Bob Knight, one of college basketball’s winningest coaches but also one of the sport’s most polarizing figures, has died at the age of 83, his family announced on Wednesday.
The family did not immediately release the cause of death for the man who most famously coached Indiana University from 1971 to 2000 and won three national championships there, including in 1976, a squad that is the most recent men’s Division I team to finish the season unbeaten.
Knight passed away at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, surrounded by his relatives, the family posted to his website.
“We will continue to celebrate his life and remember him, today and forever as a beloved Husband, Father, Coach, and Friend,” the post reads.
Before retiring in 2008, Knight won a then-record 902 NCAA Division I men’s games. Knight bookended his 29 seasons in Bloomington with successful stints at the US Military Academy and Texas Tech University.
Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary former Duke coach whom Knight coached at Army in the late 1960s, paid tribute to Knight on Wednesday, saying “we lost one of the greatest coaches in the history of basketball.”
“Clearly, he was one of a kind. Coach Knight recruited me, mentored me, and had a profound impact on my career and in my life. This is a tremendous loss for our sport and our family is deeply saddened by his passing,” said Krzyzewski, now the NCAA Division I men’s leader with 1,202 wins.
In addition to winning on the court, Knight was known for running a clean program – an overwhelming majority of Knight’s players graduated and his teams were never on NCAA probation.
Nicknamed “The General,” Knight innovated how coaches used the motion offense and insisted on tough man-to-man defense, and led his teams to 24 appearances in the NCAA Division I men’s tournament. The four-time National Coach of the Year led Indiana to 11 Big Ten Conference titles and five Final Fours.
He told ESPN in 2000 that were he to list his job title on a passport, it would be “teacher/coach.”
But Knight also was described in a lot of not-so-nice ways: Brash. Intimidating. Unapologetic. Mad genius.
“People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don’t get there with milk and cookies. We never have and we never will,” he told Bob Costas in 1994, about a week after an incident where his head contacted the head of a player he was barking at on the bench. Some media critics said it was a headbutt and that he should be fired; Knight said the incident was accidental.
At that weekend, Indiana played its final home game of the season, and at a ceremony honoring the team’s seniors, Knight said: “When my time on Earth is gone and my activities here are past, I want they bury me upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass.”
Steve Alford, one of the top players in Hoosiers’ history, told another former Hoosiers captain, AJ Guyton, in 2020 that he appreciated how Knight coached despite the angry outbursts.
“Coach just had the ability, you just couldn’t take a day off,” Alford, now coach at the University of Nevada, said on Guyton’s “House of Hoosier” podcast. “You may not appreciate when you’re playing for him, but now coaching for 30 years and seeing how he made me a better player … it was on the gas pedal all the time. … I’ve always appreciated how honest, fair, and consistent Coach was.”
“You see him, he can be the greatest, friendliest, nicest guy, but then all of a sudden, he can be the craziest, meanest, just the last person you would want to be around,” Richard Mandeville, who played for Indiana in the 1990s, told CNN in 2000.
Knight always admitted he was tough on his players.
“If I came in to recruit your son, I would tell you, your wife, and your son, that I will be the most demanding coach your son can play for,” he told CNN’s Larry King in 2001. “Right off the bat. That’s the first thing I tell them. I say, I’m going to demand he goes to class, I’m going to demand that he plays hard, that he plays smart, that he behaves himself.”
Though he is best known for building a blue blood program at Indiana, Knight left in disgrace in 2000, having been fired by the university president. Earlier that year, CNN/Sports Illustrated reported former player Neil Reed’s accusation that he was choked by the coach three years prior during a practice. Video showed Knight putting his hand to the neck of the player during a stop in play. Knight always claimed he didn’t choke Reed but admitted it wasn’t unusual for him to put his hands on players.
After the choking video surfaced, the university initially suspended Knight for three games, fined him $30,000 and said he was subject of a zero-tolerance policy.
He didn’t make it to the next basketball season, being fired in September 2000 after an Indiana student said the coach confronted and grabbed him by the arm after the student addressed him as “Knight.”
For years Knight was estranged from the university, until he returned in 2020 for an event honoring his 1980-81 national championship team. More recently, Knight had been to some Indiana basketball practices, according to current Hoosiers coach Mike Woodson. Knight was hospitalized for several days in April 2023, his family said without specifying the nature or severity of his illness.
Won a national title with Ohio State as a reserve player
Robert Montgomery Knight was born on October 25, 1940, and grew up in the small northeastern city of Orrville, Ohio, where his father was a railroad worker and his mother was an elementary school teacher. In high school he played basketball, baseball and football.
The 6-foot-5 Knight went to Ohio State University and was a reserve on the 1960 national championship team that featured future Hall of Famers John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas.
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