John Thompson Jr.'s death brings back many memories of my dealings with him as a reporter
The legendary Georgetown coach was a challenge for many in the media, but he provided me and others with invaluable lessons for growing in our profession
The essence of what John Thompson Jr. meant to college basketball was summed up during an induction speech at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It didn’t come from Thompson or anyone else talking about him when the former Georgetown coach was selected in 2006.
No, it was delivered by Lefty Driesell when he made it to Springfield two years ago this week after three failed attempts. Helped by the private prodding by Thompson to Jerry Colangelo and others on the selection committee, the former Maryland coach finally got the recognition he richly deserved.
You might remember Lefty’s 15-minute speech for its down-home humor and self-deprecating one-liners. Yet there was one sentence by Driesell at the end of a stream of consciousness reference to Thompson that seems most appropriate today, with the announcement by the legendary coach’s family that he had passed away at age 78.
“I used to be a hero around D.C, ‘till he came,” Driesell said, looking at Thompson. “He took little old Georgetown, who we used to beat easy and I quit playing him. He has done more for basketball than anyone in the country. He made Georgetown. Most of y’all never heard of Georgetown until he got there.”
That can be said about only a handful of college basketball coaches, but Thompson should be near or at the top of a short list.
Many Maryland fans would say that about Driesell himself, but as much as he put the Terps on the national stage shortly after arriving in 1969, Bud Millikan had coached Maryland to an ACC tournament title a little over a decade earlier. Starting in 1950, Millikan had his share of other good teams during an 18-year tenure that ended two years before Lefty even got to College Park.
After reaching the championship game of the then five-year-old, eight-team NCAA tournament in 1943 and playing in a couple of NITs, Georgetown didn’t get back onto college basketball’s radar until Thompson, a former high school star and successful high school coach in D.C. after playing two years for the Boston Celtics as Bill Russell’s backup, was hired in 1972.
During a six-game losing streak that season, frustrated Georgetown fans not knowing much about Thompson or his philosophies hung a banner saying, ‘Thompson the [racial epithet] flop must go.” Two years later, he would take the Hoyas to the NCAA tournament for the first of 20 trips, including 14 straight years in one stretch.
I met Thompson for the first time when Georgetown played in the ECAC Holiday Festival in New York in 1977 and I was working for the New York Post. As I switched papers and eventually reached Baltimore, I got to know him fairly well while the program’s stature grew from a regional power to one of the most successful - and feared - in the country. I witnessed some of its most landmark games.
I was in Philadelphia when Georgetown beat Maryland in the 1980 East Regional Sweet 16 before losing to Iowa - coached by Lute Olson, who passed away over the weekend - in the Elite Eight.
I was in New Orleans when the Hoyas lost to North Carolina in the 1982 Final Four in a championship game that provided Dean Smith with his first title and launched Michael Jordan’s legendary career after the then relatively unknown Tar Heel freshman hit the go-ahead jump shot in the waning seconds.
I was in Seattle two years later when Georgetown beat Houston and Thompson became the first Black coach to win an NCAA title. A year after that, I was in Lexington, Ky. when the Hoyas were upset by Villanova in a shocking final at Rupp Arena in what many thought derailed the sport’s next dynasty.
For nearly 20 years, I was there for countless other games involving Thompson and the Hoyas.
I can recall the first Big East tournament in Providence in 1980 when Thompson challenged reporters by telling us that if we could find where the Hoyas were practicing, we could watch them and he would talk to us afterwards. A handful of reporters chased them down to a place called Goat Island.
Thompson smiled and opened the tiny gym’s doors.
I can also recall the night Thompson came out for a regular season game against St. John’s at Madison Square Garden in 1985. I had just started my job at the Baltimore Sun, but was still living in New York. The Redmen, as they were then called, were ranked No. 1 and the Hoyas No. 2.
That’s the night Thompson went to shake hands with Lou Carnesecca before the game and revealed to the St. John’s coach and the Garden crowd that he was wearing a replica of one of Looie’s famously ugly sweaters under his own suit jacket. It was part of Thompson’s ploy to disarm Carnesecca and momentarily distract Looie’s team.
And it worked.
It’s been written before and again today that the arrival of Patrick Ewing at Georgetown in 1981 made the Big East what it became. You can make the argument that other stars such as Chris Mullin at St. John’s, Ed Pinkney at Villanova and Pearl Washington at Syracuse played their part.
The outsize personalities of the coaches certainly factored in, from Carnesecca to Jim Boeheim at Syracuse to Rollie Massimino at Villanova to a group of young, up-and-comers such as Rick Pitino at Providence, Gary Williams at Boston College and Jim Calhoun at Connecticut.
But Thompson, the ultimate antagonist, was the perfect anti-hero for commissioner Dave Gavitt’s fledgling league that first got national attention because of its propensity for on-court fights, many involving the Hoyas. Thompson and his team intimidated many, including the reporters covering them.
I remember a conversation I had with Thompson at the 1984 Final Four. It came after I had written a story about what “Hoya Paranoia” - a term that one reporter coined as the reason for the lack of media access to Thompson’s teams - looked like from the inside.
Since I couldn’t talk to any of Thompson’s current players about it, I reached out to talk with those who had been a part of it in the past. When I asked to get Thompson on the phone, I was told that I could tape questions that would be relayed to the coach. A few days later, I got taped answers, each of which began, “Well, Don….”
In Seattle, I pulled Thompson aside and told him that he didn’t need reporters who actually liked sparring with him to join the long list of those in my profession who despised him. One of my esteemed colleagues in the business ended his column on Thompson during the 1984 Final Four by writing, “He contaminates.”
Thompson smiled at my opinion.
“Well, Don,” he said. “I wore the white hat a few years ago, and now I wear the black hat. I’ll wear the white hat again.”
Thompson and I had a falling out right after that Final Four. It came because I wrote a column criticizing him after two of the stars in the title game win, Reggie Williams and Michael Graham, stumbled badly through a post-game interview on national television.
It was not a good look for what Thompson was trying to do at Georgetown and I blamed him and his policy of not allowing freshmen such as Williams and Graham to talk to the media for the players appearing unable to put a cohesive sentence together. A few months later, he called me.
“That was a lot of BULLSHIT, Don,” he said, his deep and recognizable voice bellowing at the other end of the phone and punctuating the expletive.
But he listened to what I had to say and by the end of what began as a mostly one-sided conversation, our relationship was intact enough for it to continue.
Thompson did soften over the years. After he resigned from Georgetown in 1999, during the middle of the season, my dealings with Thompson became less frequent, but certainly more friendly. When he started doing a radio sports talk show in Washington, he often invited me on as a guest.
I would see him sitting courtside at Wizards games or during the NCAA tournament in his role as a radio analyst. He would always pull me toward him and give a warm bear hug.
Whenever anybody asked me what my favorite story was about dealing with Thompson, I always told the same anecdote. I recalled asking a question to him after a down-to-the-wire loss to St. John’s at USAir Arena in the late 1980s, part of a string of consecutive homecourt defeats to Carnesecca’s team.
Knowing how to get a good answer out of him, I purposely asked a dumb and leading question.
“Hey John, does Looie have some sort of hex over you at home?” I asked.
“Don, I’m not a fucking fortune teller,” he said. “I’m just a basketball coach.”
He was, and a great one at that.
He was also a lot more and I will miss him.