RIP: Bobby Knight

From today's Courant by Desmond Conner, Bobby Knight, Former Knick;

One of the most happily obscure icons in Hartford basketball history died Friday in Springfield, his home for the past 37 years. He was 79. The cause of death is unknown.

Knight attended Weaver High School, but because of the lack of college opportunities available to black people at the time, he was picked from the streets of Hartford's North End to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the era of Marques Haynes and "Goose" Tatum. He had a brief stint with the Knicks in 1955.

He was often called "magical" and "a basketball genius" because of his wizardry with the ball, especially the no-look pass, mastering it long before it was fashionable.

"Bobby was a talent that was simply born too soon to fully realize his talent on a pro level," said longtime friend John Norman, a member of Weaver's 1957 New England championship team and now the dean of continuing education and a professor in the social sciences at Northwestern Connecticut Community College. "It speaks simply to the times in which he lived that he ended up being a member of the Globetrotters. It was the best option for him. But in terms of the things he did and stood for, he's in that same group of icons in the area as Doc Hurley and people like that. He really was a talent. But he really was a terrific person."

Hurley referred to Knight as the No.1 role model in Hartford.

People from around the country are expected for the funeral Friday at 10 a.m. at Phillips Metropolitan CME Church on Main Street in Hartford. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield will hold a previously scheduled event in his honor June 15 from 5-7 p.m.

"He touched hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lives," Hurley said.

In playing for the 'Trotters on and off for five years, Knight became homesick, Hurley said, one reason he didn't play in college.

"Some of the historically black colleges had heard about him and wanted him to come down, but he didn't really want to leave Hartford," Hurley said.

Knight also played with various semipro teams throughout New York and New England until he joined the Knicks — days after dazzling them at a gym in East Hartford.

His basketball talents were many, but Knight's commitment to kids was immense, too, said his niece, Dorothy Knight-Howard.

"He basically stood for kids. He was an advocate for everybody, but he was especially an advocate for the children," she said. "Two days before he went to the hospital, he was playing basketball with the kids at the Springfield YMCA."