Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography

Brilliant, intimidating, charming, or profane, Coach Bob Knight is an enduring contradiction who has long fascinated and repelled basketball fans, for whom he has provided as much to dislike as to respect.

Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography is the first comprehensive biography of Knight, one of the most successful and controversial coaches in the history of American sports. Detailing the entire scope of Knight's playing and coaching career through extensive interviews -- including many with people who have never gone on record about him before -- authors Steve Delsohn and Mark Heisler give a candid yet balanced account of the man who will likely end up as the all-time winningest coach in college basketball.

In 1965, at age twenty-four, Bobby Knight became the head basketball coach at Army and began a career that would soon take him to Indiana University, where for the next twenty-nine years he would become the game's most famous and notorious coach. While there, he won three national championships (1976, '81, '87) and once compiled a perfect 32-0 record with an amazing 63-1 record over two seasons. Knight was NCAA Coach of the Year three times (1975, '76, '89) and coached U.S. teams to gold medals in both the Olympics and the Pan-Am Games. Yet he is equally, if not more, famous for some of his misbehaviors -- pulling his team off the court against the Soviets, making insensitive comments about rape to Connie Chung, putting a tampon in a player's locker to let him know that Knight thought he was a wimp -- and other alleged misbehaviors: kicking his own son Patrick during a game, stuffing an LSU fan into a trash can, assaulting a policeman in Puerto Rico -- and the list goes on. One of Knight's closest friends once said of him, "Bob Knight is an asshole. But he knows it and he tries like hell to make up for it." Unfortunately, over the years there has been more and more to make up for.

The story of Bob Knight has moved on to Texas Tech, where he continues his quest to become the winningest college basketball coach of all time. He already is the most fascinating. Love him or loathe him, Knight keeps winning and forces you to watch him and have an opinion. Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography is an extraordinary look at a legendary coach with a monumental temper and an appetite for confrontation.

With all that's been written about controversial college basketball coach Knight, do we need another book about him? Sportswriters Delsohn and Heisler make it hard to say no. The authors make good use of the material already written about Knight, including information culled from Knight's 2002 autobiography and John Feinstein's seminal A Season on the Brink. But they also interview Knight's friends and enemies, as well as curious onlookers. They nicely dissect Knight's early years as a player at Ohio State and his first coaching job at West Point in 1965, letting his early successes and failures serve as a mirror for his future triumphs and embarrassments (Knight's courtside outrage is well known: in his worst moments he kicked his son during a game and choked an Indiana player). They shine when covering Knight's 29 years at Indiana University, where he led the Hoosiers to three national titles. Their evenhanded and in-depth reporting brings clarity and truth to a situation that's long been debated by Knight supporters and detractors. Knight is a character of Shakespearean proportions: noble, talented and charismatic, but cursed with a violent temper and surly attitude. It must be a hard life to live, but it's mesmerizing to read about. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

If Bob Knight has a good record this year at Texas Tech, he may pass Dean Smith as the all-time winner among college basketball coaches. He is, hands down, the most controversial coach of all time. Basing their account on extensive research into the millions of words written about Knight and on interviews with Knight's associates, players, assistant coaches, friends, and critics, the authors, both veteran sportswriters, produce a portrait that is always fascinating, if somewhat vexing--the latter thanks to the nature of their subject. Knight is capable of tremendous kindness and stunning cruelty. He bullies, intimidates, and threatens to get his way yet can be gracious and deferential when praising those he considers his mentors. He inspires both intense loyalty and unforgiving bitterness among former players. There are at least a half-dozen books on Bob Knight (the best may be John Feinstein's Season on the Brink, 1986), and each succeeds in exposing some aspect of the man's mercurial personality. This is one of the better efforts since it draws on the work that preceded it. Can't-put-it-down reading for Knight followers, pro and con. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved