ESPN says it spoke with Bob Knight about his comment Tuesday that the NBA has “raped” college basketball.
“We spoke with him. ESPN regrets the use of the word,” the network said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, Knight was appearing on “Mike and Mike in the Morning” when he described what the NBA has done to college basketball by drafting talented freshman as raping the sport.
“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,” he said, via Sporting News.
“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 was not the first time Knight was criticized for his casual use of the word.
In 1998, Knight was asked by NBC News correspondent Connie Chung how he handled stress.
“I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it,” Knight said.
Indiana’s president at the time said the comment was in “very poor taste” and did not represent the school.
What else can you say about it besides that Bob Knight is just a jerk? I’m really not sure what he adds for ESPN and I don’t understand why they would continue to use him.
