Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle recently looked back on his interactions with former IU legend Bob Knight.
(via Indiana Pacers):
Reporter: “You showed up in the red sweater, just a nice little subtle tribute?”
Carlisle: “Yeah, a tribute to Coach Knight. Just a show of respect for everything that he’s meant not only to IU and the state of Indiana, but to basketball overall. I’ve heard a lot of stories about people’s interactions with him over the years either on radio or I read them in accounts on the internet. I wrote a letter to him one time when I was in college, he was going to be the Olympic coach in ‘84. I think I wrote him a letter in ‘83 to try to get his attention to possibly get a shot at the Olympic trials. And he wrote me a personal letter back, which I’ve kept to this day. I always thought that it was an extremely classy thing to do. He didn’t even know me at the time. And then there was another time when Dick Harter and I went down to watch an IU practice in ‘99 during the lockout. We had dinner with him in Bloomington. It was one of the most interesting basketball discussions of my entire life and it was just so awesome to hear this guy talk about the game. I learned an awful lot. And I’m a child of the pro game. I played in college, didn’t coach in college, but he was just simply an encyclopedia of knowledge of the game. So I was always appreciative for that opportunity too.”
