BLOOMINGTON, Ind — It's been almost 24 hours since we learned the news that Bob Knight passed away.
So many people have memories of Knight's time at Indiana University, from the outbursts on and off the court to the legacy he left behind.
On Thursday, 13 Sports director Dave Calabro caught up with the man who may have known Knight better than anyone else.
Knight did it his way at Assembly Hall for 29 years. He chose his friends very carefully. Bob Hammel was on the inside.
"Well, we were good friends," Hammel said.
In his Bloomington home, Hammel reminisced about his dear friend. If "The General" was at an event, his buddy, Hammel, was nearby.
Hammel was the sports director at the Bloomington Herald newspaper, and he said the coach cared for his players well beyond basketball.
"He truly wanted them to leave with a degree," Hammel said. "I mean, he wanted it to the point that he insisted on it. He kept a very close track of whether they were in class. In fact, his recruiting, he would actually recruit the mother. The dad always thought in basketball terms. The mother thought in degree terms, and he would always promise the mother, 'Your son will go to class, your son will graduate, I'll make sure of that.' And that he did."
Knight trusted Hammel, and they spent many days together. Knight asked Hammel to write his autobiography.
"It was No. 2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list for a few weeks and never got to No. 1. I think I failed him there," Hammel said with a laugh.
Hammel said Knight was more than a coach. He was a parent, a strong disciplinarian and a teacher about life.
"Those players, they're the ones I think about right now because they know what they lost. You know, nobody has a second father, but he was close," Hammel said.