As the sports world mourns the loss of legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson. The hood mourns the loss of a hero respected in every burrow, every project and every ghetto across America. John Thompson was more than a hoop coach. He was the O.G. that young black men looked up to because he cared about his players like they were his own.
We’re all aware of his accomplishments as a coach because they have been well documented. He was the first black head coach to win a men’s D-1 basketball championship in 1984 when he led the Hoyas to the title. He became the winningest coach in Georgetown history with 596 wins. He led the Hoyas to 20 NCAA Tournament appearances and 3 Final Fours.
Big John was named Big East Coach of the Year 3-times and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He coached 26 future NBA Draft picks and including four Hall of Fame players: Alonzo Mourning, Allen Iverson, Dikembe Mutombo and Patrick Ewing.
All of those accolades are outstanding but what made John Thompson so great to the hood was that he was the coach that every kid in the ghetto had growing up. The coach that cared about them on and off of the court.
In the hood the head coach is your father or second father depending upon whether you were blessed to have one or not. He was your ride to and from practice (not physically but mentally). He was the guy you didn’t want to see if you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing. Most importantly, he was the guy that was going to have your back in your most vulnerable of times. He was down like four flat tires. That’s what coaches were in the hood.
Why? Because he understood more than any other coach at that time what he meant to be a black man in America. He was tough on his players demanding greatness and accountability out of them but he protected them and made sure they succeeded. The one stat that most people forget to highlight is the fact that 97 percent of his players stayed in school for four years and graduated. He was the O.G. that cared about their futures.
He was the guy that stood up for every black player in America when the NCAA passed Proposition 48 in 1986 that required a minimum score on the SAT for student-athletes to be eligible to play. We all know that those Standardized tests, especially the written portion of it, was culturally biased. That was simply a way to keep black players from getting into school and participating. John Thompson wasn’t having it and fought for them.
When Allen Iverson always says that Coach Thompson saved his life he isn’t playing. Big John gave A.I. a chance to play college basketball when the rest of the college basketball world turned its back on him. Without this man we would never have been blessed to see one of the greatest basketball players to ever live to play this game.
He gave him a chance because he understood his struggle and the struggles of every black kid in America because he was once one of them. That’s why in the early to mid 1980’s every kid in the ghetto was Georgetown crazy. Coach Thompson was every coach we had ever been introduced to as a child regardless of the sport and his team looked like us. We could identify with them and we loved them for that reason.
Coach Thompson was known for looking for the major drug dealers in the DC area to tell them to stay away from his players because he was responsible for them. He had promised his player’s families that he would take care of their children and he made good on that promise. They were more than just basketball players to him. They were his children and he cared about their best interests.
I wish our young players today would understand the importance of playing for a coach that really loves them and not for some of these cats that say they love them. However, their actions say something entirely different. If that were the case today Clemson wouldn’t have a football team. Well…they wouldn’t have a black player on it. Stop me when I start lyin’!