PLAYBOY: Let's get the form of address out of the way up front: Would you prefer we call you Coach or Mister, Bob or Bobby?

KNIGHT: I thought a great title for my book would be: They Call Me a Lot of Things. From the time I started teaching, when I was 21, I've always signed my name Bob Knight. My college coach called me Bobby, still does. But I have never introduced myself to anybody in my adult life in any way other than, "I'm Bob Knight."

PLAYBOY: Let's begin with the media, which have always been a problem for you. Do journalists include their personal beliefs and attitudes in the articles they write?

KNIGHT: Yes. I also believe that when something negative comes out about you in the media, that's only one person's opinion. These guys sometimes believe they've been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn't the case.

PLAYBOY: Since you're in the public eye, isn't that the bargain with the devil you must deal with?

KNIGHT: Why should it be? Why should people be unfair? I have as many good friends in the media as anybody in sports has. It's just that I probably have a hell of a lot more enemies than anybody else. The thing that bothers me the most about the media is simple accuracy. There are as many guys in coaching who do a lousy job as there are in the media. Those are two professions that are a lot alike. There aren't a hell of a lot of really good coaches or writers.

PLAYBOY: You may not like the media, but don't you still have to talk to them, to at least try to get your side out?

KNIGHT: Al McGuire talked to me I don't know how many times about dealing with the press: "You've got to be a con man." I tried that for a day or so, but it never really worked for me. My wife, Karen, is right about this. In my dealings with the press, I was like the guy who goes into the cathouse and the madam gets him prepared and looks at him and says, "Who are you going to satisfy with that?" And he looks back at her and says, "Me." That's kind of my sense of humor at times. I'd probably be better off without trying to satisfy me, with my sense of humor. There are things that I have said that are funny to me, but they weren't to somebody in the press. So that hasn't worked to my benefit.

PLAYBOY: In the Sporting News, Mike DeCourcy wrote: "No one has done more to demean the art of sportswriting than Knight. He may take a perverse pride in having so greatly offended so many journalists."

KNIGHT: I'm not sure sportswriting is an art. But that's fairly accurate. It doesn't say I'm a bad person, or that I'm a bully. You can't imagine the number of people in professional sports who have come up to me and said, "God, you treat those assholes like I'd like to treat them." And my question is, "Then why don't you?"

PLAYBOY: Why don't they?

KNIGHT: They're afraid.

PLAYBOY: What's the difference between today's sportswriters and those of the past?

KNIGHT: Writing was far more of an art in the sports world than it is now. Today you have a lot of sportswriters who don't like sports or the people in sports. I can look at a room full of sportswriters and wonder if any of them can explain to me how to attack a one-three-one trap. Or what to do with the ball against a three-two matchup zone. I'm sure there was far more written about Clemens throwing the bat than there was about his masterful performance.

PLAYBOY: Should Roger Clemens have been fined $ 50,000 for throwing that bat near Mike Piazza in the World Series?

KNIGHT: Absolutely not. The situation between Clemens and Piazza was about as out of proportion as anything could be. I admire Clemens for how tough and competitive and team-oriented he is. There isn't anything more a pitcher can do to fire himself up than breaking the other guy's bat, particularly when it's a really good hitter like Piazza. When that bat broke, I bet Clemens was at the zenith, at the apex of positive emotion. Clemens just sawed off the bat in Piazza's hands. Obviously, they don't like each other to begin with, so that adds to it. I don't think Clemens' vision would have been any wider than the brim of his hat. Clemens picked up the bat and threw it, thinking, Goddamn, is that great! Had no idea Piazza was running down the baseline. I thought it was ridiculous. But Piazza is far more attuned with the press than Clemens is. So that enters into the equation.

PLAYBOY: Is that a lesson to be learned, to make nice with the press?

KNIGHT: That's not what I'm talking about.

PLAYBOY: Look at your career. You've had 10 or 12 incidents over a period of 29 years, yet it's those incidents that are always mentioned in stories about you.

KNIGHT: I'll buy that. How many times, without ever knowing me, have you seen that chair thrown? My contention is, if I throw the chair and it hits somebody and hurts somebody, that's a real issue. That chair was scooted across the floor. That's no different from a guy throwing a coat, kicking a water bucket, slamming a clipboard down.

PLAYBOY: But you've got to admit that the chair-throwing had a dramatic effect. It lasted longer on videotape than someone kicking a bucket. For the visuals alone, why are you surprised they keep showing it?

KNIGHT: I don't have any problem with it being shown once, but for 15 years? I was standing in the wings to be introduced on Letterman's show. Here I am, a coach who's had three teams that have won national championships, a team that's won the Olympic gold medal, another that's won the Pan Am gold medal, and as I'm being introduced, on the monitor is a replay of me throwing the chair across the floor. I almost turned around and walked out. Of all the things that could be put up there relative to an introduction of me, this seems to be about as cheap a piece of shit as somebody could do.

PLAYBOY: How hard is it to lose?

KNIGHT: It's not at all difficult to lose a game. If you're sloppy in preparation, if you don't pay attention to detail, if execution is not what it should be, you're going to get beat. Winning is a difficult proposition. Who among us does everything consistently well? I made up a definition of discipline when I was at West Point: doing what has to be done, doing it as well as you can do it, doing it when it has to be done, doing it that way all the time. Four things. It's not a whip and a chair, it's those four ingredients that make a disciplined person.

PLAYBOY: Can you relate to Phil Jackson's remark that losing made him feel humiliated and worthless, as if he didn't exist?

KNIGHT: That's stretching it for me. Losing has always made me feel that there was something more I could have done. What else was there that could have happened? Why did we make these mistakes? What the hell was so-and-so thinking about? What didn't I do in preparation? Losing is a defeat. There's a difference between thinking you've been defeated and thinking you've lost.

PLAYBOY: How deeply does defeat affect you?

KNIGHT: Losing has always been far more difficult to deal with than the enjoyment you get out of winning. Winning is really important -- winning fairly, squarely within the rules, but winning. Winning is a by-product of doing things right. Too many people get caught up in the euphoria of winning, rather than just accepting it as what the hell you're supposed to do. On the other hand, losing is not what you're supposed to do. The disappointment, the frustration, the agony of losing is infinitely greater than whatever comes with winning.

PLAYBOY: What do you think of high school players who skip college and go straight to the NBA?

KNIGHT: I disagree with the theory that a kid has to go to college. If college is a stepping-stone toward lifelong security, but a kid can sign a multimillion-dollar contract when he's 18, why does he need to go to college?

PLAYBOY: Would you agree with Isiah Thomas, who said, "When you go to college, you're not a student-athlete but an athlete-student. Your main purpose is to be not an Einstein but a ballplayer, to generate some money, to put people in the stands"?

KNIGHT: If he said it. In many cases the kid is an athlete-student, but that depends on the emphasis coaches place on the two. We have shown more than anybody in the country that a kid can play and graduate and the team can win. If it can be done here it can be done anywhere.

PLAYBOY: But how do you change the emphasis and make academics the higher priority among Division I schools?

KNIGHT: If you want to really promote academics at this level, what you do is tie scholarships to graduation. If a kid doesn't graduate in five years, the team loses that scholarship for two years, or whatever. That's how you make academics really important. But nobody wants to do that because of the tremendously low graduation rates around the country in both football and basketball. There are highly ranked basketball teams that graduate less than 25 percent of the players who enter.

PLAYBOY: And your record?

KNIGHT: We graduated over 78 percent of the freshmen who entered in basketball. Indiana overall graduated 68 percent of its freshman class. So when this president, Myles Brand, commented about my dismissal, saying we needed to get back to academics, I didn't know whether he was talking about lowering the standard of the basketball team to that of the university or bringing the standard of the university up to that of the basketball team.

PLAYBOY: How did you become so much bigger than life? You've rarely had a player who's drawn more attention than you have. When other teams played you, they wanted to beat Knight more than Indiana. What is it about you?

KNIGHT: I don't know. I'm not those people. This may be an answer to that: One of the strengths I have had is a lot of the negative press I've received. It has established some kind of an aura about me that sets me apart. I've never tried to please everybody.

PLAYBOY: You certainly didn't please the current Indiana administration. Do you think you've been treated unfairly by the university?

KNIGHT: The administration and the trustees have been deceitful right from the beginning. Their approach has been one of enormous duplicity. They've been dishonest in their presentation of things and reasons. They put a spin on everything they can in an attempt to explain why I've been dismissed as the basketball coach. The people who have made these decisions are the most dishonest people I've ever dealt with. And yet, I'm not sure I blame them as much as I blame myself for not having followed my feelings and certainly my wife's feelings, which would have been to leave five years ago. The key positions at the university changed six years ago. Back then there were people in those spots who I got along with extremely well; they never had a problem with me that wasn't quickly or readily solved. I just didn't fit in with the new people, with their approach to things, their self-interest, their agendas. I have yet to see anything they've done that's been of any benefit whatsoever to either the faculty or the students.

PLAYBOY: Has what happened to you soured what you accomplished at Indiana in 29 years? Do you feel bitter?

KNIGHT: I try not to because of all the good people who were involved and all the great kids I've had a chance to coach and the great opportunities that were afforded me personally. Yet it's hard not to feel that way. As an example, on the Neil Reed question: Two trustees became investigators, and they spoke to me for an hour and 40 minutes. One of them mentioned seven times the pressure he was under. I said, "What the hell pressure are you under? This isn't your job, you don't get paid to be a trustee. Why don't you coach basketball for a year and see what pressure's like?" The other guy never took a note on anything I said. When those two left my office, my wife, who had sat in, said, "They may be the two most disgusting people I've ever had to sit through."

PLAYBOY: The tape showing you with your hands on Reed's neck didn't surface for three years. When it was shown, did you feel trapped or vindicated?

KNIGHT: When this practice tape was shown, everything this kid said was refuted. One trustee from here apparently made the comment: "Now that we've seen it and all that bullshit has been dispelled, let's go on to something that's important." When it went one day beyond looking at that practice tape -- that's when I should have quit, had I been true to myself. I should have said: "This is enough of your chickenshit garbage. This thing was discussed and looked at three years ago. If you people want to reopen it, do it with another coach. This is enough of you people positioning for the press. I don't need this bullshit. Goodbye." That is what I will regret more than anything else in my life.

PLAYBOY: Looking ahead for a moment, what happened to the talk of your working for Isiah Thomas and the Indiana Pacers?

KNIGHT: He said I could do anything I wanted to do with the Pacers, from helping occasionally to being with them full-time. I said "Anything I can do to help you, I'll do. All you got to do is tell me. You want me to come to practice, I'll come to practice. You want me to scout a team, I will. You want me to scout your own team -- tell me what you want me to do specifically and I'll be glad to do it. I just don't want to make a commitment to doing anything on a continual part-time or full-time basis at this point."

PLAYBOY: Thomas has said about playing for you: "There were times when if I'd had a gun, I think I would have shot him. And other times I wanted to tell him I loved him."

KNIGHT: Did you ever feel like shooting one of your kids, literally? So why is that a big deal? Isiah Thomas, with tears in his eyes, once said, "Coach, don't you ever change."

PLAYBOY: It's been written that the most stormy relationship you had with a player was with Isiah. Is that true?

KNIGHT: I don't think so. Isiah in the final analysis was extremely successful as a player for us. We've had other players who weren't successful and left.

PLAYBOY: One of the players who left is Larry Bird. How long was he at Indiana?

KNIGHT: He was at Indiana for a month, but he never was here for a practice. He was awed by Indiana. Larry Bird is one of my great mistakes. When he came here, it was a major, major adjustment for a kid coming out of his background -- a small town in southern Indiana, a real poor kid growing up, his father was an alcoholic, his mother was a cook at a mental institution. I was negligent in realizing what Bird needed at that time in his life. I let Larry Bird down when he was an incoming freshman.

PLAYBOY: Did he talk to you before he left?

KNIGHT: No, he just left. As I thought things over, I made a mistake in terms of who I had him room with. I had him room with a really sophisticated, articulate, well-dressed kid the same age, Jimmy Wisman, who went on to become vice president of a large advertising firm. Jimmy was everything Larry wasn't: He was really a nice-looking kid, the girls gravitated to him, he was really good with people, was an excellent student. Just in terms of roommates it was a bad match.

PLAYBOY: What do you think of Bird's leaving the Pacers as a coach after three years?

KNIGHT: Larry Bird's decision to leave was better than my decision to stay here. His decision was a close adherence to his principles.

PLAYBOY: The Columbia Journalism Review wrote, "College athletics is a corrupt and corrupting enterprise." It points out how legendary college coaches wield enormous clout -- often exercised to hold hostage university budgets, building programs and academic enterprises. Do you take exception to that?

KNIGHT: I'm sure there are examples of what they're saying. The president before this one, when he left, stated publicly that we had raised over $5 million for the library. Is that corrupt? Is that bad? We've been instrumental in establishing two professorial chairs and refurbishing the golf course. So athletics and people in them can be very valuable assets to a university.

PLAYBOY: What about academic dishonesty in college athletic departments, such as the former tutor for the University of Minnesota who wrote 400 papers for 20 basketball players between 1993 and 1998? That's not necessarily an exceptional case, is it?

KNIGHT: There is a lot of academic fraud in the eligibility process. One thing that has happened entirely too much is the athletic endorsement and expenditure on athletic tutoring. A school like this one has a tremendous budget for tutoring. I'm not of the opinion that it's not necessary, but what happens is that a kid becomes almost totally dependent on tutors. Now, there's a fine line between the tutor and the kid, particularly in work done outside the classroom, and that's where there are problems.

PLAYBOY: Isn't it true that tutors are often told by coaches to keep the athletes eligible in any way they can, which at times leads to cheating?

KNIGHT: How the hell would I know what other coaches do? You think coaches talk to each other about how they cheat?

PLAYBOY: Did you ever have any drug-related problems with your players over the years?

KNIGHT: We had a marijuana problem in 1978 -- there were eight kids involved. I brought them in one at a time. I ended up keeping six of them because they were honest with me about what they were doing, and I dropped two because they weren't. There have been some pretty good people who have experimented with drugs, so that in itself is not a reason to discount someone.

PLAYBOY: What do you think of athletes who invoke God when they're interviewed after a sporting event?

KNIGHT: Let's let the Lord work on cancer, on providing homes for the homeless. The first time I ever coached at college, not knowing what the hell I was doing, we were playing at Princeton, and before I sent the team out we said the Lord's Prayer. Our trainer put his arm around my shoulders and said, "For whatever it's worth, I just don't think you and praying mix." And we never said another pregame prayer.

PLAYBOY: Are you at all religious?

KNIGHT: I believe strongly in God in my way. The greatest religious statement ever made was: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If a person can follow that, what the hell difference does it make what religion he follows?

PLAYBOY: When was the last time you prayed?

KNIGHT: You don't need to know that, nor does anybody else.

PLAYBOY: You're a friend of former president George Bush. What do you think of his son?

KNIGHT: I really like Bush. He's a good guy -- he's friendly, down-to-earth, interesting. He cares, and he cares enough to make damn sure he's got good people around him. That's what being a president is all about.

PLAYBOY: Would you ever consider running for political office?

KNIGHT: No. You have to commit yourself to too many obligations.

[He interrupts our talk to take a call from former Dayton coach Don Donoher, now a scout for the Cleveland Cavaliers. They are planning to drive to the University of Akron the next day, where their sons are assistant basketball coaches. "We'll meet you at the Bob Evans off 75," Knight says. "There's a really interesting guy here with me who's going to come. He wants to know how I feel about God, marijuana, Gore and Bush. This has been like an investigation being conducted by the CIA to see whether or not I'm capable of running the Buenos Aires branch of covert operations. This is a question-and-answer session the likes of which Rockefeller did not put his potential son-in-law through." We break for dinner. The next morning Knight picks me up and we drive to Akron.]

PLAYBOY: We'll drop the politics and move on to what's happened to you.

KNIGHT: In a way, this whole thing that's transpired amuses me, because there's so much bullshit and so much deceit involved. All these people had to do was come to me and say, "You don't fit in with what we want our basketball coach to be. You're no longer what we think is needed here." All I'd have said is, "That's fine. Let's settle up."

PLAYBOY: Are you a difficult person to deal with because, perhaps, they're afraid of you?

KNIGHT: That's their problem, not mine. Why should anybody be afraid to deal with me? I've been at two different institutions, and neither one has had a problem in academics or recruiting violations while I've been there. So what's to fear?

PLAYBOY: The Columbia Journalism Review wrote: "Bobby Knight is perhaps the most powerful public figure in Indiana and very few people, from the governor on down, are willing to cross him."

KNIGHT: Something like that boggles my mind. How do they determine that? I have never once entered into a political decision. That's asinine. Rarely have I publicly gone after somebody.

PLAYBOY: Because few have crossed you.

KNIGHT: Oh, bullshit.

PLAYBOY: Can you relate to this from Mike Ditka: "Sometimes our mouths and reactions operate before our brains get synchronized, and that happens to me a lot"?

KNIGHT: Everybody has said something they'd like to recant. Given time to think, by tomorrow maybe I would change what I'd said. But some people who I know are absolute scumbags in their personal lives have written things that judge me. That's why you really have no chance with the press.

PLAYBOY: Knowing that, why take it on? Isn't that tilting at windmills in a way?

KNIGHT: Probably. I really tried in this thing with the university to be something I wasn't back in the spring.

PLAYBOY: Was that when you were saying you welcomed a zero-tolerance policy?

KNIGHT: I never, ever, said I welcomed zero tolerance, because it was never explained to me. I simply said that guidelines can be of benefit, period. The whole idea of using things that had happened up to 25 years ago, and using them inaccurately, eventually really pissed me off. Pissed me off more at myself than at anybody else for having accepted it.

PLAYBOY: Were you getting any advice at the time? Were you talking to your lawyer?

KNIGHT: I talked to some people. And almost without exception they told me to leave.

PLAYBOY: So you were not listening to the advice?

KNIGHT: What I did in this situation was think about the wrong things.

PLAYBOY: What were you thinking about?

KNIGHT: How this has been a very comfortable place for me to live. When I quit coaching, I envisioned being able to stay around the university, to help in any way they asked, to raise money -- there's nobody who could raise more money for this university than I could -- without ever interfering with anybody who replaced me as a coach. It was a very comfortable life in an area that I liked, around people I liked. So, OK, they tell me, here's what you have to do. And I could do any of those things. I could change in press conferences. What I intended to do was not even have press conferences. I was going to have a postgame radio show where I'd answer questions from two people who knew about the game. But what was zero tolerance? Does that mean one technical foul and we fire you? Or you go speak somewhere and somebody doesn't like your answer and they complain about it, and we fire you? There were never any outlines placed on this phrase. I asked two different vice presidents to define zero tolerance and they couldn't do it.

PLAYBOY: Why would you agree to something you couldn't get defined?

KNIGHT: I'm just telling you why I fucking agreed to it! Because of my lifestyle and how much I liked it here. So, I say to myself, if I have to do this to stay here, and I have to agree to this, now's the time for me to just simply say OK, I'll do it. And that was wrong. That was a mistake. That's what I'm trying to tell you.