Bob Knight had many ties to Philly, most of all to John Chaney

That night in 1997, Indiana in town to face John Chaney’s Temple Owls, we got Charming Bob Knight. Even after his Indiana Hoosiers had lost to Temple. Charming Bob was in no hurry to stop talking.

A couple of reasons, probably. Knight and Chaney had a genuine respect for each other. Real admiration. Chaney used to call himself the Black Knight. Especially when defending Knight after some Knight misdeed.

I don’t think it was a perfect comparison. Both coaches were demanding, had tempers, were disgusted by turnovers. One coached man-to-man defense only, the other was famous for his matchup zone.

Chaney wasn’t a bully, though. He actually liked people. Knight, who died Wednesday, age 83, was more picky about that. But he liked Chaney, even after a loss.

“We can’t pass the ball and we can’t catch the ball,” Knight said after Chaney’s matchup won the night.

Maybe there was another reason Knight was in good enough humor. He was in Philly. Site of two of his three NCAA titles. This Temple game was at the new CoreStates Center, as the Wells Fargo was originally named, just across the parking lot from the still-standing Spectrum, where those titles were won.

The 1976 and ‘81 championships cemented Knight’s status as the genius of the college game, a title he kept through the ‘80s, with another title added in 1987.

The 1976 Hoosiers still are the last undefeated men’s NCAA team. If you’re a certain age, you don’t have to look up the starters … May, Buckner, Benson, Abernathy, Wilkerson. The ‘81 Spectrum final was most famous for being played the night President Ronald Reagan had been shot. Would they even play the game? They played the game.

Writer John Feinstein, who soon became the all-time Knight chronicler, remembers following Knight to the ‘81 postgame press conference, a Spectrum security guard stopping Knight because he didn’t have a pass. Knight explained that there were going to be a thousand disappointed people inside that room if he wasn’t let in.

As it happened, Feinstein was in town Thursday, on the dais at the Coaches vs. Cancer tip-off luncheon at the Hilton on City Avenue.

Before asking Big 5 coaches about their teams, Feinstein spoke about Knight. Feinstein’s first book, A Season on the Brink, written after spending the 1985-86 season with Knight and his Hoosiers, is a sports classic.

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Feinstein spoke of how Knight had passed away “after a horrific battle with dementia.” Feinstein mentioned how North Carolina legend Dean Smith also had died of dementia, in 2015.

“Two best memories of any coaches I’ve ever known — Dean Smith and Bob Knight,” Feinstein said. “Both passed away due to dementia. That’s horrifically tragic and ironic.”

Feinstein noted that Knight had “done the favor of my professional life” by giving him the access to write the book. Then Feinstein wrote the book.

“Shockingly, he thought the book would not have any profanity in it,” Feinstein told the luncheon crowd. “As I told him, I took 97 percent of the obscenities out. If I hadn’t, I’d still be writing.”

Feinstein said he knew that this death was coming, yet it was very emotional.

“He was an important part of my life, and as I said in a column I wrote in the Washington Post, the old cliché is, the measure of a man’s life is how many people he touches. Well, Bob touched a lot of people. Not all for good. But he touched a lot of people. It’s a sad day for me and, I think, for many others.”

Fran Dunphy, now La Salle’s head coach, had been an Army assistant under Dan Dougherty right after Knight had coached Army, leaving the Cadets for Indiana. (Dougherty was replaced at Army by a former Knight guard, Mike Krzyzewski.)

I wondered whether Knight and Dunphy had ever spoken of Army. They hadn’t, Dunphy said after the luncheon.

“The only conversation I really ever had with Knight — he came to do a Temple game,” Dunphy said.

Knight was working for ESPN then, after he had retired from coaching. Typically, a color analyst would come to practice, ask some questions. That wasn’t Knight. But he did ask to speak with Dunphy before the game.

“We talked about Tom Gola,” said Dunphy, who had played for Gola at La Salle. “He loved Tom Gola. We never got to how my team was. He didn’t give a [bleep]. But he cared about Tom Gola. We talked about him for 20 minutes.”

You want a lesser Knight-Philly tie? Knight infamously cut Charles Barkley from the 1984 U.S. Olympics team after Barkley had dominated early tryout sessions. Look up the roster of that team, and you’ll still wonder why Barkley wasn’t on it.

Back to Knight and Chaney. Indiana won the return match the next season in Bloomington.

A couple of memories from that one: First, A.J. Guyton hit a deep three for the win. Afterward, Knight didn’t bring Guyton to the press conference, just a reserve who had no impact on the result. Reporters covering IU literally had to chase Guyton down in the parking lot.

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It wasn’t like Knight was mad at Guyton or even at the reporters more than usual. So much for Charming Bob.

The other memory: One of Temple’s best players had attempted a 360-degree dunk in that game, and he missed. Chaney wasn’t just mad, he was embarrassed. He called Knight after getting back to Philly, the player in his office. He made the player apologize for soiling the game.

Their relationship was unique. The two coaches used to talk defense on coaching trips put together by Nike, Knight not quite buying that you could rebound as effectively out of a zone. So before that 1997 game, Chaney sent Knight a tape of Temple’s zone, showing exactly how they could rebound out of it.

Who does that?

Knight had a manager give the tape back before the game, passing on the message that he wouldn’t watch it until after the game, that he had too much respect for Chaney.

Who does that?