Bob Knight Makes His Long-Awaited Return From Indiana Exile

“Twenty years now

Where'd they go?

Twenty years

I don't know

I sit and I wonder sometimes

Where they've gone”

-      “Like a Rock”

Bob Seger, proud son of Michigan, released that No. 1 hit in May 1986. Less than a year later, Bob Knight won the third and final NCAA Tournament championship of his long, stormy, brilliant coaching reign at Indiana University.

The lasting legacy of Seger’s song about estrangement is more about Chevy trucks after it was used in a memorable TV ad campaign from 1991-2004, but one couldn’t help humming a few bars on Saturday afternoon as Robert Montgomery Knight – aka “The General” – made his long-rumored return to the Hoosiers’ home court at Assembly Hall.

Not since Knight was dishonorably discharged in the fall of 2000 had he been back for an IU home basketball game. The hurt was still too raw, the pride was still too great and the anger toward previous administrations was still too deeply ingrained for that to happen.

But Saturday in Bloomington, Ind., with Knight’s 1980 Big Ten championship team being honored at halftime of a 74-62 loss to Purdue, the irascible coaching Hall of Famer finally returned. With his son Pat, wife Karen and a few dozen of his former players by his side, the 79-year-old hardwood genius shuffled out to center court and acknowledged the cheering home crowd.

“BOB-BY! BOB-BY!” they chanted.

And then, a little later, “THANK YOU, COACH!”

Knight, the ravages of time clearly having taken their toll on his hawkish features and bearish figure, waved an open hand of appreciation. It was a papal gesture and one he soon replaced with his old favorites: the balled fist, shaken skyward; the raised index finger, poked into a player’s chest; two arms held overhead in exhortation.

Isiah Thomas and Quinn Buckner, two of his championship point guards – the very extension of Knight’s personality on the court – leaned close to their foundering mentor and whispered in his ear. Two by two, the rest of the group did the same, including Mike Woodson, the former New York Knicks coach who rushed his return from back surgery in an attempt to save that 1979-80 season.

Knight, macho to a fault but said by friends to be a deeply emotional man, did his best to hold back tears.

Everyone in attendance did the same, including Indiana grads Mark Cuban and Sage Steele from prime courtside seats. The Dallas Mavericks owner and the ESPN broadcaster knew they couldn’t miss this reunion for the world.

Reports of tickets going for $830 on the secondary market hours before the game suggested the title-starved IU fan base felt the same.

“And I stood arrow straight

Unencumbered by the weight

Of all these hustlers and their schemes

I stood proud, I stood tall

High above it all

I still believed in my dreams”

-      “Like A Rock”

Knight did not address the crowd, at least not formally. But he did make his way to the courtside broadcast station of ESPN and longtime defender Dick Vitale, with whom he pretended to spar after twice making the “crazy” sign with his fingers.

Vitale, who recently turned 80, cried openly on the air. He credits a Knight-led campaign with helping pave the way for his 2008 induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.  

Gene Keady, Knight’s old coaching foil at Purdue, stood and applauded his old rival, against whom he went 21-20 in all those Big Ten wars. Most infamous of all those games was the 1985 meeting in Bloomington, the one where Knight threw a chair onto the court.

Saturday, Knight didn’t throw any chairs. Instead, decked out in that familiar red top to go with blue jeans, he led the crowd in a brief chant of “DE-FENSE!” as the halftime ceremony wound down.

Knight played nice and allowed an adoring Hoosier Nation to pay its respects. Closure was the operative word.

“This was a player’s deal,” Buckner said on ESPN. “The university was involved. We collectively are taking the credit for this. That was hugely importantly to Coach Knight. That’s the way he was, that’s the way we are, that’s how we get it done.”

“My hands were steady

My eyes were clear and bright

My walk had purpose

My steps were quick and light

And I held firmly

To what I felt was right

Like a rock”

Seger’s hit song was co-opted to sell pickup trucks, but if you listen again, a little more closely, you’ll hear a description of a man who once ruled the sidelines with a flinty glare. Knight did so through intimidation, yes, but also through uncommon preparation and inspiration.

For that, he deserved a day like Saturday.

“This is where he belongs,” Randy Wittman, one of four players on that 1979-80 team to coach in the NBA, said during the broadcast. “He came back here for a reason. We’ll never see another day like this in college basketball.”

Mike Berardino is a freelance writer based in South Bend, Ind. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.