Bobby Knight Revisited

The deep impression that Bobby Knight made and continues to make on so many people is evidenced by the response to the Point of View article about him (POV, January 2005). On New Years Day, after the issue was released, my nephew, Kevin McDonald, told me that I should have asked him about Bobby Knight, who, he said, came into the Boys Club gym where he and his friends were playing a pick-up game and put on a startling shooting demonstration. Bobby’s good friend, Robert (“Sub”) Lewis, called to tell me that he was being barraged with people from all over who wanted copies of the article and requested that I send him twenty-five additional copies, since he could not find any in Hartford. I sent our delivery person to our Hartford sites and, as Sub had observed, the papers had been snatched up and the sites had to be replenished.

Another POV reader, Delores Culp, also grabbed a number of newspapers from a Springfield site to share with people who knew Bobbie and commented on how he had been her tennis instructor. A call from Eunice King, in which she very emotionally summed up her appreciation of the portrayal of Bobby Knight, sort of captured the spirit of what most people were saying, which is that Bobby Knight is indeed a wonderful athlete and a wonderful person who deserves to have his story told in the manner in which it was told. That a broad range of readers could relate to Bobby Knight's experience is reflected in the letter from an Italian reader (see below), who also asked me to give Bobby a copy of a basketball song that he wrote that could also be found in the Hickock Library at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield.

But the most moving comments came from Bobby, himself, who said, “Thank you for the kind words about my brother, V. C.,” and “You mentioned Eddie Barlow in the article. I was so glad because he was real important to me,” and, “I didn’t even know the article was out until my sister’s kids called to tell me. They didn’t say if you said anything about their mother, so I asked and they told me you had dedicated the article to her. That was important to me.” Bobby said that people insisted that he read the entire article, which he did, but he “didn’t recognize the person” I was writing about. In typical Bobby Knight, unselfish, modest fashion, he was more concerned about the treatment we gave in the article to everyone except himself. He also honored me by telling me it was the best news article he had read about his career. n