Casting A Large Shadow

Charles Pierce profiles Tom Crean's revitalization project at Indiana, and the tarnished legend who's continued presence off stage (or on TV) weighs on his work:

On his way out of the interview room, Oladipo stopped and talked with Bob Hammel, the local Indiana beat writer who had been Bob Knight's amanuensis throughout Knight's entire stormy tenure in Bloomington. In fact, Hammel was central to the strangest interview of my career. In 1991, while I was working for The National, prior to our unfortunate accident while docking in Lakehurst, New Jersey, I went out to Indiana to work on a story about the 15th anniversary of the 1976 national championship team, which had gone through the entire season undefeated. (At that time, UNLV was on the verge of doing the same thing, but eventually lost to Duke in the national semifinals in, oddly enough, Indianapolis.) I talked to almost every player on Indiana's 1976 roster, and the coach was my last interview.
I was told to meet him after practice. This already was not promising; Indiana was a good team that year, but not a great one, and Knight was never a field of buttercups after practice even in the best of times — which, after all, was what I was coming to talk to him about. Knight and Hammel and I adjourned to Knight's office, whereupon he proceeded to give me what has to be the world's longest string of monosyllables. It was like interviewing Tarzan. But, at one point, Knight said something about a particular game, and Hammel jumped in and corrected him. Knight's face lit up and then he and Hammel embarked on a 90-minute conversation about that season that was brilliant and insightful and that I wish had gone on for four more hours. I was allowed to keep the tape running. The ground rule, apparently, was that Knight would answer all my questions as long as Hammel asked them. (I still owe Hammel for this, by the way.) That oddball combination of genius and truculence and Christ-alone-knows-what-else is as much a part of the Indiana tradition that Crean has tried so hard to revive as Branch McCracken is. And, watching Victor Oladipo bend over and touch Hammel gently on the shoulder, I realized that, for all the work he's done, Tom Crean still has one very big, besweatered elephant sitting in the corner of his office at Indiana University.

Knight was definitely a piece of work.  He had some great instincts, and he had some terrible ones.  I don't know if many people would welcome him back as coach at IU if such a thing was possible.  I would guess his strongest supporters are dying in ever increasing numbers.  But he was definitely a legend in his own screwed-up way. 

He is also a totem of the changes I've made as a person.  In high school, I thought players who quit from his team were cry baby liberal losers.  Today, I wouldn't fault anybody for walking away from an abusive ass like him.  Things look different at different times in life.