Nobody has been asked more about his legacy while his legacy was being created than Bob Knight.

For years, reporters asked him how he thought he would be remembered, the implicit message being, “Are you aware of just how big a jackass you are?” or perhaps more to the point, “When are you going to get around to retiring, if not expiring?”

I always believed Knight was being truthful when he said he didn’t care about his legacy.

He already knew what that legacy would be; he was living it. He never saw a need to change. If he really had wanted to be thought of as a wonderful human being, he would have tried to straighten up, would have stopped putting his hands on his players in anger. Or, he would have done what a lot of coaches do, which is to publicize every visit they make to a hospital, a soup kitchen or a home for indigent graduate assistants.

Knight wanted to win basketball games, and the only opinions that mattered to him were friends’ opinions. And generally, the people he hung around with were either like him (e.g., Ted Williams) or were afraid to tell him the truth. You either were a fellow man’s man or you were a toady, and the rest of the population didn’t much register in Knight’s world.

I don’t want to make this gushy because it’s not meant to be, but you always knew where you stood with Knight. That’s a good thing. In an age when coaches are packaged like politicians, he didn’t have handlers. You can make the case that he could have used a handler or 50, that it would have kept him out of some of the trouble he always seemed to have in his sights.

But what he needed most, and apparently never received, was good advice from someone he admired, someone who could have told him his behavior toward players sometimes went beyond abusive. It’s why he was kicked out of Indiana and why he ended up in the faraway outpost of Lubbock, Texas.

He retired from coaching Monday, leaving behind 902 victories and three national titles, and leaving us with the same complicated man we have had on our hands all along.

The chair-throwing incident seems almost quaint now. The allegations of mental and physical abuse don’t and never will.

His players graduated.

There were no steroid controversies. There were no accusations that he spied on another team. He never was implicated in recruiting scandals.

If my life depended on the outcome of a basketball game, I would pick Bob Knight to coach my team. The problem would be that he might lose the game on purpose just to see a sports writer die a painful death.

Knight is a complex man. He can be gracious and he can be boorish. He generally treated media members as if they were host carriers of some dreaded disease, yet counted a few writers as friends.

As for retirement, Knight has fishing and hunting on his things-to-do-often list. But he would be a great choice to coach the U.S. team in the 2010 World Championships. It would be worth it for no other reason than to watch the likes of Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony attempt to coexist with him. And to watch Knight attempt to stay out of trouble in Turkey, site of the World Championships.

The experiment very well would go up in flames, but it also could end up in gold, an element U.S. teams have been allergic to for a while.

Knight will be 69 in 2010. Perhaps he will have mellowed by then.

Nah.