Pat Knight's Rant - Too Much?

Seeing as everyone in the sports world seems to have seen this, I figure I should probably weigh in on it.

The other day, Pat Knight tore into his team, specifically his seniors, after his Lamar team fell to Stephen F. Austin. Knight seemed to take a page out of his father's playbook by calling out the team's work ethic, their off the court issues, and even declaring that the will not win another game this season at the rate that they're going.

Now, I've wavered on whether or not I liked or disliked this rant, and I think I know why. I liked the honesty and the idea of calling out the players in order to fire them up for the end of the season, but I don't think I like how it happened or how it was delivered.

For one, the whole tirade starts by Knight kicking a player out of his press conference by saying that he was next because the player "didn't have a clue of what it takes to win." For me, this just set a bad tone. It's one thing for a coach to come in guns blazing on a press conference, but it's quite another to call out and insult a player, to his face, in front of the media.

Knight went on to talk about how his seniors don't know how to win and that their work ethic and demeanor on the court was terrible. This part I didn't have as much of a problem with, as I think it was a tactic to try and light a fire under the team for the final stretch. We've seen coaches at every level do this before, albeit rarely, but with Pat Knight, as well as the entire Knight family, it almost isn't even shocking to hear stuff like this. It's in the Knight DNA to not pull any punches.

The part when I took issue was where he was talking about off the court issues, and specifically mentioning drug issues. Through this point, there had been no reports or mentions of drug issues surrounding Lamar, and Knight's comment just opened up Pandora's box. Are people on the team taking drugs? Are they selling drugs? Which drugs? How many players?

While the calling out of the team was one thing, I think that the drug comment as well as his other mentions of issues off the court went a bit overboard, and actually created a different distraction that may follow this team the rest of the year.

By the way, Lamar pummeled Same Houston State in their next game, 72-49.