Doyel: Testing the anger of Bob Knight, Rick Mount

At Indiana they know what would happen. The cheering will start, and then …

“They might just cancel the second half,” says IU coach Tom Crean.

At Purdue they know what would happen. The cheering will start, and then …

“It would blow the roof off Mackey,” says Purdue basketball spokesman Chris Forman.

These are parties we’re talking about, parties scheduled days apart at Purdue and Indiana. The party at Mackey Arena is Jan. 2, during Purdue’s game against Iowa. The party at Assembly Hall is Jan. 5, Indiana’s game with Wisconsin.

Purdue will honor all-time scoring leader Rick Mount with a bobble-head night, choosing Iowa because Mount scored 61 points one night in 1970 against the Hawkeyes. Indiana is honoring its 1976 undefeated national championship team, coached by Bob Knight. IU chose Wisconsin because it’s the first game of the 2016 calendar year, the first chance for IU to celebrate the 40th anniversary of perfection.

Rick Mount and Purdue. Bob Knight and Indiana. They are the biggest names at the biggest schools in the biggest, basketball-craziest state in America.

These parties. They’re going to be special.

Even if the guests of honor refuse to attend.

* * *

There are hard feelings here. These are two great and stubborn men, still angry at the schools where they became great, and they have shown no signs of forgiveness.

Does Purdue owe Rick Mount an apology? Does Indiana owe one to Bob Knight? That’s a matter of perception, and in this case it doesn’t matter, it really does not, whether Mount and Knight are right to be angry.

It matters that they are.

Knight’s anger is palpable to those who know him, more to those who don’t, the ex-IU players and assistants who haven’t heard from him since he was fired by Indiana on Sept. 10, 2000. Knight doesn’t speak to the IU coaches who came after him, not even Dan Dakich, his player from 1981-85 and assistant from 1985-97. For 16 years they were together, Knight and Dakich, but since returning to IU on Kelvin Sampson’s staff in 2007-08 – and becoming interim coach late that season – they have spoken just once. And that was a fluke. Both were working for ESPN. They were in Bristol, Conn. They saw each other in a hallway.

Mount’s anger is less palpable. He doesn’t lash out against Purdue so much as he pretends Purdue doesn’t exist. When someone from Purdue calls his home in Lebanon, Mount doesn’t answer. When they leave a message, he isn't likely to return the call. Purdue invited Mount to the Iowa game Jan. 2 in the same way Indiana invited Knight to the Wisconsin game Jan. 5: through intermediaries, or through the U.S. mail.

Because Purdue can’t get Rick Mount on the phone.

And Indiana can’t get Bob Knight on the phone.

Says Knight’s captain from 1976, Quinn Buckner: “It is what it is.”

“I know steadfastly many have tried to (mend these fences) in some way or some fashion,” Buckner says, “and he appears to not want to come back.”

Knight was put on a zero-tolerance edict in May 2000 after practice video from 1997 surfaced with his fingers wrapped around player Neil Reed’s throat. Knight tested that edict in September by grabbing the arm of an IU student who asked him, “Hey Knight, what’s up?” He was fired three days later.

Mount’s beef with Purdue? Appears to be this: His son, ex-Lebanon High superstar Richie, signed with Purdue in 1989 but averaged just four minutes and 0.7 points per game as a freshman for Gene Keady before transferring as a sophomore. Richie played sparingly at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1993. When Rick Mount was inducted into the Purdue Hall of Fame in 1994, he didn’t attend. Six years later, Purdue’s all-time scoring leader told the Chicago Tribune that Purdue’s treatment of Richie “really kind of honked me off.”

Gene Keady left in 2005, replaced by a Keady disciple, Matt Painter, a Richie Mount teammate at Purdue. Is all of that why Rick Mount doesn’t return Purdue’s calls 25 years later?

Purdue doesn’t know. Rick won’t talk to them, or to me. I asked him months ago, and he didn’t want to talk about it. I called him again this week and got the Purdue treatment: Answering machine. No return call.

They are grown men who have lived their lives, doing so in fishbowls the likes of which you and I can’t imagine. Mount was the first high school kid on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1966, became a living legend at Purdue and played for the hometown ABA Pacers. Knight is Knight. Won three national titles, broke Dean Smith’s all-time record for victories, made bizarre headlines. Was fired by Indiana in 2000.

They are angry. They are hurt. Their parties are in five weeks.

* * *

Nobody on the planet thinks Bob Knight will show up Jan. 5. I mean, nobody. Indiana won’t say it, Indiana is scared to death to say anything to increase his alienation, and so Indiana’s position is this:

“He hasn’t said ‘no,’” says IU athletics director Fred Glass.

He hasn’t said anything. Glass sent a personal letter to Knight, inviting him to the game, and hasn't heard back. In almost seven years as AD at Indiana, Glass has spoken just once to Knight. It was three years ago, a meeting brokered by Bob Hammel – the Hall of Fame former sports editor at the Bloomington Herald-Times and one of Knight’s closest friends – and that lunch at Rick’s Café Boatyard became a five-hour discussion of sports, history and other crevices of Knight’s brilliant mind.

“It was awesome,” Glass says, and then he returns to the issue at hand, the party on Jan. 5. “If the first time I hear from Coach Knight is that day when he walks onto the court, that would be fine by me. We’d just love him to be here.”

They would. They really would. IU coach Tom Crean still labors in the shadow of Knight, but he badly wants Knight to return Jan. 5.

“I wish he’d come back and feel that adoration,” Crean says. “We wouldn’t be able to start the second half. I’d put money on it. We might have to walk off the court and forfeit.”

The conduit to Knight is the former Bloomington sports editor, Hammel, who told me he didn’t know if Knight would show up Jan. 5. Former IU players, including some from the 1975 team honored last season, call Hammel, too. They played for Indiana, but they played for Bob Knight. And so they call Bob Hammel, seeking direction:

Is it OK with Coach if we show up?

Quinn Buckner, the 1976 captain, hasn’t been back since Knight was fired, at least not as an alum. He has worked games at Assembly Hall as a TV analyst, but Jan. 5 will be his first time back as a Hoosier.

Buckner doesn’t know how many of his teammates will join him on the court. One in particular: 1976 national player of the year Scott May. He understands May’s dilemma.

“I faced it many times myself,” Buckner was telling me. “When this (Jan. 5 game) started coming up, probably a year ago, I had to do some soul-searching. I love Coach to death, but this is just something I choose to do.”

And then he does something clever, something he will do one more time in our conversation. Buckner cites Knight to defend his choice to return to IU.

“One of the things Coach Knight said many years ago: ‘What we did (in 1976), we did for the people in the state of Indiana,’” says Buckner, now a Pacers TV analyst. “And if this (Jan. 5 game) is a chance for people to relive that story, I’m fine with it.”

But, I ask the 1976 team captain: Will Knight hold it against you?

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so. I really don’t. My instincts say he wanted us to grow up to be men. And if a man makes a choice, he makes a choice.”

More than a decade ago, Knight and Mount made theirs. The parties are in five weeks. Perhaps, between now and then, they will make another choice.

* * *

One person on the planet thinks Rick Mount will show up Jan. 2: His grandson, Jordan Mount. A high school senior at Traders Point Christian Academy. Richie’s son.

“I think so,” Jordan says. “I know I’m trying.”

Rick Mount is a complicated man, giving to kids and strangers. He shoots with them when they ask, on courts around Lebanon, but he’s not as comfortable with his past.

Mount once volunteered with the Lebanon girls team – he worked privately with senior Kristen Spolyar, who is on pace to surpass his career mark of 2,595 points – but he stopped coming to Lebanon games two years ago. His grandson played for Lebanon last season. Mount’s wife went to the games and taped them. Rick Mount watched the video. Wouldn’t walk into the school he made famous.

He doesn’t return Purdue’s calls. Doesn’t have much use for the Pacers, either. When they drafted him in 1970, coach Slick Leonard didn’t like the pick and skipped Mount’s introductory news conference. Two years later the Pacers traded him to Kentucky. Mount never forgot.

Earlier this year his grandson transferred to Traders Point for his senior season – severing, once and for all, Rick Mount’s last tie to any of his former teams. Jordan will be at Mackey Arena on Jan. 2. He has tickets. He’s hoping his dad, Richie, will accompany him.

Maybe they’ll see Rick Mount walk across the floor, then hear what happens next. It’d be similar to what would happen three days later at Assembly Hall if Bob Knight stepped onto that court:

Waves of noise, crashing tidal waves of love meant to wash away decades of hard feelings. They have been building for years, these waves.

It’s time to come ashore.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel