Mike Nadel: Bully Bobby undermined winner Knight

No great teacher chokes a student. No decent person verbally attacks a fellow human being for making an innocent mistake. No one who stresses teamwork believes he's bigger than the team. No stickler for discipline loses control instantaneously. No humble soul always thinks he's right.

Therein lies the vexing conundrum that is Robert Montgomery Knight, the winningest coach -- wait, make that ex-coach -- in college basketball history.

The testimonials from former players, coaching colleagues and others who knew Bobby Knight have come pouring in since he announced his retirement from the Texas Tech job Monday, and I'll add some praise of my own:

He won without breaking NCAA rules. His student-athletes really were students. He tirelessly helped former players in need. He was an innovator. He mentored young coaches.

But ...

With Bobby, there's always the "but."

And I'm not talking about his chair-throwing incident. Or the time he playfully pretended to whip Calbert Cheaney, which sent black leaders into a tizzy. Or his firm lift-the-chin move to get a player's attention. Or the time he kicked his foot in the general direction of his son, then-player and now Texas Tech successor Pat Knight. Or the millions of obscenities he screamed at his charges during his 42-year, 902-victory career.

Because Knight was such a bigger-than-life figure, we in the media went wild every time he lifted one of his bushy eyebrows in a menacing manner. Most of those incidents, however, were minor "buts" in the grand scheme of things.

My problem with Knight over the years was the way his notoriously short fuse and his cocksure vanity made him -- as former Illinois coach Lou Henson so famously and perfectly put it -- The Classic Bully.

To this day, Knight neither has admitted to nor apologized for choking Neil Reed at practice in 1997. This despite incontrovertible video evidence. I don't know what Reed did to enrage Knight. And unless the player threatened the coach's family, I don't care.

Knight's peers spent Monday lauding him as "a great teacher," but great teachers don't abuse their students. Teaching involves more than getting pupils to understand the material. As John Wooden often said, the method matters, too. Eventually, Knight's methods turned a large segment of society against him, made Indiana officials realize he wasn't bigger than the university and undermined his ability to keep excelling on a national scale.

Now that he has turned over the mediocre Red Raiders to his son, it's fair to ask this question: When did Bobby Knight cease mattering nationally?

Even before he throttled Reed (and well before his Indiana reign ended three years later with one last unseemly outburst), Knight already had lost the touch that made him a big winner and more than just a hot-headed conversation piece.

It says here that Bobby's long goodbye began in 1995, when Indiana concluded a 19-12 season with a first-round NCAA tournament loss to Missouri. After the defeat, somebody erroneously told the volunteer press-conference moderator that Knight wouldn't show; when Knight arrived moments later, he belittled the volunteer in a long, profanity-laced tirade.

Monday, Louisville coach Rick Pitino called Knight "a wonderful guy." Sorry, but there's nothing wonderful about unprovoked verbal assaults. The Classic Bully had struck again, harder and louder than ever.

Meanwhile, prep stars were opting not to be bullied. With recruits avoiding Indiana in droves, Knight's record went from prodigious to pedestrian, and he stopped contending for national titles.

Knight's Indiana record entering the 1994-95 season was 538-173, a .757 winning percentage. He was 293-109 (.729) in Big Ten play and 38-13 (.745) in the NCAA tournament.

Over his final six years at Indiana and in his seven seasons at Texas Tech, he went a combined 261-149 (.637), including 113-91 (.554) in Big Ten and Big 12 games. Most tellingly, he was 5-10 in the NCAAs.

The talent deficit became too great, and Bobby Knight became a figment of Dick Vitale's imagination.

Dickie V would yell: "The General is awesome, baby!" The results -- both on the court and in recruiting battles -- indicated otherwise.

Aside from passing Dean Smith on the all-time victory list, Knight mostly made headlines in recent seasons by getting into altercations with opposing coaches, referees, faculty members, reporters and neighbors.

Some detractors called him a hypocrite and a quitter Monday for bailing on a bad situation, but that seems unfair. I'm accepting Pat Knight's word that his 67-year-old dad simply was too tired to continue.

Although Knight's worshippers say their deity made a difference in Lubbock, the truth is this: Texas Tech had no hoops tradition when he arrived and remains an afterthought today.

Average attendance this season at United Spirit Arena is 6,610 - about 44 percent of capacity. Red Raiders Fever, it ain't.

Did Knight accomplish anything special in Lubbock? Not compared to what took place in Spokane, where Dan Monson and Mark Few built Gonzaga into a national force. For that matter, look at what's going on in Waco, where Scott Drew has saved a seemingly hopeless Baylor program -- partly by running recruiting circles around Texas neighbor Knight.

Yes, for all of The Classic Bully's coaching genius, he still needed outstanding players to win.

Bobby Knight wasn't bigger than the game after all.

Mike Nadel (mikenadel@sbcglobal.net) is the Chicago sports columnist for GateHouse News Service. Read his blog, The Baldest Truth, at www.thebaldesttruth.com <http://www.thebaldesttruth.com> .