For sports fans ... Bobby Knight

9.  I played high school basketball.  Girls basketball.  Back in the day.  This is probably very clichéd, but because I was not a scholar in high school, being on the girls' basketball team probably saved me.  I loved it.

Bobby Knight, the long-time Indiana University basketball coach, died yesterday.  Of course, I watched basketball on our little black and white TV.  I didn't like Bobby Knight.  Frankly, for those who remember the man, and if watching him coach on TV was the only way of knowing him, I don't think anyone did.

The New York Times Athletic published Bobby Knight's obituary this morning:  Legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight dies at 83.  It might be the longest obituary you will ever read.


Photograph:  On-line jpeg image.  Photographer unknown.

The author, Seth Davis, really humanizes the man.  He does not overlook, excuse or cover-up Knight's flaws, but he gives us the full picture of the man.  In doing so, Seth Davis, also humanizes his readers.  Bobby Knight was not only the man we saw watching basketball on TV or when reading the morning after headlines of his on-court antics.  He was a deeply admirable man who was formed by his time and place and values.  In one way or another, we are all Bobby Knights. 

Kudos to Seth Davis who probably stayed up all night to write Knight's obituary.  Quite a feat because there was a lot to cover and his writing eloquently gives the full measure of the man.  Close readers will notice a a couple of minor errors. These made me smile because my own writing always has these overlooked tiny things.  Setting the editing aside for a day usually makes them noticeable with fresh eyes.  Seth Davis, writing for a prestigious daily newspaper, did not have that kind of time.  Really admirable writing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Tiger Hunt in India

Image
2 .   Man-eaters by Brian Phillips.   Published in The Ringer, September 25, 2018 In an exclusive excerpt from his collection ‘Impossible Owls,’ the writer Brian Phillips goes on a quest for tigers in India. Man-Eaters was awarded a Sidney Award by New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in 2018.  At the end of each year, David Brooks publishes the Sidney Awards in his NYT op-ed column recognizing his favorite long-form essays of the year. In his 2018 The Sidney Awards Part II column, David Brooks wrote:  "I mentioned in my last column that there were several excellent essays this year on tigers. My favorite is “Man-eaters” in The Ringer, in which Brian Phillips explains: “The arrival of a tiger, it’s true, is often preceded by moments of rising tension, because a tiger’s presence changes the jungle around it, and those changes are easier to detect. Bird calls darken. Small deer call softly to each other. Herds do not run but drift into shapes that suggest some emer...
Read more

Interview: Hilary Mantel

 8 .  Hillary Mantel:  The Art of Fiction No: 226 , published in The Paris Review, Issue 212, Spring 2015.  Interviewed by Mona Simpson. “ I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian .” This is an interview with the two-time Booker Prize winner for the first two books in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies .  The final book of the trilogy is The Mirror & the Light .  She wrote A Place of Greater Safety , a historical novel about the French Revolution, completing it when she was 27 years old!  Add her many contemporary fiction books, her memoir Giving Up the Ghost and innumerable essays; she was a prolific writer. Reading the interview, I also learned that Hilary Mantel thought Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson was the perfect novel.  HM's words:  "Kidnapped I read probably every couple of years at least. It never loses its magic for me."  A bit further on she...
Read more

The Math Gap

It's Sunday, November 3rd, 2024 and I am just catching up on some of the past week's reading.  This morning I was rewarded with something that made me feel hopeful. Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math :  A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.  By Siobhan Roberts, published in the New York Times on October 24, 2024 and updated on October 25, 29024. "Math is power" is the tag line of a new documentary by the director Vicki Abeles titled " Counted Out " which explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy.  The film is currently being shown at festivals and community screenings and will have a limited theatrical release next year. This piece is actually an interview with Siobhan Roberts speaking with Vick Abeles and Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. Super important topic and interview.  I cannot wait to...
Read more