Honorifics and stuff

 And now that Bob Knight is gone, it's on to how we remember him.

Some people think there should be a statue of him outside Assembly Hall.

Some think they should rename the basketball court in the Hall after him, although it's already named for Branch McCracken. 

A few have suggested naming a street after him -- Fee Lane, perhaps, which runs just to the east of Assembly Hall, and which they could rename Bob Knight Way or something. 

Me, I vote for Bob Knight Way Or The Highway. More appropriate, I'm thinking.

All I really know is it's gonna be a hell of task no matter what. How do you accurately sum up one of the more complicated legacies an icon ever presented?

On the one hand, Bob Knight was brilliant and loyal and generous and principled, and a teacher of extraordinary gifts, seeing how many men he turned out who have been proficient at far more than just help-side defense and the motion offense.

On the other hand, he could be breathtakingly cruel at times, and abusive, and profane, and a bully and hypocrite of the first order -- unerringly picking on those who couldn't fight back, and demanding discipline from others he himself did not possess.

So what do you do with all that? 

What I hope happens is an honorific that reflects the best of the man, but that doesn't paper over the worst. Or that doesn't make claims of him that falsely embellish a life that needs no embellishment.

Here and there yesterday, for instance, I saw references to how Knight was basketball in Indiana, that was the man who made the game what it was in the Hoosier state. This is simply not true; basketball defined us as a state long before Knight showed up, and even defined Indiana University athletically.

 It was McCracken, after all, who hung two of those five national championship banners that hang at one end of Assembly Hall. And it was McCracken, remember, who integrated the Big Ten with Bill Garrett. 

That gave IU a basketball identity two decades old by the time Knight arrived on campus. What Knight did, over the next 29 years, was burnish and redefine that identity.

IU basketball has struggled to find an identity since. That's tribute enough to the man.

And the rest?

I think I vote for a statue. Maybe not of Knight himself -- how do you do that unless it's Knight screaming at Ted Valentine? -- but of the totems that made him, him.

A sweater. A chair. Three NCAA championship banners. All rendered in bronze, with this inscription: Bob Knight 1940-2023. You Can Kiss His Ass.

Well, OK. So maybe not that last part.