KNIGHT COULD HAVE LEARNED A LOT FROM WOODEN.

Byline: Samantha Kimmel Local View

SO Bobby Knight finally got himself tossed from the cushiest job in the world. All he had to do was keep a civil tongue in his head, and his hands off the student bodies and he'd get to maintain his status as the biggest, baddest Alpha male at Indiana University.

He couldn't do it. Twenty-nine years of ``coaching'' shot to hell.

You might notice that I put the word coach in quotes: this is because Ithink that what Knight did was not so much ``coaching'' as ``threatening tomaim'' if the players didn't measure up and shoot straight.

The first time I ever heard of Knight was when I saw a video of him during a game, in the midst of a towering tantrum, hurling a chair across a basketball court, where it landed in the lap of a spectator seated about 25 feet away. I thought, ``This guy is a 'coach'? He's in charge of kids? They are learning about life from this maniac?''

So when, in May, this same maniac was put on a sort of ``behavioralprobation,'' I knew it wouldn't be long before he stuck his own head intothe guillotine and pulled the lever.

And I thanked L.A.'s lucky stars for a man who gave me weekly lessons ingrace under pressure: I was fortunate to have as one of my home-town heroesJohn Wooden, UCLA head coach of the Bruins from 1964 to 1975, and my parents took me to almost every game.

Coach Wooden didn't scream. He didn't grab his players by the throat orthe arm or the hair. He didn't threaten. He didn't throw chairs. He didn'tholler at secretaries.

What Wooden did do was quietly, with dignity and poise, coach the Bruins to win eight NCAA championships, and 620 games in only 11 years (compared to Knight's three, in 30 years). There was no shrieking. No mangling. No attacking. No purple-faced histrionics.

Coach Wooden inspired his players to greatness on the court not only because he was an outstanding basketball tutor: he taught those young men to treat others, and themselves, with honor and respect, because that's how he treated them. That was his great gift to the team: approach everything and everyone with dignity and regard, and you will rarely be disappointed, and he taught them that by example.

So if Henry Bibby or Lew Alcindor played badly, because of inattentionduring practice or not giving 100 percent on the court, they were afraid that the coach might be disappointed, and they didn't want to disappoint coach Wooden: it would be like letting down your own father.

Knight's players were afraid that if they didn't sink the shot, he would kick them down a flight of stairs.

The difference is class. Something Knight wouldn't know about if he threw it through a plate glass window.

Wooden's instruction was not confined to the basketball court: many others received invaluable life lessons from watching his calm, thoughtfulapproach to teaching the art of the hoop. I, for one, would like to thank him for that.