Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [243]
So I’m in the room where we will do the interview and I’m nervous as hell and I know what’s at stake here. And Bob walks in a few minutes before we go on live, and I’ve got a clipboard or notepad or something—and I turn around and, suddenly, what happened to my notepad? He’s grabbed it off my chair and starts looking at the questions. I say, “Bob, what are you doing?” And he’s not himself. No hello, nothing. Just straight for my notes. But he doesn’t even really look at it before giving it back. He says, “We’re going to talk about this zero tolerance thing [regarding Knight’s treatment of players], right?” “Yes, of course we’re going to talk about the zero tolerance.” I thought that was strange. Of course, that’s what we were going to talk about. That’s why he got fired, for violating it. And he’s fiery. He’s worked up. I mean he’s usually near the boiling point, and he is at a steady boil now. And there’s kind of this weird dynamic in the room because there are all these people around and the cameras and a backdrop, like a stage, and Digger is sitting in a chair off to Bob’s side. And then there are people behind me, but I don’t know who they are other than the camera operators, and I only found out later that it’s Bob’s wife, Karen; Bob Hammel, his longtime friend and a local sportswriter in Bloomington with whom he’d collaborate on his memoir; and Isiah Thomas, who had been estranged from Knight for many years, but now he’s in Indiana with the Pacers and suddenly he’s back in the Knight camp.
Finally, we’re in the chairs and Bob Ley throws it to me and things start. We do two long segments with one commercial break. Things started okay. I asked him a very innocuous opening question, something to the effect of, Did you ever imagine that it would come to this, getting fired? And he starts talking about his mentors and players he’s coached, et cetera, and he’s rambling, and they’re screaming into my ear, “Cut him off! Cut him off!” But you can’t cut him off on the first answer. Norby Williamson is in the truck with David Brofsky, and they were talking in my ear. I don’t remember what happened exactly in the first segment, but Bob was frustrated that I wasn’t allowing him to filibuster, that I was actually trying to keep the interview on track—there was a lot to get to in a limited amount of time—and when we went to break, he started taking off his microphone and getting up out of the chair, and they start screaming in my ear, “Where’s he going? Is he done?!” They think the interview’s over. But he wasn’t that angry, he was just going to the bathroom, I think.
Norby and David were wondering if he would get back in the chair. He comes back in time, and he gets back into the chair. The commercial break ends, and we start again, and then somehow he gets to the point where he’s talking about Patrick, his son, his assistant coach, and he says something to the effect of, Let’s talk about the real victim here. “You know the real victim here is Pat. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” I said, “Wait a second, Bob. Would Pat be a victim if you had adhered to the zero tolerance policy?” And that’s when he turned, that moment. In the first segment, we had the argument about whether I was cutting him off. That was why he was contentious in the first segment. And I was cutting him off because he was filibustering. But my question about Pat, which was fair, set him off. And that’s when he turned, and he paused, and he gave me the evil grin and said, “You got a long way to go to be as good as your father; you better keep that in mind.” Nine years later, I still remember that line. I said, “I appreciate that,” and we continued.
We had one more argument during the interview. I asked him something like, Do you recognize the elements of tragedy in this story, an icon going out in