Coach Bobby Knight, a look back on his playing and coaching career.

pitch, bully but make sure his kids graduate and win, you know, Mike sous-chef ski, his protégé might break Bob Knight's

career

wins record, but you'll never be another general again. I mean, yeah, come on, you've seen and heard the video clips, but for I Understand Robert Montgomery Knight, you have to go

back

to Orrville Ohio, a championship at Ohio State to West Point and you know you have to go

back

to Hoosier land, where Knight won three titles. It's a journey Jeremy Shap took for four reasons, both professional and personal. I have given Indiana University basketball

coach

Bob Knight one last chance and he has failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

Coach Knight behaved and acted in a manner that was both defiant and hostile when the end finally came in September 2000. But due to a chair or choke, Bob Knight grabbed the Indiana student's elbow and Harvey after Harvey said: Hey Knight, what's up? I would have to be absolute with the things they have put on me to grab. a child in public and cursing at a child in public and that is totally false, but that explanation did not satisfy Indiana President Myles Brand. I gave him the option to resign as head basketball

coach

, he refused and I notified him that he was being removed. as a basketball coach, effective immediately, just three days later, Knight said goodbye to Indiana, I wish me and my family the best, just as I wish you the best, the competition to secure the first interview with Knight was intense, He chose ESPN and me primarily because he had a long friendship with my father, Dick Shaft.

She had known Knight since he was a teenager. Now I was sitting down with him for a 30-minute live interview in the evening. It was a chance to show millions of people that he wasn't what thousands bran had called him defined in hostile but Knight became agitated during a commercial break you know too much no, I'm serious, I don't like that, you know if I'll be here and I have points to make. I'll clarify those points. I'll be back, don't worry, we only have one minute, but don't interrupt me again after the break, the interview continued, but again before you interrupted me, I have another real faculty for doing that, thank you.

Not you, I don't think it's anything to be really proud of myself. I think when I talked about Pat Bob you came here to do an interview. I'm asking you questions. When I've spoken it well, let me finish. The answer is that. Okay, Jeremy, that's fair enough. He has done the right thing if I interrupted your questions. Yes, yes, no. Didn't you interrupt my answers with your questions and then I tried to come back, so let me show you this? You have a long way to go. Go be as good as your dad, you better keep that in mind Five minutes later, the interview was over, thank you very much for the better part of 30 minutes of the night and I had discussed the circumstances of his dismissal, but of all things he said.

It was his personal attack on me that had the most immediate impact, suddenly I was part of the story, as my father recognized a few days later, Bob Knight, has been my friend for years, but now he owes me an apology. Son, he made it personal. I wonder. How Bob would have reacted if someone had made a shot like that and one of his sons. Perhaps no sports figure of the last 40 years has been analyzed and dissected more frequently, debated and discussed than Bob. The night, the night is, in many ways, a mystery like that. many of those who have observed him I have long wanted to know what made him the man he became to get answers I sought out people who knew him well long before his arrival in Indiana we fished we hunted and inevitably it was something to do just to be they often had a good time Norman Douglas and Bob Knight were best friends and grew up 60 years ago in little Orrville Ohio, when Knight was in the minor leagues Douglass was his teammate, he remembers Knight's father as a powerful influence, his father was just a very straight shooter. he was absolutely a person who told the truth and that's it, amateur psychologists have been analyzing Bob Knight for a long time if there is something you can find that defines him, what could his parents be, mainly his friends and city ​​of him?

Everyone has this sense of right and wrong and I really think that's the essence of the man Orville Knight went to Ohio State on a basketball scholarship among his teammates were future Hall of Famers Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek Havlicek says that sometimes Knight, as a coach, insisted that his players attend class; he himself was not a student of discipline. I remember there was a period of time, I don't know how many days in a row, he didn't go to class and when he showed up, the teacher said, "Oh, it's nice to see you." that you're still alive or you're still in this, on the other hand, Night dedicated himself completely to Fred Taylors Buckeyes Ohio State won the NCAA title in 1960 and reached the national championship the next two years, but Night was always the odd one out.

He desperately wanted to be a starter, but Taylor never elevated him off the bench, so how do you think he finally realized what his role was going to be? I don't know if he ever realized it because I always think about his On his own, he probably should have played more and you know, maybe he's right and a lot of respect like Havlicek and Lucas Mel know that they started for the Buckeyes and would go on to play in the NBA. What impact do you think he would have not getting

playing

time in Ohio? State he wanted to have over the rest of Bob Knight's life.

I think it has a lot to do with why he is so successful. I think you can't help but come out of that with the recognition that once you're in a position of some control over your own destiny you're going to exercise that control and I think that's what Bobby does when his closest friends were moving to the NBA night and moved to northern Ohio, not far from Orville, to coach the Cuyahoga Falls High School junior varsity team in 1962, where Bobby Knight would be OK? Gary Ebers, the only guy who played at night for two different schools in college, in the military, but before that on the JV team in Cuyahoga Falls, to help me learn to catch, would stand around here and throw balls, but there was no way around it, you had to understand it Bieber says that Knight was not nicer when he taught history like many of the teachers of the time.

Knight uber says he wasn't above resorting to corporal punishment, you didn't talk and if you did, you knew it. what were the consequences and he certainly he took a good hit and I never got one, but there were those who didn't. This was off the basketball court after just one season at the high school level. The night I went to West Point as an assistant coach. the head coach was Tate's Locke, only two years older than him, we led the country and the technical aspects when we were together there back then, that was not statistics, people maintained but it would be today and we were off the wall Jeremy in 1965 Knight managed to block his head coach of all the dozens of young men who played for him in his six seasons there his head coach none was closer tonight than point guard Mike sous-chefs key I learned about passion I learned about preparation I learned the At the funeral he spent three days with my family and you know, he was worried and told me: "You can stay here, don't worry about coming back.

I came back, we won both games, not because of me, but you know, we won both games and "We went to the NIT, we made the Final Four." and he never wanted any credit for it, but Knight is also stubborn because of a dispute in the 1992 Final Four. He and Shoe Chefs Key didn't speak for almost a decade. How did you guys find a way to heal the gap between you? you and the 90s, yes that was a stupid thing and we both know it, but as a result of all that we are as close and dear and each other as much as we can be.

I talk to him once or twice a week. I consider it. one of my best friends and, as sometimes happens in relationships in which people love each other, there are problems at the end the night remains an inscrutable tangle of contradictions. a disciplinarian who often lacks self-discipline demands respect but often withholds it. He has been smart and stupid. successful and self-destructive, a devoted friend and his worst enemy. I think most of the kids who left the programs he trained are probably stronger, more capable and ready for life, and I wanted my only child to be trained under that program.

He wouldn't have sent my son there to follow those steps and procedures. Those who know the night best suggest that much of what defines him comes from his inability to see shades of gray in Bob Knight's world. There are blacks and there are whites, people talk about temperament and I call that a highly developed sense of right and wrong. I think he felt so good about his overall approach to the game that there wasn't room for anyone to have an opinion. totally different, that's Bob Knight. He knows what he believes is right and he will do it.

Many ordinary people who allow someone else to define what is right and what is wrong. He doesn't know it and I admire him. Bob Night did not respond to our request for an interview for this story Monday night alma mater Ohio State jumping in its first NCAA championship game since 1962, which was its third straight title game, a team that had a young but still intense Robert Montgomery Knight coming off the bench on one of the best days of The year to be a sportsman there is a lot to see on Monday why the Buckeye Gators' battle for the national title is loaded with flavor.