NCAA Basketball: The ulimate legacy of head coach John Thompson Jr.
The passing of legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson isn’t just noteworthy from the confines of NCAA Basketball. He was a standard-bearer for social justice and African-American excellence during a period when many needed it the most.
I’m a native Washingtonian, born and raised. I grew up during the 1980s and did so watching a local NCAA Basketball scene that was, for lack of a better word, in turmoil. Lenny Bias, another legend that exemplified hoops excellence and was a DMV icon, passed away under tragic and dubious circumstances.
The one concrete, visible constant during my young years of basketball fandom in DC, was Georgetown. Whether it was McDonough Arena or the old Capital Center in Landover Maryland, going out to catch a Hoyas basketball game was an event. It was a source of pride. As I got older (and after Coach Thompson retired from coaching), I got the chance to actually see the scope of John Thompson’s impact on the game.
More importantly, I started to see his impact on my generation of kids outside of the confines of a basketball court. He was a homegrown giant in stature and unapologetic in his blackness, despite his position as one of the best basketball coaches on the planet. We loved him for it. Many people outside of that circle didn’t, but he was both feared and respected by everybody, whether you were a Hoya fan or not.
“He was a winner. He was a living hero.”@realgranthill33 honors the late John Thompson. pic.twitter.com/q1imh434c8
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) September 1, 2020
The first thing that immediately comes to mind when you talk about Coach John Thompson is undoubtedly the Big East. When he took over a non-descript Georgetown Hoya program in 1972, it wasn’t even a blip on the nation’s college basketball radar.
By the time the original Big East conference was founded in 1979, Thompson had the Hoya program primed to be a contender in that new landscape. Of course, he went on to break records and record a number of firsts as one of the few African-American coaching presences at the NCAA D1 level of the sport.
Beyond that, his teams did everything from force real conversations on race and equality to imprint the Hoya mystique onto the very fabric of pop culture at the time. Let’s take a closer look at how the man they called “Big John” left his indelible mark on both the NCAA Basketball landscape and the conscience of America in general.