Ricky, Steve and Coach Knight… When did Ricky’s relationship start to crack with Coach Knight? And that rolled up sweater period was awful………..
Ricky’s relationship with Coach Knight began to fray during what many fans now refer to as the “rolled-up sweater period”—a strange, transitional stretch in their history that marked the beginning of an emotional and philosophical divide between the two. What once looked like a mentor-protégé relationship, grounded in mutual respect and basketball purity, slowly deteriorated into a mix of passive-aggressive silence, performative gestures, and symbolic wardrobe choices.
The first visible crack appeared midway through Ricky’s junior year, after a narrow loss to a clearly inferior team. During the post-game presser, Coach Knight—typically stern but supportive—made an offhand comment about “players who read their own press too much and forget how to box out.” The comment wasn’t directed at Ricky by name, but the implication was obvious. Ricky, who had scored 27 but was beat twice on key rebounds late in the fourth, responded in kind with a cryptic tweet later that night: “Funny how some people wear sweaters like armor when they’re really just hiding.”
That tweet lit the match.
In the following weeks, Coach Knight began a peculiar habit of rolling up his sweater sleeves during games. Some thought it was a tactical response to Ricky’s social media dig, a visual metaphor for “rolling up your sleeves and doing the work.” Others saw it as petty defiance—a fashion statement fueled by spite. Whatever the reason, the rolled-up sweater became a symbol of the growing rift. It didn’t help that the team’s performance became inconsistent. Ricky’s numbers stayed strong, but he no longer looked like he was playing for someone. He was playing in spite of them.
Steve, caught in the middle, tried to broker peace. In one locker room moment now recounted with near-mythical reverence, he reportedly told Coach Knight, “You raised a wolf, not a sheep. Don’t act shocked when he starts hunting his own way.” It was a noble effort, but the damage had already been done.
The final straw came during a late-season game when Coach Knight benched Ricky during the final minutes of a winnable contest. When asked afterward, Knight shrugged and said, “Sometimes the game doesn’t need stars—it needs soldiers.” Ricky’s response was icy but controlled. “I’m not a soldier. I’m an artist,” he told reporters, staring directly into the camera.
That was the point of no return. From then on, every handshake was perfunctory, every timeout a cold transaction. The love that once existed between Ricky and Coach Knight had curdled into an uncomfortable detente. The rolled-up sweater was eventually retired, but by then, it had already become a symbol—of pride, miscommunication, and the slow unraveling of what once promised to be a legendary partnership.
Looking back, it wasn’t one moment that broke them. It was a season’s worth of little things: words unsaid, looks exchanged, and the slow realization that they no longer saw the game—or each other—the same way.
