Rewriting History

It is with little or no exaggeration that I say that I attended the University of North Carolina during the golden era of its storied basketball program. I was a freshman the same year as James Worthy and over the next two years Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan joined the Tar Heels. Along with point guard Jimmy Black and forward Matt Doherty, this team rolled through the 1981-82 season the way water runs downhill and helped coach Dean Smith win his first NCAA championship.

Texas Tech Red Raiders coach Bob Knight screams encouragement to a player during his quest to become the all time winningest coach in college hoops.

The Tar Heels went 32-2 that year and met little resistance from many of the teams they played. Carmichael Auditorium was the scene of so many lopsided victories that we students had to find other ways to make games interesting during their final minutes. One thing we liked to do that season was chant “Timo, Timo,” when the Tar Heels had some hapless opponent in a Chapel Hill choke hold. The chant was our way of saying it was time for Dean to call off the dogs and put in Timo Makkonen, a bench-warming center from the basketball Mecca of Finland. Makkonen, who was about seven feet tall, was used in practice as a defensive obstacle so his teammates could rehearse shooting over other seven-footers such as Virginia’s Ralph Sampson and Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing.

If you were playing against the Tar Heels that season and you saw the Finnish center at the scorer’s table about to enter the game, you knew that you were, well, finnished. It was only a matter of time before Dean Smith would shake your hand, say “good game,” and move on to his next victim.

I was thinking about Coach Smith and the glory days of Tar Heel basketball this week as every single basketball commentator was drooling over Bobby Knight, the crusty head coach of Texas Tech who finally passed Smith as the all-time leader in victories in college basketball.

It is one of those occasions when even thoughtful journalists are transformed into sentimental fools.

If you’ve listened to or read any of the commentary on Bobby Knight this past week, you have no doubt come to the conclusion that he is the best coach that basketball, nay sports, has ever seen. He has been transformed by ESPN “analysts” from a bullying thug of a coach to one who takes impressionable young dribblers and magically molds them into men.

Hogwash. This is just another case of revisionist history, the kind that happens every time someone in the news passes a milestone, retires, or dies. The sad thing is that years from now, people will dust off these newspaper accounts of Knight and think that they are gospel.

On Monday, after one failed attempt, Knight surpassed Smith in the record books with 880 wins when Texas Tech squeaked by New Mexico 70-68. By Tuesday, every publication in America featured glowing reports of the historic event that made Knight sound like the best thing to happen to college athletics since the invention of the ref whistle.

Nearly all of these publications neglected to remind basketball fans that it took Knight over 100 more games (i.e. losses) to equal Smith in victories. They also failed to remind us that despite Knight’s ability as a coach, he was run out of Indiana for his boorish behavior toward players, alumni and administrators.

Remember now, Indiana is probably more basketball-crazy than North Carolina, and Hoosiers in Bloomington still decided it was best to cut all ties with Coach Knight. I guess IU alums finally figured out that the best high school players in the country were going to college elsewhere rather than face the verbal and physical abuse that came with a scholarship under Drill Sergeant Knight. When Indiana’s best high school player, Eric Montross, dismissed the allure of IU for a chance to lead Coach Smith and the Tar Heels to another championship, Hoosier fans began to sour on Knight’s methods.

Don’t get me wrong, as far as Xs and Os go, Knight is a superb coach. As a person, however, I wouldn’t want to share a cab with him if the ride was going to be more than five minutes long. As a coach who has influenced college basketball for the better, I don’t think he’s qualified to carry Coach Smith’s clipboard.

Of course, I’m a UNC alum, so I might be a bit biased.

Coach Knight’s legacy wasn’t the only case of revisionist history in the news this week. When musician James Brown and former president Gerald Ford died on consecutive days, obituary writers hastened to put a positive spin on all aspects of their characters and careers.

While James Brown was truly an influential musician and it is hard to imagine today’s funk, soul or hip-hop without him, he didn’t exactly invent his act from scratch. Just like every musician has done since the dawn of time, he stood on the backs of others. In Brown’s case, it was people such as Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Louis Jordan who helped break down racial barriers for professional musicians in America and transformed the blues into modern jazz, R&B and soul music.

Brown was also assisted by one of the tightest backing bands in live music history. Totally untrained as a musician, all Brown had to do was say, “Take me to the bridge,” and the J.B. horn section would blast a blazing coda, signaling that it was time to go back to the beginning of the song. The JBs went a long way in preventing Brown’s music and lyrics from sounding as repetitive as it might have otherwise. (If you don’t think Brown’s music is repetitive, ask yourself, “How many James Brown albums do I own?”).

As far as Gerald Ford’s death goes, I say he was the last moderate Republican president this country has ever had. Republicans who are now honoring him should remember how the party pushed him out to pasture at the beginning of the Reagan Revolution. He publicly decried his party’s turn to what he called “the hard right” and was vocally opposed to our current military involvement in Iraq. But Ford’s words fell on deaf ears until his death.

Ford was the only man in American history to serve as Vice President and President without being voted into office, and his tenure reflected that lack of public support. Although he is now being hailed as a president who reached across the aisle to democrats, the fact is that he vetoed a lot of legislation coming from democrats, forcing a two-thirds vote for passage.

All current tributes to Ford say he did a wonderful thing for the country when he pardoned Richard Nixon and prevented any prolonged court case concerning his role in the Watergate scandal. I can’t help but think that this is revisionist spin on a pardon that set the dangerous precedent that presidents are somehow above the law.