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Bob Knight: ‘It’s as though [the NBA has] raped college basketball’

Bob Knight

Bob Knight

AP

ESPN broadcaster and former Indiana head coach Bob Knight appeared on the ‘Mike and Mike’ radio show this morning and, while discussing one-and-done players, said the following: “It’s as though [the NBA] raped college basketball.”

Ugh.

Here’s the entire quote. I’m not even sure it’s possible for a rape reference to be taken out of context, but this certainly wasn’t. It’s as bad as it seems:

“If I were involved with the NBA I wouldn’t want a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old kid, to bring into all the travel and all the problems that exist in the NBA. I would want a much more mature kid. I would want a kid that maybe I’ve been watching on another team and now he’s 21, 22 years old instead of 18 or 19, and I might trade for that kid.”

“On top of it all, the NBA does a tremendous, gigantic disservice to college basketball. It’s as though they’ve raped college basketball in my opinion.”

“Major League Baseball has the best idea of all. Three years before they’ll take a kid out of college, then they have a minor league system that they put the kids in. I’m sure that if the NBA followed the same thing, there would be a lot of kids in a minor league system that still were not good enough to play in the major NBA.”

This isn’t Knight’s first run-in with that word.

26 years ago, during an interview with Connie Chung, Knight said, “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

(h/t Sporting News)

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