A furniture row

Well, now we know one more thing, because in life you never stop learning.

We know throwing furniture around at a basketball game only makes you iconic if your name is Bob Knight.

This is because an Indiana high school coach named Nick Moore threw a chair the other day while his team was losing by eight, and all it did was get him fired. Yep, picked up a chair and winged it toward the opposing team's basket while his Lighthouse College Prep Academy Lions were losing to Bowman Academy 73-65 with 6:32 to play in a game up by Gary.

Hey, it almost worked. Bowman ended up eking out a 92-91 victory after Coach Moore was ejected. That dropped Lighthouse to 3-12 on the season, which might have had as much to do with Lighthouse's swift dismissal of Moore as his homage to Bob Knight.

Also, he tried to throw a second chair, but one of Lighthouse's assistants restrained him. Also, the school's athletic director, Lawrence Sandlin, was ejected. Also another Lighthouse assistant threw another chair when the game ended. 

Apparently originality isn't a thing at Lighthouse.

Either that, or they think starting a row by throwing furniture is the way successful coaches become successful.

I've been hitching a ride on this planet longer than I like to contemplate, and in all that time I've seen my share of coaches who thought that way. Coaches who thought the secret to Bob Knight's success was bullying players, game officials, administrators or some poor schlub from the student newspaper.  Coaches who confused intimidation with teaching. 

That wasn't why Knight was successful. Knowledge was why Knight was successful.

When he wasn't throwing hissy fits and being a sociopath, see, he won basketball games because most of the time he knew more basketball than the opposing coach. And he was better at teaching it -- even if sometimes he, too, confused intimidation with teaching.

Look. I don't know if Moore was consciously imitating Knight the other day. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was just super pissed off, and had to release his pissed-off-ness by taking it out on an inanimate object. The chair just happened to be what was at hand.

This is why I've always thought coaches should have an Anger Management Object with them on the bench at all times. Jerry Tarkanian used to gnaw on a wet towel when things got tense. One of the best high school coaches I ever covered, the late Norm Held at Anderson High School, used to carry a towel he would periodically fling toward the heavens when some egregious wrong was done his Indians. 

Imagine if he'd done that with a chair. Why, someone could have gotten hurt.

Anyway .. maybe if Moore had had a towel of his own the other day, he'd still have his job. A towel or a Koosh Ball or a clipboard with a built-in hinge so he could snap it over his knee without actually breaking it. Or maybe just a colorful Hawaiian lei.

Then when Coach Moore got angry he could rip off the lei and throw it towards the opposing basket, and it would make everyone think of warm sun and sandy beaches. Heck, it would almost be festive.

And festive's better than fired, right?