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#Sports head basketball upside down games professional#

I was negligent in realizing what Bird needed at that time in his life.”

In his book “When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball,” Seth Davis quotes Knight as saying: “Larry Bird is one of my great mistakes. Larry Bird, as good a player as the state of Indiana ever produced, but a shy and lonely freshman when he began his college career at Indiana, quickly realized he and Knight never would be a good mix and transferred to Indiana State, where he had a stellar career before moving on to fame with the Boston Celtics. When observers sided with Thomas, he said, “I deserved it,” and calmly explained that one of the main reasons he’d chosen Indiana was that Knight demanded the best from his players.Īnd there remains a significant segment of Indiana’s hoops-crazy population that considers Knight one of the best things ever to hit the Hoosier state.įor some, though, Knight was an acquired taste.

He was 18 and had yet to begin his freshman season when Knight chewed him out publicly in loud and colorful language for mental mistakes with the U.S. Isiah Thomas, another Indiana star who went on to NBA greatness, got a good taste of Knight even before playing for the Hoosiers. He considered Knight “the greatest coach ever” and once said, “He made me a better man, and for that I’m grateful.” Alford, who was UCLA coach from 2013 to 2018, alternated as star point guard and object of Knight’s ire at Indiana. Most of his players held him in high regard. To me, what’s most enjoyable is the practice and preparation.” “The game! I don’t need the 18,000 people and all the peripheral things. “I just love the game of basketball,” he said. Casting himself as a teacher, he often was more bully than counselor, more screamer than lecturer, more heavy-handed disciplinarian than instructor.įor all of his bluster, Knight saw himself in simple terms. The late Pete Newell, a revered former coach and among basketball’s most influential figures, once observed in Sports Illustrated, “What Knight does do is the single most important thing in coaching: He turns out educated kids who are ready for society.”īut, of course, he did it his way, mingling gestures of compassion and charity with the kind of behavior commonly associated with a 5-year-old. More than 90% of his players graduated, none of his teams drew NCAA sanctions for infractions, and he campaigned tirelessly and loudly for reforms in college basketball, at one point offering to identify cheating coaches to the NCAA. Perhaps most impressive, in a sport notorious for recruiting violations and other shenanigans, Knight ran a clean program.

#Sports head basketball upside down games professional#

Many who played for him went on to successful professional careers, and many more went on to successful coaching careers, most notably Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who played for Knight at West Point and ultimately surpassed him in coaching victories. team to the title in the 1979 Pan American Games.Īt Texas Tech, where he landed after Indiana fired him in 2000 following the Reed report and an on-campus confrontation with a student, he quickly turned a sinking program beset with recruiting violations and the subsequent loss of scholarships into a consistent winner, getting the Red Raiders into the NCAA tournament three times. In 1984, he coached the U.S team to a gold medal in the Los Angeles Olympics, having previously led a U.S.