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THE WIZARD VERSUS THE GENERAL Jerry L. Walls DURING THE SUMMER of 2005, a remarkable movie entitled The Great Raid was released. The movie is remarkable primarily because the extraordinary events it depicts really happened. In 1945, during the Second World War, more than 500 U.S. prisoners of war were under the threat of imminent death in the infamous Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. The movie recounts the story of how 121 men in the Sixth Ranger Battalion undertook a daring, against-all-odds mission to liberate those POWs. This task was daunting not only because these men would be far outnumbered by the Japanese but also because they would have to travel, undetected, thirty miles behind enemy lines to reach the camp and would have to rely heavily on a strategic plan of attack and the element of surprise to have any chance of success. Despite the unlikely odds, this most audacious raid was a spectacular triumph. Nearly all the captives were rescued, and only two of the Sixth Ranger Battalion lost their lives.1 For my money, The Great Raid is a great movie.2 But for now, I am more interested in the question of why the raid itself is worthy of being labeled as great. The broader issue of how greatness is measured is an inherently philosophical issue, especially since it involves judgments of value. Standards of greatness usually are not obvious or set in stone. They often depend on contestable judgments of comparative value.3 So what makes a military operation like the one described above deserve to be called great? I would suggest that there are at least two factors involved in this assessment. First, the mission was impressive because it was accomplished by a relatively small group of men who defeated a Why Bob Knight Is a Greater Coach than John Wooden 130 Jerry L. Walls larger and better-situated group of enemies. This was not a victory of superior strength and numbers overwhelming an outmatched opponent. Rather, it was the triumph of an undermanned group that succeeded by virtue of a strategy that was carefully thought out, planned, and executed . But there is another factor as well. This raid also required outstanding courage and commitment on the part of those who carried it out. So in addition to the strategic brilliance of the mission, it demonstrated the sort of heroic valor and sacrifice that makes for greatness. The character these men displayed demands our honor and respect even more than their skill and savvy in executing their ingenious plan of attack. In this chapter I want to explore what makes for greatness in coaching . This is admittedly not as important an issue as what makes a military operation great. However, I think our discussion thus far gives us some clues that may be pertinent to measuring greatness in basketball coaches. This issue, I have discovered, incites considerable passion among fans. In my many years of engaging in basketball arguments, some of the most spirited disputes I have participated in have involved the question of who are the truly great coaches of the game. My choice for the top of the list is admittedly controversial. In fact, for many people he embodies the very idea of controversy more than any other figure in all of sport. I refer, of course, to Bob Knight, the man whom hoops fans also know as “the General.” I can hardly recall the number of times people have reacted with surprise, if not indignation, when they learn that I am an outspoken fan of the General. Part of the reason some find it surprising that I love the General is that I teach at a theological seminary. Some apparently see it as incongruous that a guy who teaches philosophy to students preparing for the ministry can be a fan of a guy whose most notorious moment in the public eye came when he threw a chair across the gym in protest of what he took to be a bad call in a game. The chair is only the most famous episode in a whole litany of incidents in which Knight’s volatile temper has gotten the best of him. But my appreciation for Knight is not the only thing that evokes surprised reactions from my fellow hoops fans. I have gotten similarly strong reactions from a number of people when they learn that I am not a big fan of another coaching icon, namely...

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