BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Iconic as he was controversial, Bob Knight for decades embodied the spirit of basketball in a corner of the world mad about it. His hard-nosed, fundamentals-driven style and attention to detail became deeply rooted in the culture of the sport for basketball fans in southern Indiana and elsewhere, his admirers standing as ardently by him as his critics often chastised him.
At the height of his success, few in the sport were more recognizable, or more noteworthy.
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Knight died in Bloomington, according to a post on bobknight.com, a website that represents Knight and his foundation. The school later confirmed Knight’s death, announcing his passing ahead of the Indiana women’s exhibition game Wednesday at Assembly Hall. He was 83.
Knight was renowned for his extremes — an irrepressible winning habit juxtaposed against a fiery temper — which brought him both fame and notoriety. Each helped define one of college basketball’s most distinctive personalities for his 42 years as a head coach.
An Orrville, Ohio, native who played at Ohio State collegiately, Robert Montgomery Knight was part of Fred Taylor’s 1960 national championship-winning team that also included future NBA Hall of Famers John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. At 21, just out of Ohio State, Knight embarked on his coaching career by starting out as junior varsity coach at Cuyahoga Falls High School in 1962-63. He went 13-3 in his lone season there.
Knight would make his greatest impact running his own sideline as a college basketball coach. After his season at Cuyahoga Falls, he accepted an assistant coaching position at Army, under Tates Locke. He replaced Locke as head coach in West Point in 1965.
Over six seasons, Knight won 102 games at Army, with four 18-win seasons and only one year under .500. That work prompted the move that would come to define both Knight’s career and the program that lured him away from the service academy.
In 1971, Knight was hired as head coach at Indiana, a Big Ten school with two national championships but some ways removed from its best years under Branch McCracken. Knight almost immediately restored the Hoosiers among college basketball’s elite, advancing to the Final Four in his second season and winning a national title in his fifth.
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His 1975-76 team remains the last in Division I men’s basketball to complete a season undefeated, 32-0.
Those teams were widely considered his best, or at least the most reflective of Knight’s tenacious style.
Between 1974 and 1976, Indiana lost just once, in a regional final to Kentucky with star forward Scott May severely limited by injury. Members of both the 1974-75 team and its immediate successor have since suggested the former squad might have been the better overall, even if the latter finished its undefeated season and won Knight’s first national title.
But 1975-76 returned a hardened core of experienced players and good defensive balance. It battled all the way to the national final before losing Bobby Wilkerson to injury. Just as it had lost May.
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“Coach didn’t write anything on the board, and for a while he didn’t say a word,” Scott May told Sports Illustrated in 1995. “Then he said, ‘If you guys want to be champions, if you want to make history and do something that maybe no other team will ever do, you’ve got 20 minutes to prove it.’ And that was it. Somebody told me later he had waited two years to be in a position to say that.”
Knight would go on to win two more national titles at Indiana, in 1981 with future NBA Hall of Fame point guard Isiah Thomas, and in 1987, when Steve Alford set what was then an all-time Indiana scoring record.
Calbert Cheaney would later break that record, and the Big Ten career scoring mark as well, among the most notable of dozens of records with Knight’s fingerprints on them.
Of Indiana’s top 25 all-time scorers, 14 played some or all of their careers for Knight. Five of the Hoosiers’ top 10 rebounders did the same. So did 10 of Indiana’s top 15 assists leaders.
In total, Knight won 662 games at Indiana, most in program history by some distance. Among Big Ten coaches with at least 10 seasons service in the conference, only Bo Ryan and Thad Matta surpassed Knight’s win percentage (.731), and neither spent anywhere near as many years in the league.
Knight’s 353 conference wins were a Big Ten record until 2022, and his 11 league titles tied him with former Purdue coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert for most all-time.
When he retired in 2008, Knight’s 902 wins were an NCAA Division I men’s record, one later surpassed by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who played for Knight at Army and coached under him for one season in Bloomington.
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Controversy often accompanied his successes.
Knight was infamous for his temper, which he directed at everyone including referees, administrators, officials and his own players. He was accused of assaulting a police officer in Puerto Rico in 1979, while coaching a U.S. team there in the Pan American Games. His comments about sexual assault in a 1988 interview drew nationwide criticism.
But Knight was forever and inextricably attached to two incidents.
In 1985, during a home game against Purdue, incensed by an officiating decision to the point of drawing a technical foul, Knight then threw a chair from the IU bench across the Assembly Hall floor while Purdue guard Steve Reid stood at the line to shoot free throws.
In 1997, Knight was captured on videotape with his hand around the neck of one of his players, Neil Reed, during practice. The videotape was later published by CNN/SI.
That topped a mounting series of incidents that moved IU’s administration to put Knight on a “zero tolerance” policy for bad behavior. When he allegedly grabbed an IU student on campus in the fall of 2000, he was fired from his job.
Knight eventually took the head coaching job at Texas Tech, where he won 138 games and qualified for the NCAA tournament four times in six-plus seasons in Lubbock.
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After retiring in 2008, Knight worked for ESPN as a college basketball analyst before largely retreating from public life.
For nearly two decades, he also retreated from — and at times publicly scorned — the university where he enjoyed his greatest success.
Knight spent almost 20 years estranged from his former program, uninterested in reconciliation following his dismissal in 2000. But that cold war would eventually end.
With no forewarning or fanfare, in April 2019, Knight attended an IU baseball game against Penn State. Unannounced, the former Indiana coach was guided through the Bart Kaufman Field crowd in a golf cart driven by an athletics employee. He took in the game, then departed as quietly as he had arrived.
Later that year, Knight and his wife moved back to Bloomington. Former players stopped in to visit. Knight’s relationship with IU appeared to be thawing.
It did for good on Feb. 8, 2020. Flanked by his son, Pat, and numerous other former players, Knight took the Assembly Hall floor to thunderous applause during a halftime ceremony held in his honor.
“This,” former Hoosier Randy Wittman said that afternoon, “is where he belongs.”
Mike Woodson, who alongside Wittman and a close circle of others helped persuade Knight to finally return to Indiana, was hired from the NBA to coach his alma mater in March 2021. From that point forward, Knight was a fixture behind the scenes, regularly attending team practices. Knight lived out his final years in Bloomington.
Perhaps the most poignant public moment in his later years between Knight and the fan base that adored him for nearly three decades came in March 2017.
Knight co-hosted a speaking engagement in the gymnasium at Bloomington High School North alongside longtime confidant and former Bloomington Herald-Times sports editor Bob Hammel. Knight and Hammel spent the evening reminiscing about Knight’s tenure, trading memories and interacting with a crowd nearly 3,000 strong.
Near the end of an event that ran more than two hours, Pat Ryan, wife of the late IU president John Ryan, took a microphone and spoke to Knight.
“Thank you, on behalf of all of these people,” she said. “We miss you.”
As Knight stood to exit the gym, the crowd rose to its feet in applause. Knight waved.
“I’ll remember that until I’m gone,” he said. “You are the best fans in the history of college basketball.”
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