No question Bob Knight and other “old school” coaches (I’ll avoid the word “abusive”) can be winners. But did their old school tactics make them successful? Could Knight have won just as many games (or maybe more) if he had used a different approach? Did he NEED to behave the way he did to win?
I keep saying it: If being a jerk is so successful, why isn’t there a single business school or management guru out there advocating it? I think (?) we all agree that managing people in the working world isn’t supposed to work that way (although sometimes managers are jerks, too). So why do we expect something different from coaches?