RIP: Popularly known American basketball coach dies after….At the age of 83, the renowned Indiana Hoosier coach passed away. At the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, he served as Team USA’s coach.
RIP to a legend of college basketball in America and around the globe. Robert Montgomery Knight, also known as Bob or Bobby Knight, was born in Orrville, Ohio, in 1940. His family confirmed that he passed away this morning at the age of 83 at his Bloomigton, Indiana, home.
Knight served as the Olympic coach for Team USA in 1984. His team, which included Michael Jordan, Pat Ewing, Chris Mullin, and Sam Perkins, won the gold medal in Los Angeles after defeating a Spanish squad led by the late Antonio DÃaz-Miguel and including Epi, Romay, and Fernando MartÃn. With immense respect, Knight subsequently declared, “He was the best non-American coach of his time.”
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Knight is a strict and disciplined coach whose tale alternates between light and shadow. Between the ingenuity of his techniques and the revolutionary nature of his systems, which are renowned for their dynamic assaults, blocking, and passing in addition to press defence. In the autumn of 2000, he was forced to leave the Indiana Hoosiers, his home since 1971, due to his volatile nature. He won his three national titles in Indiana over nearly thirty years: in 1976, with a 32-0 record, in 1981, and in 1987.
Students looked up to Knight as a god, and when he confronted one of them violently, they wanted him fired. When a video of him grabbing a player by the neck surfaced, it was no longer enough to punish him for his outburst of rage with three games and $300,000. That time, his figure saved him. There was nothing and no one that could stop him from bidding Indiana farewell.
Over his career, his outbursts were a constant. His image was embedded in his DNA. Knight showed no hesitation in exerting pressure on his players or in denigrating and objecting to referees. At the 1979 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico, he assaulted a police officer, hurled a trash can at a spectator, and took his own son off the bench during a timeout.
One particular incident from February 1985 stands out in his memory: he threw a red chair across the court just as Purdue’s Steve Reid was about to attempt a free throw. Knight started his coaching career on the benches of the military academy at West Point. That’s why he called George Patton “The General” and was so fond of him.
After Indiana, his career continued. He spent nine years as a reserve at Texas Tech, from 2001 to 2008. With 42 seasons under his belt, 902 victories (the fifth-highest total ever for a college coach), and 80% of his players graduating from college at a rate above the average of 42%, he concluded his coaching career. Out of all the students who went through his hands over the course of the four years, only four (2%) did not graduate. He was admitted to the NCAA in 2006 and the Hall of Fame in 1991.
