Congratulations, Coach Knight

I keep wondering how to spin this - I mean, Bob Knight gets the record, and it's significant, but I think he probably doesn't care - in his fashion, I don't doubt that he's looking at all the trove of hagiographic articles and thinking it's all bullshit. And that's one more reason why I like him. But at the same time, as a hoops media whore, I've loved all the press around this because it gets at who Knight is. I've never been a Knight apologist, but there's a lot about him that I really admire and like. There's, of course, also more to him than is shown in typical media rants - the chair-throwing, the ass-kicking of players, the aggressive press conference tirades. If you read John Feinstein's book, A Season on the Brink, (which Knight hated) it shows a side of Knight that you rarely hear about: a team of coaches from Japan shows up unannounced, and Knight accepts that, invites them to his practices, and shows them the cordiality that I don't think Rick Pitino would...there's the Landon Turner story, and the one that was most touching was when a young kid comes up to Knight in a restaurant after a terrible loss by Indiana. The kid explains to Knight that he and his family are big Hoosier fans and they just wanted to say hi...the kids' parents are deaf and mute, so this 11 year-old speaks for them. Knight is so touched by the courage of this kid that he graciously goes out of his way to chat with him and his family, invites them to some games, and arranges for them to walk out with a ton of I.U. gear.

So you hear this stuff, and it floors you. And you hear about the graduation rate of his players...and all this is great, and again, one of reasons to like Knight is that he says he just expects this - graduating and playing college ball are not mutually exclusive in his book. So good for him, and I'm glad he's here, because I think he's a dying breed.

But then you hear about the asshole stuff, and I don't mean popping that kid on the chin. I'm talking about never taking any responsibility for acting like a class-A jerkoff at Indiana - and you can be DAMN sure that if one of his players pulled this shit and didn't take responsibility, Knight would rip him. I'm talking about a postgame interview, a couple years after Indiana fired him, in which Knight lambasted his former assistant and then coach of IU...he said he was going to fire Davis, but then he got fired first. Quite a bitchy comment from a manly man.

Knight is worthy of admiration for much that he does, but watch your back because he just can't help himself when it comes to being a horse's ass.