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)