John Thompson passes away

[admin]

John Thompson is the first person I think of when the Big East is mentioned. Some of us might choose Gavitt, or Rollie, maybe Boeheim or Calhoun, but I bet Big John is near the top of everyone’s list. Many people didn’t like his outspokenness particularly on race and societal issues, but he was a man with deep convictions and he wasn’t afraid to speak out for what he believed in.

A tremendous loss for Georgetown and the Big East community as a whole. Thoughts and prayers to all of those impacted by this tremendous loss.

[sju88grad]

I agree with everyones' posts.

Sorry, to hear this. I thought we'd have many more years with him like with Louie. Very proud that he was a Friar alum. Loved his teams, coaching, style, outspoken-ness, social commentary, and that he didn't put up with any BS from anyone even in retirement.

Really sad news. A true icon. RIP.

[DudeAnon]

Not old enough to have seen him coach but obviously know the amount of love and respect he commanded from his players. Seemed like a great man and may he rest in peace.

[sju88grad]

B01EB974-02F8-4C1A-85B0-BBBE71CC0A43.jpeg

My favorite John Thompson moment....

[stever20]

RIck Pitino tweet- https://twitter.com/RealPitino/status/1 ... 6909133828
RIP Big John. He gave so much to his players and Georgetown. His program defined hard work, perseverance, and loyalty. As the proud father of several Hoyas, he will be greatly missed by the whole Pitino family.

[GumbyDamnit!]

John Thompson is the first person I think of when the Big East is mentioned. Some of us might choose Gavitt, or Rollie, maybe Boeheim or Calhoun, but I bet Big John is near the top of everyone’s list. Many people didn’t like his outspokenness particularly on race and societal issues, but he was a man with deep convictions and he wasn’t afraid to speak out for what he believed in.

A tremendous loss for Georgetown and the Big East community as a whole. Thoughts and prayers to all of those impacted by this tremendous loss.

Amen. Couldn't agree more.

Hoya Paranoia was real. John Thompson was a physical and metaphorical mountain in the BE and all of college hoops. Fiercely loyal to his players JT built a team that would never back down and never apologize. No big deal today but back in the early 80's this trail-blaze mentality was not very well received by most. And John had to deal with some really bad behavior from fans on the road. The Hoyas did blur the line between competition and sportsmanship at times. Let's be honest...they played with an edge that sometimes revealed itself as chippy or dirty. He and his team used intimidation and physicality to impose their will on a game. To a generation of young black men and fans the Hoyas and JT were transcendent. 3 Championship appearances in 3 years. He battled perhaps the greatest UNC team ever with Jordan, Worthy and Perkins in '82 and had the ball with a chance to win at the end; they beat Houston and Olajuwon in '84; and then lost by 2 to a conference mate who played the perfect game and shot like 70% from the floor. Def BE Mt. Rushmore.

In retrospect the 3 point line changed the game and his style suffered as a result. Bully ball became extinct.

[kayako]

Admittedly we were fortunate that the shot clock wasn't introduced a season earlier.

Appreciate him so much more in hindsight... RIP

[MUBoxer]

Had no idea he went to Providence. Between him and Billy D PC really should've looked within their alumni ranks for coaches over the years...

[ArmyVet]

From the Washington Post's Tom Boswell:
https://live.washingtonpost.com/ask-bos ... Fstory-ans

Those who refuse to bend to the world as they find it usually end up in one of two ways. The world breaks them. Or, far less often, they bend the world to them. John Thompson bent the world and made it a bit better.

To understand Thompson, it helps to go back a long, long way with him. One Saturday morning almost 50 years ago, John, his two young sons, John III and Ronnie, and I sat in the living room of Father Raymond Kemp, a priest and lifelong D.C. activist for social change who was on the D.C. Board of Education.

John had just begun to coach Georgetown University, taking over a program that went 3-24 the year before he arrived. But he was not interested in discussing his own program, obscure at that time, or its long-shot prospects. He wanted to brain-storm, almost plot, you might say, with Kemp. Thompson wanted to know, at the granular level or as a leader, how he could help effect change.

At that time, Kemp was on the D.C. Board of Education and later worked with the 14th and U Coalition, D.C. Central Kitchen and, for 18 years was a white pastor for African-American congregations. I was reporting.

The talk at Kemp’s house that day was, painful to say, about many of the same issues of social injustice and systemic racism which are debated nationwide today.

How do you go from ideas, theory and good intentions to day-after-day impact on the lives of individuals and communities? How do you get whites –Kemp was a white pastor at African-American parishes for 18 years—to go beyond “not-being-racist,” to being part of solutions.

“Money,” Thompson would say. How do you get more of it to people who need it? How do you educate, and network, more successful Blacks so they continuously grow in economic influence? Thompson saw Black and White, but he’d say, “Don’t forget, the world is green.”

It is a basic misunderstanding to see Thompson first as a Hall of Fame basketball coach, though he loved his sport and, behind his tough-love façade, adored his teams. Before anything else, he saw himself, and truly was, a catalyst for change who used his national platform, to teach and “preach” social justice.

As a devout Catholic, he saw himself as just as flawed as the next fallen sinner, just as prone to pride or mistakes of judgment. A few times, winning battled with principle as the force which drove him. But I covered his whole career, as a beat writer or columnist, and I can count on my fingers the times that principle lost.

On this day of farewells, I’d like to return to what I wrote about Thompson on that happy day he was voted into the basketball Hall of Fame.

For 27 years as coach at Georgetown, “with his booming laugh and passionate opinions, Thompson was one of the most disagreeable people in this country. Agreement bored him. Debate invigorated him. Everything he disliked he discussed, with bouquets of exclamation points attached. In a sports arena awash in happy cliches, he left the easy compliments to others.

“A cheerful consensus on any issue -- especially one that involved race, class, money, education or basketball -- raised his suspicions. To quote P.G. Wodehouse, "If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

“Thompson's strength was not the freshness of his perspective or the depth of his insight, though he had both. What gave his positions power was his simple belief that college sports should live up to the code that the country claimed it lived by. Others asked. He demanded.

“What Thompson brought to his bully Hilltop pulpit was intense conviction and a street-wise, book-polished way of making his point with a sports anecdote that often hid a parable at its core. Even the deflated basketball in his office was a metaphor.”

A visit to that office in GU’s McDonough Gym was a graduate course in Big John. First, the door had no name. You thought it might be stairwell or storage closet. You’d nudge it open to peek inside. The first glimpse, in this place of dirty towels and socks, was a shock: an elegant, tastefully under-furnished room with Oriental lamps, Early American furniture, photomurals of Washington vistas and faint sky-blue walls and rugs.

“You sure didn’t think it looked like a coach’s office,” one Washington NBA star who’d gon to Duke told me. “This looks like a beautiful Southern home.”

That door also had no bell, no buzzer. So, you had to push it open. Just as it was open wide enough to enter, a tiny noise began above your head –Oriental butterfly chimes, the gentlest of alarms. Because it came a beat later than you’d expect, it made you feel like an interloper as a gong never could.

“Every player notices it the first time,” Thompson told me. “They even put one above the door of the training room, so I couldn’t sneak up on them.”

Some men are trivially suspicious. They suspect opponents of spying or stealing players. Other people, like Thompson, are profoundly suspicious. He loved a-tower idealism, animated by Catholic social conscience, mixed with a youth on the city’s tough streets and playgrounds.

The books on Thompson shelf were all chosen to make a point to players. And they showed the range of interests he expected of them or at least hoped they’d find in themselves “Power –How to Get It, How to Use It.” “Winning Through Intimidation.” “You Don’t Have to Be in Who’s Who to Know What’s What.” Machiavelli’s “Prince.”

Under the desk motto: “To Err Is Human. To Forgive Is Not My Policy,” you find “Your Mastery of English” and “Spell It Right” as well as “The New Etiquette.”

Then came the counterpoint: Harry Truman on how to make things work. Aesop’s Fables. James Thurber’s humor. “Quotations From Chairman Jesus.” “A Controversy of Poets.” “Ideas and Opinions of Albert Einstein.” An a little volume of Zen paradox: “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.”

Every one of those books had a common purpose –to help his players grow. The opposite side of that Thompson coined was that he believed his players needed time and space and less, rather than more celebrity if they were going to do that growing. We debated his view that his players should be interviewed as little as possible and never as freshmen. I could never get around his central point about defending the privacy of his players from constant inspection: “The intent is always good, but the harm is always real.”

This week, as America discusses serious issues, a serious man will be mourned, a wise man who also happened to be a national championship basketball coach. Thompson once told me that the center he’d played behind on the Celtics –the great Bill Russell—was also one of his life mentors.

“You should live a life with as few negatives as possible,” said Russell, “without acquiescing.”

In times of death and grief, as well as memories and posthumous praise, we often say of famous people, or friends that we knew well, “He will be missed.”

But with John Thompson’s passing, something truly will be lost.

[Xudash]

I agree with everyones' posts.

Sorry, to hear this. I thought we'd have many more years with him like with Louie. Very proud that he was a Friar alum. Loved his teams, coaching, style, outspoken-ness, social commentary, and that he didn't put up with any BS from anyone even in retirement.

Learn something new everyday: I had no idea he went to Providence College.

RIP, Coach Thompson. If anyone added to the legend and brand of the Big East, you did.