Knight Fall in Indiana

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

Sept. 11, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Bob Knight was fired Sunday and his supporters will moan from here to the Final Four that the Indiana coach was set up by a 19-year-old kid who looked like he started shaving three weeks ago.

Nice try.

The Kent Harvey story is suspicious, yes. They should call in Inspector Clouseau. Harvey’s stepfather is Mark Shaw, a former Bloomington talk-show host and longtime Knight critic in the past.

You know what talk-show hosts are after.

It is entirely possible Harvey set out to goad Knight into confrontation last Thursday in Assembly Hall, sparking a weekend bombshell that led to Knight’s ouster.

“What’s up, Knight,” the kid reportedly said, causing Knight to grab Harvey by the arm and lecture him on, of all things, being respectful of others.

And what rich irony it is that the act that led to Knight’s canning may have been one of the more innocuous things he has done in 29 years of generating headlines.

But, no, that wasn’t the setup.

The setup was May 15, when Indiana President Myles Brand took the onus off himself and put it on Knight and every 19-year-old freshman scrub looking to take a coach down.

Brand had every right to fire Knight that day and should have.

Brand had before him a litany of offenses, a mandate from his trustees and all the momentum.

Knight was reeling in the wake of the Neil Reed accusations. A videotape had caught the coach in a 2.3-second choke hold on the player during a 1997 practice.

What more did Brand need?

With Knight’s power base eroding, other victims came forward like jailhouse snitches.

An athletic department secretary said Knight cursed her and once fired a vase over her head.

Ron Felling, a former assistant coach, said Knight roughed him up last year before Felling “resigned” to pursue other interests.

Still, Brand couldn’t pull the trigger?

Instead, he let Knight sweet-talk him into another chance.

“That was the ethical and moral thing to do,” Brand said Sunday. “Coach Knight has contributed almost 30 years to this university and has been successful in many ways. I believe then and I continue to believe that we had to give him one last chance.”

Really?

“Some people believed I overreached with that, and disagreed, and think that May 15 should have been the end. But I believe then, and I believe now, that it was a moral act.”

Actually, it was the easiest way to take the heat off Myles Brand.

“The fact is,” Brand said, “having given Coach Knight one last opportunity, he failed to take advantage of it. It was his decision.”

Yeah, but it should have been yours, Myles.

No sane person from Boston to Bloomington thought Knight had a chance to last under Brand’s “zero-tolerance” edict, although admittedly most of us thought he’d make it to the opening of practice.

Former New York Giant coach Bill Parcells, a close friend of Knight’s, hit it on the head once when he said: “You are what you are.”

Bob Knight is what he is.

Pete Newell, the Hall of Fame coach and Knight confidant, saw this coming like Shaquille O’Neal barreling down the lane.

“They were looking for it,” Newell said Sunday. “That guy [Brand] doesn’t have the guts to do it before, so he puts in impossible standards so that it’s all a setup, to satisfy the trustees, so that he [Knight] could fire himself, and say he violated the edict.

“This was never meant to be an edict anyone could follow, not even God could follow it.”

Harvey just happened to be the bag man.

If it wasn’t him, it would have been a referee in November, a cab driver in December, a Purdue fan in January or a sportswriter in summer who set off Knight’s zero-tolerance trigger wire.

There was a reason why Brand was spinning like a top Sunday, trying to convince everyone last week’s arm-grabbing incident did not alone precipitate Knight’s firing.

Brand laid out a scenario in which Knight was going to get fired any day now, regardless of Harvey.

“If that was the only instance that took place you would not be here today,” Brand told reporters. “It is the unacceptable pattern of behavior.”

And then Brand added: “This young man has been caught up in events well beyond his own responsibility.”

Brand worked furiously to protect Harvey from the post-firing onslaught, but it didn’t work.

Soon after Brand left the microphone, there were reports Harvey was already receiving death threats. The kid’s effigy was burned Sunday outside of Brand’s home.

Some goons passed out fliers in Bloomington showing a picture of Harvey with the message: “Wanted: Dead.”

This could have all been avoided had IU had a president with backbone.

It is, in essence, the story of Bob Knight in microcosm at Indiana.

In a state that prized basketball more than all else, Knight was allowed to operate in a vacuum, bend rules, kick chairs, kick people, pick fights.

He was one-more-chanced for 29 years.

Of course, it is all Bob Knight’s fault in the end, but Indiana has long been his enabler.

Murray Sperber, a former IU English professor, stuck it out as long as he could as one of the lone voices who dared to criticize Knight.

But even Sperber bailed out last spring, after he said Knight deserved to be fired in the wake of the Neil Reed revelations.

After getting death threats of his own, Sperber packed up and went to Montreal.

“Hopefully, I can come back,” Sperber said Sunday. “I’m going to call them tomorrow and ask if we can talk about teaching in the spring.”

Sperber thinks Knight’s firing can mark a new beginning for IU.

“I’m sure the faculty is very relieved,” he said. “I know for a fact. I’m getting lots of e-mails. They just want it to be over. They couldn’t stand the pain anymore.”

Yes, it’s finally over.

But it could have been over sooner.

UNIVERSITY DISMISSES COACH

Bob Knight, 59, was fired for violating a zero-tolerance conduct policy set in May. A1

HE’S GOING, GOING, GONE

A chronology of how things have come and gone for Knight, on and off the court, since 1971.

Page 16

IT’S PLAYERS WHO PAY PRICE

There’s no reason to pity the university, but Knight betrays his team, writes Diane Pucin. Page 17

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KNIGHT BY THE NUMBERS

3: NCAA titles