Legendary coach Bob Knight's health reportedly 'has declined'
Legendary basketball coach Bob Knight is reportedly “struggling with health issues,” according to a report from the Indianapolis Star.
Longtime Indiana broadcaster Don Fischer was asked about Knight on Wednesday on “The Drive with jack & Tom,” a radio show out of Lansing, Michigan. Fischer was asked if any sort of reunion would be possible to get Knight back to Bloomington.
That’s when Fischer brought up Knight’s health.
"I hesitate to say anything about that right now because coach Knight is not well," Fischer said. "He's going through some major issues and it hurts me to even talk about it just because a man with that kind of a mind, who was so tremendous at coaching the game of basketball, and you know, at the age that we get to at this point in our lives, you want to keep thinking that that brain is never going to go away, and it appears that's a real problem for him right now in the sense of what he's dealing with."
Knight, who led the Hoosiers to three national championships during his tenure from 1971-2000, was fired in 2000. He has had a rough relationship with the university since then, and said he doesn’t have any “interest in ever going back to that university.” He also said in 2017 that he hopes theIndiana staff that fired him are “all dead.”
He has made multiple public appearances in recent years, however, and even campaigned multiple times with President Donald Trump in Indiana in 2016.
When asked about his comments by the Indianapolis Star, Fischer said he did not have any first-hand knowledge of Knight’s health, and that he was “not a doctor.” He also requested that the story not be published.
"Honestly, I probably shouldn't have said what I said, because now everyone's talking about it like there's something really wrong with Coach Knight," Fischer later said in a statement to the Indianapolis Star.
"That's not what I was trying to say. I don't mean to intimate in any way shape or form that he's on his death bed. That's not the case, that I know of. Just that his health has declined."
Knight has reached the NCAA Tournament 28 times, reached the Final Four five times and won three national titles throughout his 41-year coaching career. He has 899 career wins, the third most in college basketball history, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991.
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