Bob Knight, who won three national titles as head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, has died. He was 83. (Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
He was brilliant. He was a bully. He coached some of the most perfectly disciplined basketball ever played, and then acted undisciplined in his own life.
He was an American original and a cultural touchstone with oversized impact, in ways good and, yes, sometimes less so.
You could say Bob Knight was a product of his time, but even half a century ago he pushed the edges of proper conduct; attempting, say, to beat down the door to the referee’s dressing room was frowned upon back in the 1970 NIT as well.
Complicated? They don’t get much more complicated than Robert Montgomery Knight, one of the greatest coaches of all time. He combined a demanding will and a legendary temper to become as famous for his authoritarian outbursts as decades of dominance highlighted by three national college basketball titles.
Knight died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Indiana after a lengthy illness, his family announced. The Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer was 83.
You can’t write the history of basketball, perhaps