Indiana Alumni Magazine
Playing for the General
On or off the court, Bob Knight has always been the same person.
by John Laskowski
When I first got to Indiana, I found out Coach Knight was already starting to change the way things would be done. We had heard that at West Point he made the kids do conditioning in Army boots. One of the guys at the meetings spoke up and said, kind of in jest, "Coach, are you going to make us wear Army boots for conditioning?"
Boy, Coach snapped right back and said, "Don't you worry about what you're going to run in." That really set the tone about who was going to be the boss.
The thing that separates him from other coaches is his mental approach to the game. My first varsity scrimmage was in Fort Wayne. The following Monday, I got a call to come in to practice an hour early. Steve Green [BA'78, DDS'84] also was called in. Coach [Bob] Weltlich had us in the film room, showing the film of the intrasquad game. He'd say, "Are you running as fast as you can down the floor on this play?" "Is that as hard as you can guard this guy?"
John Laskowski notes that Coach Bob Knight's singular approach was a two-edged sword. Courtesy photo.
Obviously, Coach Knight told him to get us in there and show us what was expected. The message was "you can do better." It showed me I was not going to be able to come down here, run around, and say it was a great practice. It also told us he needed us to help the team. He singled the two of us out to say he needed a couple more players to make this thing go.
His style was challenging physically and mentally. There's a fine line between getting on a guy so hard you bury his spirit and getting on him so he works harder. I was one who got yelled at a lot. Steve Green and Kent Benson [BS'77], we got our share. But this is where Coach Knight was the smartest. I think he has the ability to look at a guy and say he needs to be pushed more. Green, Benson, and I fit that mold.
Other guys may not respond to that, but they still hear the message. If you're yelling at one guy, all the other guys are hearing that message. There are a lot of dynamics going on that we weren't smart enough to figure out. In the course of watching other teams, some of these things became clear to me.
But that approach is a two-edged sword. The drive in Coach that makes him such a great motivator, a great tactician, spending hours and hours on the game, having a single focus on how to make the team as good as it can be: that factor comes into play when someone takes him away from his mission.
And he does have a temper. He doesn't sit there and talk in a subtle voice all the time. He gets mad and he yells. I never felt it was demeaning, and I never felt embarrassed. I knew it was his way, his coaching style, to get me to be the best player I could be.
So it must be difficult to say all of a sudden, "Now I'm not dealing with my team. I'm dealing with somebody off the court so I better switch to personality B to handle this situation." Coach is always the same guy. And he deals with those situations the way he deals with things on the court.
Well, those people aren't here to become better basketball players. They're here to do some other job. What proves to be successful in one arena can prove harmful in another. I think it got worse over the years. Times change. Back in 1971, that type of coach was common, the Vince Lombardi type. But people changed how they respond to that style. A lot more people are uncomfortable dealing with him than there were back when I played.
And winning or not winning championships has something to do with it. It's human nature to say, "We're winning and, yes, he might have been a little bit out of line in this instance over here. But man, that national championship is good." A couple of things have made it harder and harder to win championships. First, the rules changed. They add a shot clock so you can't play a controlled offense late in a game or force the other team to play defense for 45 or 50 seconds to wear them down. And the three-point line gives that guard making 20-footers three points. So you have to change your offense and defense and the type of players you recruit.
Also, basketball has moved from an intercollegiate sports event to an entertainment activity. When we played Kentucky in Dayton, Ohio, in 1975, my last game as a college player, for the right to go to the Final Four, that game was on tape-delay in Bloomington, Ind. It wasn't deemed important enough to show live. Now the tournament is 64 teams, and every game is on live TV. Because it became entertainment, more guys play and there is more talent at more schools. It's harder to get to the top of the conference all the time and harder to get to the Final Four.
It's entertainment now, and Coach Knight is not in the entertainment business.
But when you take into account that he coached at Indiana for 29 years, which is the longest tenure of any basketball or football coach in the history of the conference, this is not the way we wanted it to end. The whole university community, from the president to the players, is saddened about how this happened.
I think Isiah Thomas [BA'87] put it in perspective when he told me it's like when there's a corporate merger in the business world. One company has a certain type of personnel and the other company has another type, and now they have to merge. Sometimes people have to leave because it's just not going to work out for everybody. This is where we're at here. The best thing to do is separate and go forward.
Both sides are going to come out fine. 
John Laskowski, BS'75, is vice president of marketing and membership for the IUAA. He was in Bob Knight's first recruiting class and today announces IU games on television. On Sept. 12 he sat down with Indiana Alumni Magazine Managing Editor Mike Wright, BA'78, and told him this story.