(Editor’s note: Bob Knight died Wednesday at 83.)
About a week before the 1984 Olympics, Bob Knight rode shotgun in a Mustang convertible through the streets of Southern California. The United States men’s basketball coach had his feet up on the dashboard and the seat leaned back.
Pete Newell was behind the wheel. Henry Iba sat scrunched in the back seat. Both former Team USA head coaches had been involved with the 1984 squad since the trials began three months earlier, in April. Newell was a longtime mentor of Knight, practically a father figure to the Indiana coach. Iba’s wife had died a year earlier, and Knight had invited him to the trials to serve as a consultant to the Olympic staff. It was the escape Iba needed.
Behind the Mustang, a bus transported Knight’s team and staff. The 12 players on board had emerged from perhaps the greatest collection of amateur talent the sport had seen. Among the 72 prospects invited to the Olympic trials in Bloomington, Ind., were 37 future first-round NBA Draft picks, 12 future NBA All-Stars and seven future Hall of Famers. The historical implications weren’t lost on those there. Midway through the trials, George Washington big man Michael Brown asked every player to sign a trials game program, a souvenir he would keep for…
