As it turned out, Bob Knight’s memorable return to an IU basketball game in February of 2020 came just in time.
The health of the legendary leader of the Indiana program was already hit-or-miss by that point.
But as was always the case when Knight stepped foot on the court at Assembly Hall, he was firing on all cylinders for his much anticipated homecoming.
“It was wild. He was on that day,” his son Pat Knight said in a radio interview last week. “ON.”
“It was unbelievable. He walked into that place, and the first thing that they wanted him to do was talk to the team right away. So Randy Wittman and I went with him, and we were a little nervous because you don’t know.
“Archie (Miller) did a great job introducing him, and coach gets right up there in front, and it was like something clicked. Randy Wittman and I got goosebumps. It was like he was in front of our teams. Didn’t miss a beat. Talking about the offense, defense, talking about kids, knew their names.”
It was every bit the kind of cathartic day everyone hoped it could.
Even for the coach.
“He got emotional with the fans, told me this is why he coached here because of these people,” Pat Knight said.
But days like that became less common in the months that followed.
Now that he’s back in Indiana coaching at Marian University, Pat Knight says he wants to talk about his father’s struggle with dementia and help the Alzheimer’s Foundation in Indiana.
With Jake Query on The Fan, Pat shared the story of the challenges his father and family faced together the last three years, as the iconic coach slipped away.
Not long after Bob Knight was able to name players on the current Indiana team, he couldn’t recall those closest to him.
“It’s been tough,” Pat Knight said.
“His wife (Karen) called me six, seven months into Covid, and we had a talk. She said, ‘Hey if you can start coming more, because he’s starting to forget who we are, asking me, do I have a son?'”
At the time, Pat Knight was living in Las Vegas and working as a scout for the Indiana Pacers.
“So I started coming to Indiana once a month, for a few days to a week. And I ended up coming so much I ended getting an apartment which I still have in downtown. And it was just a decline. Every time I could tell, if I’d been away, with the memory and physically.
“The good thing was early on, we were able to go on fishing trips, have conversations. He’d repeat himself, wouldn’t remember things. But that wasn’t bad. It was still pretty much normal. But I always tell people who ask me for advice, the problem is not the person with dementia, the problem’s us. Because the person with dementia doesn’t know that they’re repeating themselves. They don’t know that they’re asking you questions or forgetting things. And for the people that are the caregivers, you kind of get annoyed, how many times can I answer this question? So it was a learning process with that, but we were able to do the things we loved to do like fishing and watching sports.
“And what really hurt was we had to stop fishing, two years ago. He couldn’t physically get around as well on a boat and everything. And just at home just watching him, you know, the guy was your idol, you played for him, the man’s man, and he just kind of whittled away. It’s tough.
“But then what hits you is when they don’t remember you. And that’s a kick in the gut. And so that takes a lot to get used to. And you’ve just gotta go with the flow.
“And we figured we’d be the last ones, his wife, myself, and he loved my wife (Amanda). We really thought she may be the last one he remembered. So we always knew in the back of our minds, when he started forgetting us three, that’s gonna start being the spiral to the end.”
The end for Bob Knight came in November, but that was later than expected, his son shared.
Even as he had slipped deep into the late stages of Alzheimer’s, Knight continued to attend IU basketball practices on a weekly basis into 2023.
He was admitted into the hospital in April of 2023, and Pat Knight shared this week at his introductory press conference at Marian, the doctors told the family he wouldn’t make it out of the hospital.
Known for doing things on his own terms, the coach put up one more fight.
“It is Bob Knight, so he got out of the hospital,” Pat said. “And then they kept telling us he was going to last a month. Well, he lasted seven.”
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