{"id":57283,"date":"2020-08-31T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T15:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/john-thompson-was-so-much-more-than-a-great-basketball-coach\/"},"modified":"2020-08-31T18:44:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T15:44:00","slug":"john-thompson-was-so-much-more-than-a-great-basketball-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/john-thompson-was-so-much-more-than-a-great-basketball-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"#John Thompson was so much more than a great basketball coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#John Thompson was so much more than a great basketball coach<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The final buzzer had gone off about 20 minutes earlier and John Thompson, sitting courtside at the Superdome, hadn\u2019t stopped giggling. He was sitting with one of his old coaching rivals and pals, Bill Raftery, and the two of them were giddy that another of their own, Jim Boeheim, had just joined the select club of national championship coaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know,\u201d Raftery kidded Thompson, in that impish way of his, \u201cif someone in 1982 had said you\u2019d one day be acting this way when Syracuse won the NCAA Tournament \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson roared.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe called me an SOB a thousand times,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cAnd I can promise you I called him much worse a thousand times more!\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a part of Thompson few ever got to see, or hear. For years, he helped cultivate a certain image about himself \u2013 aloof, sometimes angry, always protective of his own players and the challenges facing Black athletes \u2013 that at times brought him into conflict with other segments of society \u2013 opposing fans, sportswriters, critics, cynics.<\/p>\n

Once, years ago, with a small gathering of writers at Big East Media<\/a> Day, Thompson was asked if it wouldn\u2019t have just been easier to be a basketball coach, which is something he was very good at for a very long time, 596 victories in 28 years at Georgetown, the 1982 NCAA title, three Final Fours.<\/p>\n

Thompson smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d he said, \u201cbut people always ask my opinion. And the thing I\u2019ve always said: Don\u2019t ask me a question if you don\u2019t want to know my answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s death was announced Monday morning, two days before his 79th birthday, and it was a full, worthy life, one that brought him to Providence College in the 1960s under the great coach Joe Mullaney, one that brought him to the Celtics where he was Bill Russell\u2019s understudy for three years (and where he won three championships), and ultimately led him to St. Anthony High School in Washington before Georgetown hired him in 1972.<\/p>\n

The team he inherited went 3-23 the year before he arrived and had been to one NCAA Tournament. What he soon built was a regional power that slowly morphed into a national one, even before he lured the signature player of his career, Patrick Ewing, out of Cambridge, Mass., in 1981.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach didn\u2019t BS me,\u201d Ewing said a few years ago, inside the room he now occupies as head coach at Georgetown that he still refers to as \u201cCoach Thompson\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said if you want to drive fancy cars, not go to class, and waste your talent I can tell you where to go. I know who\u2019s recruiting you. Go to those places. But if you want to go to work, I can show you how. He made that promise to me, and he never went back on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson famously kept a deflated basketball in his office \u2013 as Ewing still does \u2013 a reminder that there is life after the shouting and the tumult. He was also famously protective of his players, sometimes sequestering them far out of town for NCAA game<\/a>s, which gave birth to \u201cHoya Paranoia.\u201d<\/p>\n

And his purview stretched beyond the locker room. He fought against Propositions 48 and 42, arguing standardized entrance tests were culturally biased, and walked off the floor before a game against Boston College in 1989. Later, he would discuss these things in greater depth as a radio host after leaving coaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the same old [jerk] I used to be,\u201d he told me the night Ewing\u2019s number was retired by the Knicks. \u201cI just have a microphone now instead of a whistle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/img>
John Thompson and Patrick Ewing after Georgetown won the 1984 NCAA title.<\/span>AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the people who knew Thompson best loved him unerringly \u2013 his players, yes, but also the men with whom he helped forge the Big East. Lou Carnesecca never forgot the smile on Thompson\u2019s face that matched the fake sweater he wore the night at the Garden when St. John\u2019s and Georgetown, No. 1 and No. 2, met in 1985.<\/p>\n

Thompson spent years advocating for Rollie Massimino to join him in Springfield, Mass., at the Basketball Hall of Fame; it was Massimino\u2019s Villanova Wildcats who handed Thompson his most bitter loss, in the \u201985 NCAA Final.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s the greatest upset of all time, and it is,\u201d Thompson said, \u201cthen why isn\u2019t my old friend in the same hall where I\u2019m at?\u201d<\/p>\n

And that brings us back to courtside at the Superdome. Back in 1980, Georgetown won the last game ever played at Syracuse\u2019s old gym, ending a 57-game winning streak and had thundered afterward, \u201cMANLEY FIELD HOUSE IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED!\u201d Nobody embodied the passions of the vintage Big East like Syracuse and Georgetown, Boeheim and Thompson.<\/p>\n

Now, freshly crowned a champion, Boeheim sought out Thompson, the two men hugged, and it looked like Thompson might actually asphyxiate Boeheim he held him so tight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have great players,\u201d Boeheim said through tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a great coach,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s so,\u201d Little Jim said, smiling at Big John, \u201cI had some great role models.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

If you want to read more Sports News<\/a> articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#John Thompson was so much more than a great basketball coach” The final buzzer had gone off about 20 minutes earlier and John Thompson, sitting courtside at the Superdome, hadn\u2019t stopped giggling. He was sitting with one of his old coaching rivals and pals, Bill Raftery, and the two of them were giddy that another…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61636],"class_list":["post-57283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-john-thompson-was-so-much-more-than-a-great-basketball-coach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}