The Shouting Match
When I picked up A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers by John Feinstein the first thing I noticed were the handful endorsements on the book jacket. Many reputable publications like The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and USA Today had lots of nice things to say about this supposed ‘classic’. Naturally I was excited.
John Feinstein followed Bob Knight everywhere he went for the ’85-’86 season, he attended every team practice, meeting and game. This book is the result of that. It is the story of Knight’s unwavering passion for basketball. Knight was obsessed with the game and insisted on it being played the way he liked it. As A Season on the Brink demonstrates, Sometimes this would go according to plan but most of the time it didn’t. If Knight’s team couldn’t live up to his, at times, unrealistic expectations of performance, they knew about it.
To step back a moment, I have to say I don’t know much about Bob Knight or the Indiana Hoosiers. I did a Google search before beginning the book and I watched some YouTube videos. Pretty quickly I was up to speed. Knight’s mood could alter in seconds: from pure hatred to love, from anger to compassion, a strong word in your ear to an arm round your shoulder, he kept his team and everyone in his life on their toes. Knight is clearly a man who eats, sleeps and breathes his precious sport, basketball. For college basketball fans he is the ultimate “you either love him or hate him ” character.
This side of Knight was well covered by Feinstein. Perhaps a little too well. I have to admit to finding it all a bit tedious after a while. I understand that Bob was (is) a firey man who liked to be the centre of attention and managed love / hate relationships with all those around him. I understand that Knight’s philosophy for teaching is something along the lines of ‘if you play enough mind games with them, shout at them enough, show them videos of their mistakes and shout some more then they’ll finally get it.’ But after 300 pages of this, I started to crave something more concrete — something about basketball! I stopped caring so much about Bob or Indiana, I wanted to learn more about the game and Knight’s style of coaching. I became curious to learn why his teams were so effective. What’s the winning formula?
So for me, though I enjoyed this book in parts I felt it was lacking depth. Set in the ’80s, Knight and his team were products of their time and this, as well as the sport itself, was what I wanted to read more about. Who were the players? What were their stories? How were they able to deal with Knight’s iron fist? What did they think of his coaching style? How did they turn all this into victory? Surely Knight’s temper alone didn’t propel them to such feats.
I want to add also that I thought this book could have used a bit of trimming. I found it repetitious in some places. Conversely, I also thought that the retelling of games could of been done better. A bit of extra insight into the behind-the-scenes games day antics would have been great.
My Rating 2.5/5.