Blanche’s Book Club: ‘Knight.’

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In November, legendary basketball coach Bob Knight passed away. I shared in a blog post about why I paused when I found out, and what Coach Knight meant to my dad, and to me.

When I found out about Knight’s passing, I remembered that I’d wanted to read a book he wrote. So, I searched online for a copy of his memoir and found a used copy that ended up being autographed (I didn’t know that when I bought it, and it was a VERY pleasant surprise when I opened it).

I finished reading the book, “Knight: My Story” by Bob Knight, earlier this week and I’ve got so many thoughts about it and quotes from it that I’ll share with you!

The book goes from 1940-2001, which covers Knight’s family and childhood, his early life in basketball, his playing in college, his coaching at West Point, his entire career at Indiana University, and his getting hired and starting at Texas Tech. Whew!

Generally speaking, there’s a good bit of talk about his philosophy on coaching, his perspective on any of the controversial parts of his career, and bits of his personal life (there’s very little on his marriage, but a lot on fishing and hunting).

Before reading this book, I knew very little about Coach Knight, and now that I’ve read it, I understand much of his career — please note that I’m not saying I necessarily agree with his take on everything 🙂

He does cover most, if not all, of the more negative parts of his career, but his perspective on them is likely not going to shock anyone. He stands by pretty much everything he’s ever done. Admittedly, there are other parts of the book (mostly people he mentions) that haven’t aged well, but I understand that we live in a different time now, and I also believe that Coach Knight was truly a man of his time.

I highlighted some quotes I’ll share with you:

• It’s always to your advantage if the other guys are worried more about what you’re doing than what they want to do.
• I’ve always felt that preparation is much more important than anything else you do…In any walk of life, the best-prepared person creates advantages that help him or her be the most successful.
• Winning is the last of all criteria that I think you should use to determine how well you’re playing.
• …so much of managing a basketball team or coaching a basketball or football team starts with eliminating or minimizing the ways you can lose. Basketball is a game of errors. You try to reduce the number of errors to give your team the best chance to win.
• There were dozens of times in the years before when I was so torn up after a loss or so worn out as a season came to a close that I would have loved to step away from it all and quit — except for some kids who were there because they wanted to play for me, and I told them I wanted them to play for me. Obviously, there has to be a time, but how do you decide which groups of kids to — at least in this one way — walk out on?

This is my first “Coach” book, so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I really enjoyed it. I closed the book feeling find about putting Bob Knight into that category of people who do great things but aren’t necessarily great people.

I mean that in the nicest way possible. It’s the whole “both things can be true” scenario with him.

He lived a great life, and he did a lot for college basketball and IU, and I hope he fully understood that impact when his days were coming to an end.

If you’re a fan of Coach Knight or IU basketball, I’d recommend it!

For more book recommendations, be sure to subscribe to the blog (look to the right) and follow me on Goodreads @thebitterlemon – where I share more of my book picks. Also, check out my printable bookmarks and Book Club Journal Pages in my Etsy Shop.