By Ken Davis
Hall of Fame basketball coach John Thompson Jr. was many things to many people. He was never just about basketball. If you thought that about the man, you were missing the big picture.
Thompson was a coach, a teacher, a counselor, a man of convictions and principle, extremely intelligent, extremely large, secretive and intimidating. He might rough you up one minute and then laugh with you the next. Thompson was protective of his players, never made it easy for reporters to cover the Georgetown Hoyas, and really didn’t give a crap what you thought of him.
Beyond all that, he was way ahead of his time. Just look at how our country continues to struggle with systemic racism. Thompson was battling that problem many, many years ago – when others tried to look the other way.
“I know I’m not perfect,” Thompson once told me in an interview, “but I resent the hell out of it. We’re striving for perfection. That’s what keeps us going in life. I don’t know if you ever reach it. But when you stop reaching for it, it stops our purpose. This doesn’t just pertain to basketball.”
After years of coaching and cultivating the role of a villain, he stepped away from the bench and became a sports talk show host and a game analyst on TV and radio. He loosened up. He showed a lighter side that wasn’t revealed publicly when he was winning so many games, including the 1984 NCAA championship. But he never dismissed his strongest beliefs. If he decided to confront an issue, he did it with his characteristic combative style.
In 40 years of covering sports, Thompson may have been the most intriguing, most complex personality I ever met. I cannot remember an interview with Thompson when I didn’t walk away better educated, with a deeper understanding of the man or the game of basketball. That is truly unique.
Thompson passed away on Monday, two days shy of his 79th birthday. The loss is devastating for everyone in college basketball. But we should celebrate what he accomplished and every tough stand he took during his career.
“He was one of a kind,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, Thompson’s greatest rival in the Big East, said Monday. “There aren’t that many. He brought a presence to the game that nobody does, has He was a great coach, but he was also a role model for a lot of coaches . . white coaches and Black coaches.”
I spent most of my newspaper years covering the Big East, so I was lucky to cross paths with Thompson often. While working in Binghamton, N.Y., and covering nearby Syracuse, I made my first trip to Hartford in 1982 for the Big East Conference tournament. The Hoyas beat Villanova in the championship game and Eric “Sleepy” Floyd was tournament MVP. This was during the rise of “Hoya Paranoia” when Thompson’s heavy hands protected big man Patrick Ewing. That stole the show.
I was working in Baltimore when the Hoyas went to the Final Four in 1984 and 1985. I was on the Maryland beat but covered several Georgetown games because Hoya stars David Wingate and Reggie Williams were produced by Baltimore’s Dunbar High School. I covered my first Final Four in 1985 when the Big East rocked the world by sending Georgetown, Villanova and St. John’s to the season’s final weekend. Villanova’s upset victory over Georgetown in the championship game changed the way I viewed the college game and created great passion for the NCAA’s biggest event. I didn’t miss another Final Four until 2019.
I covered many of the great Georgetown-Syracuse games during the regular season and the Big East tournament. It was great theatre. Working at The Hartford Courant, I witnessed the great battles between UConn and Georgetown. Thompson vs. Jim Calhoun. Alonzo Mourning and Nadav Henefeld. Ray Allen vs. Allen Iverson.
When Thompson was named coach of the 1988 U.S Olympic team in 1988, I was assigned a feature and told it should result in the “definitive article” on the man. Despite his friends’ efforts not to reveal much, the article turned out well. I wouldn’t describe it as “definitive.” That was probably an impossible task.
I asked the late North Carolina coach Dean Smith about Thompson’s formative years. “That’s something i choose not to share,” Smith said. “I’d rather talk about him as a coach and a leader.”
Thompson stage an historic boycott of NCAA academic eligibility rules, showing his displeasure over Proposition 42 and Proposition 48 by walking away from a game against Boston College. When the Hoyas played their next game at Providence, Thompson never came to the bench. I was there. Never had there been a greater visual in college hoops than Thompson’s empty chair – draped with his big white towel. It was so powerful.
When Thompson retired in the midst of the 1999 season, the Courant dispatched me to the Georgetown campus to cover the press conference. When Thompson was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame later that same year, I was asked to write his feature for the official program. In Springfield, Mass., Big John told me he was very pleased with the article. That was an honor you never forget.
If you wanted a phone interview with Thompson, you submitted it to sports information director Bill Shapland. It was a game of chance. You never knew if the request would be granted. If it was, you never knew what time of day the call might come. One time the phone rang and Thompson identified himself. “I hope you don’t mind, I’m in the car on the way to getting my hair cut.” I told him I always appreciated his calls, regardless of what he was doing. He gave me one of his deep, baritone laughs and he proceeded through the D.C traffic while I began my line of questioning.
In 2004, John Thompson III became Georgetown’s coach. JT III took the Hoyas back to the Final Four in 2007. Any time I saw JT III, whether during his time as coach or since he became a TV analyst, I always asked how his dad was doing. “Pops is doing great,” he would say. Then I would tell him to pass along my greetings to Big John. And whenever I saw “Pops” along press row, getting ready to call a game, I would walk over to say hello. Big John always gave me a handshake, sometimes put his arm around my shoulder, and occasionally gave me one of his big bear hugs.
I’ve decided the best way to honor Thompson is with his own words. I’ve selected sone of the best quotes from interviews with Thompson, as well as some comments from others who knew him well
Thompson was the first Black coach to win the NCAA in 1984. Before that, in 1982, he was asked about becoming the first Black coach to reach the Final Four. He gave an answer for the ages, accusing the questioner of suffering from “historical amnesia.” Thompson said he didn’t take any honor or dignity from being the first Black anything.
Let’s start there.
Thompson was asked about his response for my Hall of Fame feature:
“I think it was misunderstood,” Thompson said. “It was even portrayed as an angry response. The way the young man asked the question implied that I was the first [Black] with the ability to win a championship. I am happy and proud to be an African American. But if the statement implied that I am the only with the ability then that’s wrong. There were several people before me who deserved to have a chance and did not get that chance.”
On making the Hall of Fame:
“I’m not sure exactly why [it means so much to me.] It is the period that ends all sentences. It’s something that take a lot of time and a lot work. There are a lot of people I’ve always admired and respected who are the Hall. I took some positions on unpopular things and I always wondered if I ever would be admitted. I’m not always the most popular person. But if I had been worried about the popular vote, I probably would have been a politician.”
On his success:
“Winning was extremely important.But how you define success extends much further than the competition. Success should be used solely on whether you won or didn’t win. I just believed there were a lot of other things that were more important.”
Thompson liked to say that he devoted 30 percent of his typical workday to basketball. The rest of the time he was a counselor or a teacher or a parent:
“And at other time, I had to take the role of a villain.”
“At certain times I’m certain I am bad. I think at times I probably do want to be
“I feel confident that I don’t have to open up and let people see.”
On doing things his way:
“You can spend a lifetime trying to explain and get people to understand why you do things.But then you get away from teaching. I don’t play the game of trying to expose myself to people. You’ve got to put on so many faces and so many acts. There is a show business aspect [to coaching]. You try to keep enough out so you can salvage the real aspect of coaching and that’s the teaching that you get in it for.”
“It’s very easy when you’re in the public eye to be projected and portrayed as being a saint a racist, a thug, a Christian – anything somebody wants to portray you as. If I walk down the street and someone is hungry and I take then into a McDonald’s and buy them a sandwich, that doesn’t mean I’m John The Baptist. How do you ever give an explanation for yourself that’s lasting? I don’t think that happens. A few people, because of a lack of accessibility have attempted to make themselves authorities on how Georgetown functions or how John Thompson thinks. I don’t know many people who are qualified in doing that.”
Thompson struggled in Catholic grammar school. A cuunselor told his mother that John was uneducable. She was told to hide him and keep him out of the way:
“As we walked home, my mother talked to me about it. I was loved. We weren’t rich people but I was not without love from my mother or father ever. My mother always instilled confidence. She encouraged you to believe in yourself. She never dealt with me as if I was unable to learn. That would have destroyed me.”
The late Dave Gavitt, Thompson’s friend from their days at Providence College, went on to form the Big East and was the conference’s long-time commissioner:
“John was an imposing presence with his size. And he was on the very cutting edge of the minority coaches. He felt strongly about some things. I always respected him, that he was willing to take the heat that went with unpopular stances. I didn’t 100 percent always agree with where he was coming from, but I always 100 percent respected his right to feel strongly.”
Patrick Ewing, perhaps the greatest player in Big East history:
“When I was in school, he was a coach and a father figure. But now we’ve developed a great friendship. If there was anything I ever needed he was always there. And vice versa.”
Longtime friend Julius Wyatt, Number Two Boys Club on Elm Street in the Northwest section of Washington, D.C. Wyatt first met Thompson when he was a teenager:
“Some people say that he’s a racist or this or that. All I know is he is a man about helping people – kids or adults. I know that. He made up his mind years ago to help people who are in different situations.”
Richard Lapchick, Center for Sports and Society at Northeastern University, talking about Thompson’s ability to take a powerful stance:
“I don’t think there is another coach in the country who could have taken the stand he did on Proposition 42. He was powerful enough that he couldn’t get fired and he raised an issue that a lot of white coaches supported him on He was a lightning rod.”
Allen Iverson’s Instagram post on Monday:
“Thanks for Saving My Life Coach.”
Lightning rod. Life saver. Great coach. Great man. One of a kind. A true giant in sports history.
John Thompson’s contribution to basketball should never be forgotten.
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