Bob Knight: NBA has 'raped college basketball'
Bob Knight is critical of the NBA drafting college basketball's underclassmen. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
Bob Knight faults the NBA for drafting players after one year of college, saying the practice is as though the professional league has "raped" the college game.
Knight said on ESPN's Mike and Mike radio show Tuesday morning that one-and-done prospects like Andrew Wiggins (Kansas) and Jabari Parker (Duke) are not ready for the NBA even though they are projected to be top-three picks in this year's NBA Draft.
"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," Knight said. "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."
Knight thinks the NBA should adopt Major League Baseball's system for bringing young prospects into the pros.
Knight said, "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."
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In 1988, Knight, then coach at Indiana, drew criticism for his use of another rape analogy on national television.
Asked by Connie Chung, the NBC News correspondent conducting the interview, how he handled stress, the Indiana men's basketball coach said, ''I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.''
Then, apparently realizing what he had said might be offensive, Knight went on: ''That's just an old term that you're going to use. The plane's down, so you have no control over it. I'm not talking about that, about the act of rape. Don't misinterpret me there. But what I'm talking about is, something happens to you, so you have to handle it - now.''
