Columnist Ron Kantowski: On the other side of Knight

Thursday, Dec. 15, 2005 | 8:28 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Even though Las Vegas is more than halfway across the country from the Indiana prairie, you would be hard pressed to find a local resident who hasn't seen that lowlight of Knight's spectacular and controversial career as a legendary coach.

But there's only one local resident (unless Steve Alford recently moved to Southern Nevada) who survived it.

Winston Morgan was a starting guard on, as he sheepishly put it, "the chair-throwing team." Depending on whom you talk to, Knight was either finding a seat for a little old lady under the basket (his explanation) or hurling it in the general direction of Fort Wayne to express his displeasure with the officials (everybody else's explanation).

Everybody else's explanation, that is, except Winston Morgan's.

"There was a lot more to it," said the former Hoosier, who moved to Las Vegas in the late 1980s and now writes tickets in the Wynn Las Vegas race and sports book.

Although Morgan didn't expound, his tone suggested that he might have had something to do with the firestorm that had been building within his old coach.

The 1985-86 Indiana team, the focus of John Feinstein's riveting book "Season on the Brink," was not one of Knight's favorites. And Morgan was not one of Knight's favorite players, at least not then.

Morgan said he had missed some classes, which, next to showing Knight an ink blot of former LSU coach Dale Brown, is probably the quickest way to get under his skin. The second-quickest is to play poorly, which Morgan admittedly was.

He got so deep into Knight's doghouse that there was no getting out. After the season, Morgan was told not to come back for his senior year and that his scholarship was being revoked, although Knight offered to help him find another school.

Rather than sulk or complain about his situation, when Morgan left the meeting with Knight he immediately went to shake hands with Jim Crews, a former Hoosier who was leaving as one of Knight's assistants to take the head coaching job at Evansville.

Morgan wished Crews good luck and thanked him for working with him and making him a better player.

That simple gesture endeared him to Knight. When the coach got wind of it, he reinstated Morgan, who earned back his spot in the lineup and, more importantly, graduated.

"He made me move back into the dormitory and it was hard, what he put me through. But it was a blessing. I ended up graduating." Morgan said.

On his own. While Knight reinstated Morgan, he did not reinstate his scholarship.

At least not immediately.

"The guy's got a heart so big that he wound up reimbursing me for the scholarship 14 years later," Morgan said.

By then, Morgan's career as a pro overseas was over and he was trying to get on with life without basketball. It was a struggle, he said, until Knight made a phone call to the late Tom Wiesner, the longtime UNLV benefactor who would introduce Morgan to Dan Wade, a former MGM Grand executive.

Morgan was later hired as a casino host at the MGM Grand.

Although Morgan had played at Anderson Madison Heights High School in Indiana, the same basketball factory that produced Hoosiers stars such as Bobby Wilkerson, Roy Tolbert and Stew Robinson (now on Knight's staff at Texas Tech), he said nothing could have prepared him for his four seasons on, and nearly over, the brink.

"It was tough," admitted Morgan, a spiritual man who does charity work for Kingdom Builders Inc., an organization that is providing food and shelter for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. "It's real hard. But once you finish and graduate it's a blessing to have somebody like Coach look after you.

"With Coach, it's not all about basketball. In fact, it's only about 10 percent about basketball. The rest of it is just life's lessons."

Morgan and Knight have remained friends. They are going to have dinner Friday night, before Tech's game with the Rebels on Saturday. They'll chat about old times and new times, too, such as Morgan's son Moses, who's already hooping it up as an eighth grader at Greenspun Middle School.

But they probably won't talk about that darn chair.