Holding Court on Indiana, Davis, & Knight

During the prelude to this year's Final Four, the most popular topic of discussion was the relationship between former Indiana coach Bob Knight and his successor, Mike Davis.

Most of that discussion centered on who should get what share of the credit for the Hoosiers' surprising run to the Final Four, and which one of them should pick up the phone to call the other.

As far as the credit for success, it seems obvious that it should be shared, although not equally.

Knight gets most of the credit for putting this team together, but Davis was his lead recruiter.

Davis was the key to getting star Jared Jefferies to ignore the siren call of Coach Mike Krzyzewski from Duke and play for his home state school.

Knight may have been the architect of the team, but Davis did much of the leg-work in obtaining the players' signatures on the bottom line.

No doubt Davis learned quite a bit from Knight while serving as one of his assistants, but he also developed his own ideas about how to have his team play.

One of the first things he did was scrap Knight's motion offense and rely more on three-point shooting.

Jeffries is the only athletic player in the rotation, so Davis' options were somewhat limited.

His Hoosiers were not a great team by any stretch of the imagination, but they played their best when it counted the most, something Knight's last Indiana teams failed to do.

Knight's first Texas Tech squad also fared poorly in this postseason, being annihilated by Kansas in the Big 12 Tournament and then getting knocked out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by upstart Southern Illinois.

The issue of the phone call is both complicated and silly.

The one thing to say about it conclusively is that the call will NOT come from Knight.

As we have seen with The General's strained relationships with Coach K and Steve Alford, the worst thing you can do to Knight if you want to be his friend is either defeat him in competition or compete at a higher level than he is.

Coach K got the cold shoulder for years after his Duke team had the nerve to beat Indiana in the Final Four while Knight was coaching.

Alford moved into Knight's territory when he took the Iowa job, and this obvious (to Knight) effort to usurp him was met with great displeasure.

The story goes that when Knight was dismissed from Indiana, he offered to pay his assistants' salaries out of his own pocket for a year until he landed elsewhere and gave them new jobs.

Davis had the unmitigated gall to turn down this offer and replace Knight as the head coach at Indiana.

This act of utter insolence to The General will not be forgiven anytime soon, if ever.

Maybe Knight will come around if Davis is elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame the way he did when Coach K was inducted last year.

No problem, just gain election to the Hall of Fame and all is forgiven!

Davis has his own issues to deal with, even in the midst of his recent unexpected success.

There were times during this season when he whined about not getting respect from officials and bemoaned the fact that he was low on the pay scale of Big Ten coaches.

Mike, I'm going to offer you some unsolicited yet outstanding advice.

Few coaches go through a season not feeling that referees at one point or another shaft them.

It doesn't help your case when you imply it is because you are a black coach.

It did not help Nolan Richardson when he complained about the treatment he received due to perceived racial prejudice, and it won't help you either.

Just worry about your players and the things you can control.

If you want the big contract you think (with some merit) that you deserve, there is a tried and true method of obtaining it.

Through your performance (and perhaps networking), you need to convince another school that you are worth what you think you are.

That's called leverage, Mike, and it works.

If you don't have leverage, it's called whining (there's that word again).

It also doesn't inspire confidence from the school administration when you talk before your team's most important game of the season about how much you would eventually love to coach in the NBA.

There's nothing wrong with feeling that.

It's good to have goals and dreams. Personally, I want a pony.

However, when you want your players to be totally focused on the game at hand, it would be a good idea to lead by example.

Mike, you've started to move out of Bob Knight's shadow.

A good next step would be to continue winning and establish your own identity without portraying yourself as under-appreciated and underpaid.

That often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.