That team had some players who went on to the NBA, but none of them were stars at the next level. That proves how good of a coach he was.
Bobby always believed that the bottom line was to totally operate as a team. Nobody got to be a star.
That was his non secret secret.
He gave some really great motivational speeches for anyone to attend.
Isiah Thomas was the only Knight player who became top tier in the NBA, although a number of other did have long, productive pro careers. I don’t follow the NBA at all so that’s not something I ever tracked, but Mike Woodson comes to mind.
Scott May might have been that good but he blew out a knee early in his first NBA season and then had two more knee operations after that, all in his first three years. That was back when a serious knee injury was often career ending.
We’ll never know how good a pro May might have been. He graduated the same year as Adrian Dantley and Marques Johnson. He outplayed both of them in their head to head matchups in college. Different styles.
Landon Turner was coming into his own as a dominant big man with a style suited to the modern NBA, but then came the accident.
The ego cases coming out of high school never wanted to play for Knight. He relied on very good players with a work ethic. The great contrast was with Dean Smith, who always had the future NBA All Star team on his bench — and who was running a completely fraudulent program with regard to the academic side of things. The NCAA declining to sanction North Carolina when Smith’s program got exposed was one of the things that led to me giving up on college sports.