“I’m going to cry about that": When UNC legend Dean Smith joked about Bob Knight breaking his all-time win record

Former Indiana Hoosiers coach Bob Knight is renowned as one of the greatest-ever college basketball coaches. He helped lead the Hoosiers to three national championships during his 29-year tenure (1971-2000) at the helm of the program.

Knight was a divisive character but his firm friendship with legendary North Carolina Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, who won two national championships in his college basketball coaching career, was well known. In 2006, after Smith had retired as the winningest coach in basketball history (879 wins), he joked with good nature about Knight breaking his all-time win record.

“I’m going to cry about that,” Smith said. “All of it’s on coaching, I think. He’ll always be known as the coach – coach Knight.”

Smith then told a hilarious anecdote of how he tried to poach a player that both coaches were recruiting.

“I said, ‘You better not go in there. They don’t like you,”‘ Smith said. “The next thing I know, he calls me and said (the family) quickly changed their mind. He’s really sensational in the home. I was there first and he got him.”

Bob Knight retired with 902 wins in his career, which ranks him at No. 14 in the all-time college basketball wins rankings (both men's and women's basketball).

Dean Smith once offered Bob Knight his assistant

Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim detailed how despite the pair's teams fighting for national championship wins every season, Dean Smith offered his North Carolina Tar Heels assistant coach Roy Williams to Bob Knight for a year because the Indiana Hoosiers legend was looking for an addition to his staff in 1984.

“‘Coach Smith said to Coach Knight, ‘Well, who are you looking for?’” Roy Williams said. “And I think Coach Knight said, ‘Somebody like Roy.’"

Williams further revealed that his wife Wanda shot down the idea after reading about the charismatic Knight's aggressive nature in sports historian John Feinstein's "A Season on the Brink" book.

"She (Wanda) said, ‘Are you serious?’” Williams said. “When I told Coach Knight that story, he thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. But, yeah, that shows you what great friends they were and what trust they had.’”

Wertheim detailed how Bob Knight and Dean Smith exchanged phone calls, letters and advice throughout their careers despite both vying to make their teams the best in the country. In 1981, the Hoosiers beat the Tar Heels in the national championship game to win Knight his second natty.

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Edited by Nadim El Kak