Combined with Thompson’s flashes of emotion and his players’ rough-and-tumble style of play, it wasn’t long before the words “Hoya Paranoia” came to epitomize the new era of basketball on the Hilltop campus.Georgetown lost the 1982 NCAA championship game when Fred Brown mistakenly passed the ball to North Carolina’s James Worthy in the game’s final seconds. I don’t take any pride in being the first Black coach in the Final Four. Over the next 27 years, he led Georgetown to 14 straight NCAA tournaments (1979-92), 24 consecutive postseason appearances (20 NCAA, 4 NIT), three Final Fours (1982, 1984, 1985) and won six Big East tournament championships.Employing a physical, defense-focused approach that frequently relied on a dominant center — Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo were among his other pupils — Thompson compiled a 596-239 record (.715 winning percentage).He had 26 players drafted by the NBA.One of his honors — his selection as coach of the U.S. team for the 1988 Olympics — had a sour ending when the Americans had to settle for the bronze medal.
Two years later, Ewing led an 84-75 win over Houston in the title game. He became a sports radio talk show host and a TV and radio game analyst, joining the very profession he had frustrated so often as a coach. I find the question extremely offensive.”Born Sept. 2, 1941, John R. Thompson Jr. grew up in Washington, D.C. His father was always working — on a farm in Maryland and later as a laborer in the city — and could neither read nor write.“I never in my life saw my father’s hands clean,” Thompson told The Associated Press in 2007. The family's statement did not provide any details of his death.Thompson, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999, became the first Black head coach to win the NCAA national title when he guided the Hoyas in 1984. Thompson coached several future NBA greats, including Allen Iverson, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo and Patrick Ewing, the 1985 national player of the year and the team's current head coach.In his 2016 Hall of Fame speech, Iverson credited Thompson for "saving my life" after giving him a scholarship when other elite schools rescinded their offers following Iverson's three felony convictions Thompson had most recently been a basketball analyst for Turner Sports and Westwood One. John Thompson was one of the giants of collegiate sports, basketball and the Black-empowerment movement. For the betterment of basketball, John Thompson didn’t coach with any soft spots. He’d come home and scrub his hands with this ugly brown soap that looked like tar. More than a coach, he was our foundation. “We are heartbroken to share the news of the passing of our father, John Thompson, Jr.," the family said in a statement. We will cherish forever his strength, courage, wisdom and boldness, as well as his unfailing love. It was a result so disappointing that Thompson put himself on a sort of self-imposed leave at Georgetown for a while, coaching practices and games but leaving many other duties to his assistants.Off the court, Thompson was both a role model and a lightning rod.
When I was still coaching, kids would show up late for practice and I’d (say) ... ‘My father got up every morning of his life at 5 a.m. to go to work. By . Thompson, who liked playing the slot machines in Las Vegas, reluctantly dropped the application after the university president objected.Centers Ewing, Mourning and Mutombo turned Georgetown into “Big Man U” under Thompson, although his last superstar was guard Allen Iverson, who in 1996 also became the first player under Thompson to leave school early for the NBA draft.“Thanks for Saving My Life Coach,” Iverson wrote at the start of an Instagram post Monday with photos of the pair.The Hoyas teams in the 1990s never came close to matching the achievements of the 1980s, and Thompson’s era came to a surprising and sudden end when he resigned in the middle of the 1998-99 season, citing distractions from a pending divorce.Thompson didn’t fade from the limelight.
He was a Black coach who recruited mostly Black players to a predominantly white Jesuit university in Washington, and Thompson never hesitated to speak out on behalf of his players.One of the most dramatic moments in Georgetown history came on Jan. 14, 1989, when he walked off the court to a standing ovation before the tipoff of a home game against Boston College, demonstrating in a most public way his displeasure against NCAA Proposition 42.The rule denied athletic scholarships to freshmen who didn’t meet certain requirements, and Thompson said it was biased against underprivileged students. Gaughan The younger Thompson, with “Pops” often watching from the stands or sitting in the back of the room for news conferences, returned the Hoyas to the Final Four in 2007. "We will miss him but are grounded in the assurance that we carry his faith and determination in us. He was moved to a segregated public school, had a growth spurt and became good enough at basketball to get into John Carroll, a Catholic high school, where he led the team to 55 consecutive victories and two city titles.He went to Providence College as one of the most touted basketball prospects in the country and led the Friars to the first NCAA bid in school history. Legendary Georgetown college basketball coach John Thompson has died, his family announced in a statement released by the school's athletic program Monday morning. A stickler for academics, he kept a deflated basketball on his desk, a reminder to his players that a degree was a necessity because a career in basketball relied on a tenuous “nine pounds of air.”The school boasted that 76 of 78 players who played four seasons under Thompson received their degrees. Opposition from Thompson, and others, led the NCAA to modify the rule.Thompson’s most daring move came that same year, when he summoned notorious drug kingpin Rayful Edmond III for a meeting in the coach’s office. He is revered as a historic shepherd of the sport, dedicated to the welfare of his community above all else,” the statement said.