Bobby Knight, the Indiana University basketball coach who guided the Hoosiers to three NCAA championships, has died at 83, his family said.
Knight, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, died Wednesday surrounded by his family at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, his family said in a statement. They did not provide a cause of death.
"We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as Coach requested a private family gathering, which is being honored," his family said. "We will continue to celebrate his life and remember him, today and forever as a beloved Husband, Father, Coach, and Friend."
Knight was called “a legend among coaches” by the Basketball Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 1991.
He played for the Ohio State Buckeyes when the team captured the 1960 NCAA championship, and he coached the Indiana Hoosiers from 1971 to 2000 — when the team won three NCAA titles.
Knight also coached on the world stage. In 1984, he led the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team when it won the gold medal at the Summer Games in Los Angeles.
Knight was the Big Ten coach of the year five times and a four-time national coach of the year.
“He changed basketball in this state, the way you compete, the way you win,” Steve Alford, the leader of Knight’s last national championship team in 1987, once said. “It started in Indiana, but he really changed college basketball. You look at the motion offense, and people everywhere used it.”
Knight was born Robert Knight in Massillon, Ohio, on Oct. 25, 1940, but he was known as Bob or Bobby.
He is one of only three coaches to have won the “triple crown,” with an NCAA title, a National Invitation Tournament title and an Olympic gold medal, the Hall of Fame said.
Nicknamed "the General," Knight had an intensity that was on display on the court. In 1985, he famously threw a chair onto the court and was ejected during a game against Purdue.
He was suspended for one game and put on probation for two years by the Big Ten, and Indiana chained the chairs together for both benches after the incident.
Indiana fired Knight in 2000 for violating then-university President Myles Brand’s zero-tolerance policy by grabbing the arm of a 19-year-old student to lecture him about manners.
In 1979, Knight was charged with assaulting a police officer in Puerto Rico during a practice session of the U.S. basketball team for the Pan American Games after an argument about using a gymnasium, UPI reported at the time.
He left the island before a trial, Indiana officials rejected requests to extradite him on the misdemeanor, and he later apologized, the agency reported.
At his enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame, after an introduction by friend and fellow Hall of Famer Pete Newell, Knight appeared to joke about the incident.
“Pete, if you’re ever asked by the people in Puerto Rico for me to come there and give a clinic, would you tell them I’m tied up?” Knight said to laughter.
After Indiana, Knight coached at Texas Tech from 2001 to 2008. He had also coached at Army from 1965 to 1971, before Indiana.
Knight retired from Texas Tech in February 2008 and was replaced by his son Pat Knight.
Knight’s family requested that in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be made to the Alzheimer’s Association or Marian University in Indianapolis, but donations to any charity in his name are also appreciated, the family said.
Indiana basketball called Knight one of the most successful and influential figures in the history of college basketball on social media.
"With unmatched accomplishment, Coach Knight’s brilliance ensures he will forever rest among the giants of college basketball," Indiana University President Pamela Whitten said in a statement.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb called Knight "a towering basketball figure and fighter, second to none."
Knight said the awards and recognition that come with coaching are about more than one person.
“I’ve never felt comfortable with the award coach of the year or coach of anything,” Knight said in his Hall of Fame speech. “I think there’s a much more appropriate nomenclature that could be used, and that would be: team of the year.
“Because for a team to develop to a point where a coach is recognized for what that team has done is an indication that the players, the assistant coaches, everyone involved has really put forth an outstanding effort,” he said. “And that is truly a team honor.”
