston Morgan, Steve Alford, Kreigh Smith, Joe Hillman, Delray Brooks. (Top row) Jeff Oliphant, Magnus Pelkowski, Ricky Calloway, Steve Eyl, Daryl Thomas, Todd Jadlow, Andre Harris, Brian Sloan.
Steve Alford driving against Kansas State. (Dave Repp photo)
Daryl Thomas works on his defense against Magnus Pelkowski in practice. (Dave Repp photo)
Winston Morgan gets in position for a rebound against Wisconsin. (Dave Repp photo)
Andre Harris skies to reject a Notre Dame shot. (Dave Repp photo)
Daryl Thomas grabs a rebound against Purdue, as Alford (12) and Harris look on. (Dave Repp photo)
A critical element of Knight’s preparation is the pregame walkthrough. From left: Courtney Witte (watching), Kreigh Smith, Steve Eyl, Stew Robinson (at back, watching), Jeff Oliphant, Steve Alford (back to camera), Todd Meier, and Magnus Pelkowski. (Dave Repp photo)
Ricky Calloway with Knight on the sidelines at Assembly Hall. (Dave Repp photo)
“Will we ever win another game?” (Dave Repp photo)
About the Author
© PHIL HOFFMAN
JOHN FEINSTEIN is the author of sixteen books, including the million-copy seller A Good Walk Spoiled. He is a regular commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. He lives in Potomac, Maryland, and Shelter Island, New York, with his wife, Mary, and their two children.
ALSO BY JOHN FEINSTEIN
Moment of Glory
Are You Kidding Me?
Living on the Black
Tales from Q School
Last Dance
Let Me Tell You a Story
Caddy for Life
Open
The Punch
The Last Amateurs
The Majors
A March to Madness
A Civil War
A Good Walk Spoiled
Play Ball
Hard Courts
Forever’s Team
A Season Inside
Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery
Vanishing Act: Mystery at the U.S. Open
Cover-up: Mystery at the Super Bowl
Change-up: Mystery at the World Series
Running Mates: A Mystery
Winter Games: A Mystery
The Rivalry: Mystery at the Army-Navy Game
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Library of Congress Control Number: 86-18033
ISBN 978-0-0253-7230-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-5025-9 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2713-1 (eBook)
John Feinstein, A Season on the Brink
A Season on the Brink Page 41