Knight already had that moment, Feinstein says, when he challenged IU president Myles Brand and lost his job at Indiana.  

“He goes out putting some punk up against a wall, kicking and screaming and claiming the president treated him unfairly,” Feinstein said. “It was best described as a swarmy and embarrassing scene. The fact that he now is going to break this record in Lubbock, Texas, is all about that.”

Knight, who began his coaching career at Army, won 662 games and three NCAA championships at Indiana. If he could have figured out a way to avoid the path of trouble, he might still be coach of the Hoosiers.  Maybe then Brand never would have become president of the NCAA. Poor Mike Davis wouldn’t have endured all the criticism and nastiness that went along with being Knight’s successor. And maybe Kelvin Sampson, who replaced Davis this year, would still be at Oklahoma.

But, of course, none of that happened. It didn’t happen because Knight, for all his success and all his virtues, also is a man of great flaws. Former UCLA coach John Wooden, whose record of 10 NCAA championships will likely never be broken, has told Knight directly that he doesn’t approve of his methods or his language.

Said Wooden: “I still have the greatest respect for Bobby Knight. He is undoubtedly as fine a coach as the game has had.”

“He’s one of a kind,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who played for Knight at Army and remains a close friend. “As a result of that, he’s a lightening rod. He does things so well to such an extreme, that if something else happens, that becomes the extreme too. There’s no one like him.”

The coaching fraternity pulled for Bob Knight. Now that he passed Dean Smith, Knight can be celebrated for his teaching, of coaching, following the rules, graduating his players, and playing to win.

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And for true historians, it should be a celebration of Indiana basketball — even if the arena is in West Texas.

“He spent 30 years at Indiana and he took Indiana to a level Indiana hadn’t aspired to ever,” Alford said. “I’m amazed, in the little time he’s been there, at what basketball means now in Lubbock. . . .You give him 30 years in Lubbock and he’s probably doing the same thing there that he did in Bloomington.

“If there’s one time in my life I wish I could go back and do it all over again, just to experience it again, it would be that time with Coach. That’s why I want to be there with him.”

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