Bob Knight is smarter than Steve Phillips

October 18th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

I always find it interesting when coaches actually open up to the media about what they know. It happens all too rarely in this age of Patriotgate and Belichikian one-word answers. “Yeah, we played well. No, we gotta block better. Well, we shot the ball well. He’s a good player. They’re a good team. Hats off to the other team.” Ugh.

So maybe that’s why Bob Knight’s baseball quotes from yesterday fascinate me so much. Sure, Knight isn’t actually talking openly about basketball — he’s way too paranoid for that — but for a guy with a distinct and highly developed sense of sports strategy to talk baseball for like 10 minutes … that’s entertaining, right?

Anyway, some of the highlights:

Knight on Terry Francona’s decision to not bring back Josh Beckett on three days rest:
“We will now see everything on television geared for two days to where Beckett should have pitched last night. If (Tim) Wakefield had pitched well, it would have been the greatest decision in baseball. I always get a kick out of TV people because when a play works — a guy runs a trap, you know, or a delay and it gains 12 yards — boy, what a great call that was. Well, it was a great call because someone blocked well. It wasn’t like it came out of divine intervention somewhere. And if they run the same play, and it gets thrown for a three-yard loss, boy, that was a bad call.”

Knight on doing something because it’s the conventional way to do it:
”I think you get stuck with some things that are, for lack of a better word, traditional or expected. So at the end of the eighth inning, I was with two guys watching, and I said: ‘I wonder if (Rafael) Betancourt will pitch the ninth inning.’ Which he did. Which to me was a great decision because he had just gone through three guys like a hot knife through butter. And when he pitched the ninth inning, I thought maybe they’d bring in Joe Borowski because that’s the thing to do. it was good. I like that part of it.

”I used to tell Bill Parcells that football ought to investigate the guy that invented the prevent defense.“

Opining on alternative outcomes … battling back the scourge of conventional wisdom … you know, don’t look now, but this is smart baseball talk. This Bob Knight guy might have a future in sports, if he can stay this reasonable on the golf course.