The balm, and curse, of years

Finally, then, he came to his home place, shuffling slowly, stooped and ancient now, clinging to a supporting arm here and a proffered elbow there. Wearing red again, as if time had at last peeled away all the bitter and the petty, and restored his natural coloration.

"Bob-by! Bob-by! Bob-by!" they thundered, beneath those five swaying national championship banners.

"Dee-fense! Dee-fense! Dee-fense!" they roared, as the ancient led them in the old chant, raising his fists and shaking them in a faint echo of the old days.

Yes, Bob Knight came back to Assembly Hall, finally, two decades after he blew up his career there.

Yes, he got the welcome we all expected, Hoosier Nation wrapping its arms around him the way Isiah Thomas did and Quinn Buckner did and all those former players who gathered for the Alumni Day game against arch-rival Purdue.

Yes, it touched him, brought tears to his eyes as his players surrounded him and he raised his hands to acknowledge the ovation.

But, no. No, it was not ... not really Bob Knight doing this.

This was not the basketball genius who snarled and bellowed and tested the aerodynamic properties of plastic chairs, who warred with the world not because the world wished to be warred with, but because he was his own worst enemy, always. This was a cold campfire, an empty concert hall. It was a 79-year-old man who looked 89, and you could see his sunset approaching.

And so as much as it was gratifying to see the balm of years heal the wounds and give the man some sort of closure, the very fact it was closure was inexpressibly sad to watch. You could revile the man for the way he bully-ragged players and media types and secretaries and even university officials (and, yes, extol him for graduating his players and performing all manner of good works, simply because he was Bob Knight and three of those banners at one end of Assembly Hall were his. But all of that is gone now.

This is a different time entirely, after all. The glory the faithful cling to recedes with every winter. The banners become artifacts. And so Saturday was not about looking forward but backward, because not only Knight but his old frenemy Gene Keady was in the house, too.

Where he watched his pupil, Matt Painter, whip the Hoosiers again, swatting by a dozen an IU team that looks to have misplaced its identity in a way Knight's teams never did.

The message: You can go home again, but not really. It is still home, but it is not the same and neither are you.

You can thank God for that or not, where Bob Knight is concerned. Or both.