LUBBOCK - There are construction designers with blueprints in Bob Knight's conference room. But these are not the ones studying the changes Knight would like to see in the men's basketball offices at the United Spirit Arena.
These are the builders designing the house Knight and his wife, Karen, will construct just outside of Lubbock, minutes from the movie theater Knight already swears by.
"Leslie, get Gerald on the phone," Knight says to his secretary.
Knight wants to talk to his athletic director and close friend, Gerald Myers, to see if there is any update on an appeal Tech has filed with the NCAA to get two more scholarships for next season.
The 60-year-old coach has just walked into his office wearing a grayish-green golf shirt and similar-colored pants. He almost looks unfamiliar in anything other than red. He has just come from watching his four remaining scholarship players doing individual workouts Tuesday afternoon.
During these workouts, junior Andy Ellis and freshmen Andre Emmett of Carter, Marcus Shropshire of South Grand Prairie and Mikey Marshall are usually always going full speed - even between drills. Walking is never allowed. One drill has them shoot a 3-pointer, race to midcourt and back for another 3-pointer until their legs and arms are spaghetti.
Only 3,000 tickets are available for men's basketball games in the 15,050-seat United Spirit Arena next season. And 1,800 personal seat licenses, which carry an average price tag of $2,000, have already been sold. If nothing else, Knight has pumped cash into a financially strapped athletic department that has suffered nearly $3 million in shortfalls the past two years.
Knight has agreed to a brief one-on-one interview.
Q: How have the first 10 or 11 days on the job gone?
A: I've really enjoyed it. Let's not even talk basketball right now. This is a great city to get around in. I mean great. The driving is unbelievable, going from one place to another. I have yet to encounter any traffic.
We are 15 minutes from the airport. There is every kind of restaurant imaginable here. And there is a lot of space. And then, from where we are living right now, it takes me 10 minutes to get to the office. I park the car and I walk 50 feet and I'm in my office. Little things like that.
You can go to the Lubbock airport, as an example, and I could be in New York by the time you go to the Dallas airport and take off. Damn near. ...
And that's just the town. I haven't even gone fishing or hunting or played golf. And I know there's that in each of those areas in ample quantities. You add the people with the town, and the people are great. Everywhere I've been, I've really enjoyed the people. The people at the university, the people in town, the students, I mean it's been a really, really nice situation for me that doesn't have a thing to do with basketball. If I were just here and didn't know the first thing about basketball, this would be a great place. My wife feels the same way.
Q: Well, on to basketball. How have the guys taken to the demands you've put on them?
A: They've worked hard. And I've been really pleased with the four kids, the way they are working. They have worked hard and will continue to work hard. And I'm sure they are working harder at the game than they've ever worked before. But that's what we expect of them. I've liked watching them work. ...
Q: Are those kinds of demands about creating toughness?
A: It's about work ethic. It's about work and putting forth a real effort in what you are doing.
Q: What about Andy Ellis? He is a guy who scored 30 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against your Indiana team in Lubbock two years ago.
A: We'll just have to wait and see. I've only worked with him for a week. I think Ellis is very talented. But he doesn't have a very good work ethic. If he can develop that and really push himself to have it between now and the start of the season, then he goes into the season a much-improved player. But he's got to do a lot of weight work and a lot of work with just making himself a guy who puts much greater effort forth because I think he's got good ability.
Q: guys you are recruiting right now are junior college guys. You have commitments from five junior college players for next season right now. Is that the way you want to go, or is that what you are forced to do right now as a coach coming in, trying to win right away?
A: I think in recruiting, there are only two things involved. One is, what do you need? And two is, where can you go to fulfill those needs? Those are the only two questions that you ask, and then when you've answered those two questions, that's your recruiting.
Q: Is there anything that you'll change about how you approach this game and how you approach the players?
A: I think you change all the time. You change from one day to the next. If you don't change, then you don't get anything accomplished. You prepare for one opponent to play on Wednesday, and you've got a different opponent to play on Saturday. Sometimes, you change the lineup. Sometimes, you change the emphasis of your offense. Sometimes, you make defensive adjustments. It's a game of constant change.
Q: Any personal changes that you'll make? I think on Larry King you said you wanted to cut out some of the profanity.
A: Yeah. I'd like to do that. I think I got trapped with that over the years. I can speak as long as anyone you've known without ever saying anything profane. But from a coaching standpoint, and I don't think I'm the only guy who has gotten trapped that way, you explain things in a certain way, and then you kind of get trapped in going in that direction. And sometimes it's hard to get out of.
Q: Jim Sowell, the Tech regents chairman, said he told you that he thinks some fans will treat your games next year like a NASCAR race. Some will come to see a good race, but they might come to see an explosion as well.
A: I've coached way over 1,000 games and you go back over how many explosions there have been with me, and it's a pretty small percentage. It's like I told these guys out here today: If you want to find out about me, don't read about me. Get ahold of guys who played for me.
Q: And that's what you told the folks here at Texas Tech as well, isn't that true?
A: Yeah. I said you want to read about me from some guy who doesn't know me, who has an ax to grind? I'll give you one thing and you tell me if you have ever seen this in print. In fact, I'll ask you this question: If you went based on what you read, would you feel that while I was at Indiana, we had a very high percentage of kids who quit?
Q: Well, because you know the types of kids who will play for you and are efficient in recruiting, probably not.
A: I'm not asking you that. Based on what you read. That was my question. You expect me to answer questions accurately, so you need to do the same thing.
Q: Based on what I read? Probably.
A: OK. Now, what we have then is this: The average number of kids that leaves a Division I program in basketball during the 1990s was about 38 percent. ... Now, the percentage of kids that left Indiana was about 27 or 28 percent of those that entered. So not only were we not near the bottom, we were well into the upper half. In fact, in the 1990s, the last accounting of it that I saw was, we were 28th out of 310 Division I schools. That's based on all kids who entered as freshmen.
My point is this: You've never read how high we were in retention. I just got a letter from one of my former coaches who is now the head coach at Indiana State [Royce Waltman]. He was talking about the whole thing at Indiana and he said he was interviewed by The Indianapolis Star for almost an hour, and they didn't write one thing that he said. That's why I don't think I can make a more accurate statement than, "If you want to find about me, don't read about me. Listen to what guys that have played for me say." ...
When people want to say change, the guy who is crying for me to change is some moron that writes for a paper in New York City or someplace, who has never been to our practice, never talked to one of our players, never anything.
Q: You said in your introductory press conference that you use your sense of humor with the media. Are you misunderstood in that way?
A: Oh, I don't know. I think sometimes my sense of humor is probably difficult to understand. And I can see where it would offend some people. As I look back over the years at that, not everybody is going to think that that sort of caustic humor is really funny. And I understand that. I don't have any problem with that.
Q: But that's kind of the way it's been for you in a news conference situation hasn't it?
A: Yeah. Probably.
Q: And it's probably the way it will be in the future?
A: We'll see. I've got to go.
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