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Shedding some light on Knight
Posted: Sunday April 02, 2000 07:42 AM
INDIANAPOLIS -- "Knight Had Altercation With Boss." The headline blared from The Indianapolis Star newsboxes outside the RCA Dome on Thursday morning, appearing over a story that detailed a confrontation between Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight and the Hoosiers' athletic director, Clarence Doninger. Knight ought to love that headline, for it fits neatly into his belief that the press prints patent falsehoods. Everyone knows that Knight has no boss, least of all Doninger, who was unsettled enough by the incident -- it occurred in a hallway outside the IU locker room following a loss to Ohio State on Feb. 19 -- that he reported it to a school vice president. On March 14 CNN Sports Illustrated first aired a report that should have made the entire Indiana administration cringe. It detailed a host of Knight's excesses, the most serious being an incident during a 1997 practice in which he allegedly choked former Hoosier Neil Reed. But school president Myles Brand should be just as outraged by Knight's reaction to the report: releasing information to cast aspersions on the young men making the assertions -- young men the coach once liked well enough to offer scholarships. Appalled by these attempts to smear former players, at least one more ex-Hoosier has come forward. He's far enough beyond the pale of Knight's influence to take the risk. Last week Ricky Calloway recounted to the Houston Chronicle two other instances of physical abuse, one of Knight punching Steve Alford and another of him slapping Daryl Thomas. Didn't happen, said Alford, who's coaching in the Big Ten at Iowa and trying to patch up a strained relationship with his mentor. Didn't happen, chorused Thomas. So far, Calloway has only been contradicted. Others haven't been so lucky. Reed went from trouper to tumor -- from a gritty kid who played through a separated shoulder to an outcast, ripped by Knight teletoadies Digger Phelps and Billy Packer. Former player Richard Mandeville also appeared in the CNN/SI report alleging that Knight wiped himself with toilet paper, and emerged from a bathroom stall to show it to the team; Indiana released the news that Mandeville had been involved in an "alcohol-related incident" while a student. As for Reed, Knight was only too willing to have his athletic department release a letter containing a charge that Reed had used profanity at a summer camp. Brand has asked John Walda, the Fort Wayne lawyer who presides over the school's board of trustees, to lead an investigation into the allegations contained in the CNN/SI report. Perhaps he'll look into the Doninger, Alford and Thomas incidents, too. But if the Indiana administration is willing to countenance the propaganda emanating from Bloomington so far, it's clear where Walda's probe is going. That his teammates voted 8-0 to kick Neil Reed off the team is now canonized in parts of Indiana like some epic Supreme Court decision. Use your common sense: Would an autocrat like Knight really submit to a legitimate plebiscite such a major matter regarding his team? In fact, Reed was one of three players Knight called in after their junior season and essentially told that they couldn't play, weren't going to play as seniors and might as well transfer. After Reed took him at his word and quit the team, Knight asked the remaining players to vote on (crucial distinction here) whether they'd take Reed back if he changed his mind. According to several sources, the first ballot was yea, though not unanimous. Only after Knight resubmitted the proposal -- having made clear the outcome he wanted to see -- did the vote swing to 8-0 against Reed. The CNN/SI report included at least three on-the-record witnesses to most of Knight's episodes. Perhaps that's why his denials have been cagey and indirect. He has preferred to turn to associates and pose questions like, "I didn't do that, did I?" Pity the courtier in the palace who utters a contradictory word. Even after the latest incident, Knight sounded like Bill Clinton in a clarifying moment with Betty Currie. He asked Brad Bomba, a team doctor who played peacemaker in the confrontation with Doninger, "Well, did I do anything that was threatening?'" If you're anywhere in Knight's inner circle, you know the correct answer: the yes-man nod. For if you offer anything else, Knight is liable to go after you for not being supportive enough, the same offense that reportedly caused him to go after his athletic director. One of Knight's redeeming qualities is his insistence that players behave themselves and take school seriously. At Indiana, it isn't enough to be a mercenary; you must tend to business off the court, too. But why is IU unwilling to hold Knight to this same modest standard of well-roundedness? Why is he supported in his every method to squeeze whatever he can out of his players, but not held accountable for behavior that mocks the purposes for which a university is chartered? In 1998 Brand and Walda co-wrote a piece for the op-ed page of the Star in which they approvingly cited Dean Smith's support for Knight. (Would that Indiana were fortunate enough to have someone like Smith coaching its basketball team. Smith would never be so cowardly as to divulge private details about any player, for any purpose, least of all to buttress his own standing.) In that piece, Brand and Walda posed several questions: Q: "Why, we wonder, are graduation rates of student-athletes rarely mentioned in media coverage of Knight?" A: They are mentioned, constantly, including in the CNN/SI report. That's one of the reasons Knight so fascinates the public -- because his better instincts coexist with such dark ones. Q: "Why are there no accolades when Knight deals promptly, and correctly, with off-court problems such as the time a few seasons ago when a star player abused his girlfriend?" A: Ridding one's team of an abuser is the least that could be expected of a college coach. And an abuser who kicks someone off his team for abuse is a hypocrite -- and, thankfully, much of our society is still reluctant to shower hypocrites with praise. Q: "So where is the 'unacceptable behavior' the media have honed in on so intently?" A: Wiping your rear end to graphically demonstrate contempt for your team's play, as Knight allegedly did, is unacceptable. Guilt-tripping a player into not transferring -- as Knight did to Luke Recker by threatening to quit as coach and thereby bring down the wrath of the state on Recker's teenaged shoulders -- is unacceptable. Verbally abusing people, whether they're your "students" (if we're to accept the premise of Knight as educator) or your "boss" (if we're to accept the charade of Knight as subordinate), is unacceptable. As for the physical assault alleged to have occurred, it's more than unacceptable. It's criminal. President Brand did his graduate work in philosophy. Pondering the tough questions is his business. Maybe the problem is that the questions facing Indiana right now are gimmes. Alexander Wolff is a Sports Illustrated senior writer. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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