Knight's tale: Looking at The General's Legacy at Texas Tech and beyond

Almost two weeks ago, the public learned former Red Raiders Head Basketball Coach Bob Knight was hospitalized and then released from the hospital. It turned out the legendary coach suffered and later recovered from a bout with pneumonia. With Knight’s illness, it got me thinking about the 82-year-old’s Hall of Fame career and legacy. The good and bad.

Without a shadow of doubt, Coach Knight is controversial. With controversy, the entire record, whole story must be considered. Let us, first, examine the good.

Knight’s record extends from his days at Army, where he led the Black Knights for six seasons, accumulated a 102-50 win-loss record, and coached a young player in Mike Krzyzewski, who later surpassed his mentor in career wins and championships.

Knight left Army after the 1970-1971 season to take the helm at Indiana University. For the next 29 seasons, Bob Knight’s legacy was made, leading the Hoosiers to college basketball’s glory three times, five Final Four appearances, 25 N.C.A.A. tournament bids, and one N.I.T. championship. Of all the teams, his most notable was the 1975-1976 undefeated team. Coming on the heels of losing to Kentucky in the “Elite Eight,” by two in the prior season’s tournament – which was I.U.’s only loss – Knight reflected the day before the 1975-1976 season, the team’s goal was to go undefeated. Not only did they go undefeated and avenge the previous season, that team is still the last Men’s Division One college team to run the table.

After his final season in 2000, Knight’s overall record with the Hoosiers was 662-239. That computes to an astounding winning percentage of 73.5%. In his time at I.U., there is much debate about which team was Knight’s best. It is a hotly debated conversation the 1974-1975 team was just as good as, if not better than, the 1975-1976 undefeated team. There are many I.U. fans arguing if “Scott May didn’t break his arm at Purdue, Knight would have two consecutive undefeated championships!” Then there is the 1981 championship team, led by future Hall of Fame guard Isiah Thomas. Where does the 1987 team fall into the category, with Keith Smart’s famous game winning shot over Syracuse?

A year after Knight’s exit from Indiana, he came to Lubbock and put Texas Tech basketball on the map (for good reasons) for the first time in five years. In the 2004-2005 season, Knight led the Red Raiders to a 22-11 win-loss record and its first “Sweet Sixteen” appearance in the N.C.A.A. Tournament in nine seasons. In his six and half seasons at the helm, Knight’s record for Tech was 138 wins to 82 losses with four N.C.A.A. Tournament bids and one trip to the “Sweet Sixteen.”

As The General led his teams to much success, there are other positives that need to be stated. One was his philanthropy. When 6’10” power forward/center Landon Turner suffered a paralyzing car accident just months after winning the 1981 N.C.A.A. Championship, it was Knight who led a national effort to help pay for Turner’s medical bills. Coach Knight did the same thing for the Slaton community when he coached the Red Raiders. Even after he retired, he helped raise money for the Hodges family in Wichita County in 2018. When coaching, Knight made a sizeable monetary donation to the Texas Tech’s libraries and he did the same at Indiana. He endowed two chairs, one in history, the other in law. He donated a sum close to $5 million to I.U.’s library system in his time there.

The other positive part on Knight’s legacy was he ran a clean program. At no time under Coach Knight did Army, Indiana, and Texas Tech men’s basketball programs have an N.C.A.A. cheating violation. He also sported a high graduation rate in his programs, nearing 100%. The odds were high if your son played for Knight, he was going to be in a clean program and graduate from college.

The negatives of Knight while often played out the most in media, must be detailed. There was no question Coach Knight had a violent streak. The Houston Chronicle compiled a list of his incidents stemming from his early years at I.U. but just to name a few was his punching of a cop in Puerto Rico during the Pan-American Games in 1979, his involvement in a shoving match with an L.S.U. fan in the 1981 Final Four, the infamous chair throw in 1985, the unintentional head-butt to Sherron Wilkerson in 1994, choking a man at a restaurant in 1999, the investigation into the choking incident with Neil Reid in 2000, and his public argument with then Texas Tech Chancellor David Smith in 2004 at a MarketStreet grocery store in Lubbock.

What should be questioned, though, is “how was he able to get away with it for so long?” N.F.L. Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells – a friend of Knight’s –is credited with saying “winning is the best deodorant.” When Knight won, society looked the other way. When we look at the violent outbursts from Knight, though, they nearly all came when his team was losing, which therefore caused attention.

The cause of Knight’s inability to win was his coaching methods. The way he coached his old players turned out to be out of touch with the new way of playing. This led to unsuccessful teams and violent outbursts. Furthermore, as the game went from players who stayed four years to “one and done’s,” Knight’s coaching techniques fell on deaf ears and players who did not buy into the methods. Simply put, Coach Knight did not adapt with the evolving game and it left him behind.

When Bob Knight is discussed, all parts of his legacy must be considered. We must read the book A Season on the Brink or at least watch the ESPN produced film based on that book; we must consider the 30-for-30 sports documentary entitled The Last Days of Knight; we must factor in his litany of legal problems; and why he was fired from Indiana in 2000. Along with those, we must consider his vast successes that made him the legendary coach. His 902 wins, 1984 Olympic Gold, plethora of conference champions, clean program, and high graduation rates must also be part of the equation.

With all of this measured, the absolute fairest analysis about Coach Robert Montgomery Knight is that he left a complicated legacy on basketball. Complicated does not mean wonderful, nor does it mean terrible. It means not easy to explain and completely nuanced. That perfectly describes Coach Knight.

Drew Landry is an assistant professor of government at South Plains College.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Knight's tale Looking at The General's Legacy at Texas Tech, beyond