What to make of former Indiana University coach Bob Knight's legacy?
The passing of bullies should be ignored but it seldom works out that way. The trumpets will fade for Bob Knight, as they already had for a generation unfamiliar with the man. Not a trophy or a building or some remembrance yet, but that's up to Indiana, or to ESPN or whomever decides those things these days.
His legacy is past, but his story is fresh and requires telling, not to the point where Knight is the greatest basketball coach ever, as has been offered among the immediate tributes, but to recognize Knight's significance, a winner for a while, a grotesque forever.
If Knight had not been so loud, so oafish, so erratic and so often out of control his legacy would be wrapped in soft tissue, there with John Wooden or Dean Smith, eventually with Mike Krzyzewski, basketball coaches of grand achievement and genuine worth.
But no photo or film of Knight as a reasonable human is handy. He was good copy. He was good pictures, in motion or at full roar, hardly ever represented without his face distorted in rage, mouth open, fist raised, a lit fuse.
His famous instruction to be buried face down so his detractors could kiss his rump, was clever and phony. The man cared about his legacy, the three national titles, the undefeated team at Indiana, the 32 tournament teams, the Olympic gold medal, the purity of his programs, the thousands of players and coaches whom he touched, sometimes literally, who could take the morality of Knight and ignore the abusiveness.
The truth of it is Knight never grew as a coach, never adjusted to the selfishness of players less interested in winning than getting to the NBA, never motivated without screaming. His basketball was old, his methods were old, his expectations were old. His teams continued to run an offense that looked like something the Syracuse Nationals first put in.
Nobody who ever played for Knight did not bend to Knight, save Larry Bird who got out early. So what Knight ended up with were good soldiers who could run that weave all day at the top of the key but could never get their own shot.
"The way kids have changed hasn't made coaching easier," Knight once said, not blaming himself, of course.
Affection has caught up to Knight's achievements, old disgraces forgone. He went from lout and boor to scoundrel and curmudgeon, forgivable flaws, no longer dangerous.
Knight left basketball to a shrug, defying a long held belief that he would go out as did Woody Hayes, or maybe Tonya Harding, committing some outrageous and unforgivable act, leaving a lasting stain.
Examples of Knight's charm may be much rarer than of his temper, but I have seen him as human as the rest of us, actually addressing his image, something he said he did not care about. Just before he won his final national title, the one in 1987, Knight waxed on about where he fit in college basketball, pleased at the time that everything else fit below him.
His defense for his outbursts was that he was no different from others facing on-the-job pressures but when he lost his cool he lost it in front of 18,000 people.
"I'm not interested in people thinking of me as the greatest coach who ever lived," Knight said then. "I would like them to say there goes a guy who got the most out of what he had.
"Winning to me has never been as important as figuring out how to win. I'm a doer of puzzles. When one puzzle is completed, I go on to the next puzzle.
"I am very comfortable with myself. And I am the only guy who has to be."
Knight never coached a great player, Isiah Thomas being the nearest thing, not counting Michael Jordan briefly on the 1984 Olympic team that would have won easily without Knight. So those Big Ten championships and those national titles and Final Fours and the last undefeated season in college basketball quite plausibly are due more to the coach than to the players. Hard to disagree with that.