During a campaign rally Tuesday night, Sen. Ted Cruz was speaking
to his supporters at Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, IN. Cruz, like any politician worth his salt,
chose the gym made famous in the movie Hoosiers
for what he hoped would be a magnificent photo opportunity.
Everything was going along just fine until the moment he tried to recreate one of the most memorable
moments in the beloved film.
In
the movie, Gene Hackman has a player measure the height of the basket to show
that there's no difference between the court his small town team was used to
playing on and the larger arena where the state tournament was taking place.
A
man at one end of the court had already climbed a ladder and Cruz asked if he
had a tape measure. He did and Cruz asked
him to measure the height. Everyone in
that gym knew where he was going with this, but to the uninitiated it wasn’t
clear what point he was trying to make.
And
then it happened. He referred to the
hoop as a basketball ring. Oh my! In basketball vernacular, it was an airball.
It
was truly cringe-worthy
No one has ever called it a "basketball ring" before Cruz just now in the history of basketball, politics, or words.— Luke O'Neil (@lukeoneil47) April 26, 2016
This evening, Donald Trump will appear at the
Indiana State Fairgrounds with college basketball’s legendary Hall of Fame Head
Coach Bobby Knight.
Knight has not returned to the state since
his firing in 2000. He has held a grudge
ever since that fateful day and famously said, "When my
time on earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me
upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass!"
Knight ran a clean
program having never been sanctioned by the NCAA for recruiting violations and
for graduating most of his players. He was no stranger to controversy; he
famously threw a chair
across the court during a game against Purdue in 1985, was arrested for assault,
and regularly displayed a combative nature during encounters with members of
the press.
I despise Bobby
Knight. It would be sacrilege for me to
feel any differently since I am a devout Duke Blue Devils fan. I root for the Carolina Tarheels except when
they take the court against Duke. I also
loved Jim Valvano, but then everybody loved Coach V.
Coach Knight remains
the object of fanatical devotion from his former players and Indiana fans. His name still
carries a lot of weight with Hoosier fans and Donald Trump, who enjoyed a
5-state sweep in Tuesday’s Acela Primary, is counting on that devotion to
challenge Ted Cruz in next Tuesday’s Indiana presidential primary.
Cruz may need Jimmy Chitwood, Larry Bird, Damon Bailey, Steve Alford and Yogi Ferrell to pull off Indiana #hickory— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) April 26, 2016
