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OT/ RIP John Thompson

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He'll always be an OG for how he handled Rayful Edmund. If you dont know who that is, he was a notorious drug dealer in the 80s who was cool w Alonzo Mourning and other Georgetown players. Think Avon Barksdale, but real.

Big John pulled his card and checked him and told him to stay tf away from his players. Maybe for the first time in history, the drug dealer actually stood down.
 
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He was a great coach and a leader of men.

IMO, John Thompson set the standard on how to bring a bunch of inner-city kids , many of whom were lightly recruited by traditional basketball schools, into a small, private, predominantly white academic institution and create a basketball powerhouse. He ran a tight ship and with very few exceptions, made sure those kids got an education in addition to playing basketball. The strength of all his teams was his lockdown defense.

John Thompson coached some great talent and managed diverse personalities: Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Allen Iverson, Dkembe Matumbo, Michael Graham, Eric "Sleepy" Floyd to name a few...

I feel fortunate to have been a student during the early days of "Hoya Paranoia" - John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca, (St. Johns) Jim Boeheim (Syracuse) and Rollie Massimino (Villanova) made Big East basketball exciting and relevant.

I was at Syracuse for the last game in Manley Field House , when GTown upset Syracuse 52-50 and John Thompson declared "Manley Field House is Officially Closed" and at the infamous UNC-Georgetown National Championship game in 1982, when Freddie Brown made the errant pass and Michael Jordan had his coming out party,..

Good years...
 
Hoyacane1620 said:
He was a great coach and a leader of men.

IMO, John Thompson set the standard on how to bring a bunch of inner-city kids , many of whom were lightly recruited by traditional basketball schools, into a small, private, predominantly white academic institution and create a basketball powerhouse. He ran a tight ship and with very few exceptions, made sure those kids got an education in addition to playing basketball. The strength of all his teams was his lockdown defense.

John Thompson coached some great talent and managed diverse personalities: Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Allen Iverson, Dkembe Matumbo, Michael Graham, Eric "Sleepy" Floyd to name a few...

I feel fortunate to have been a student during the early days of "Hoya Paranoia" - John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca, (St. Johns) Jim Boeheim (Syracuse) and Rollie Massimino (Villanova) made Big East basketball exciting and relevant.

I was at Syracuse for the last game in Manley Field House , when GTown upset Syracuse 52-50 and John Thompson declared "Manley Field House is Officially Closed" and at the infamous UNC-Georgetown National Championship game in 1982, when Freddie Brown made the errant pass and Michael Jordan had his coming out party,..

Good years...
Click to expand...
I still want to Yoke Freddies *** out for that...
 
supersaiyanshel said:
He'll always be an OG for how he handled Rayful Edmund. If you dont know who that is, he was a notorious drug dealer in the 80s who was cool w Alonzo Mourning and other Georgetown players. Think Avon Barksdale, but real.

Big John pulled his card and checked him and told him to stay tf away from his players. Maybe for the first time in history, the drug dealer actually stood down.
Click to expand...
JWill just talked about that.
 
supersaiyanshel said:
He'll always be an OG for how he handled Rayful Edmund. If you dont know who that is, he was a notorious drug dealer in the 80s who was cool w Alonzo Mourning and other Georgetown players. Think Avon Barksdale, but real.

Big John pulled his card and checked him and told him to stay tf away from his players. Maybe for the first time in history, the drug dealer actually stood down.
Click to expand...
Not sure too many other coaches could have had that kind of sway.
 
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I know there are many on this board who were barely born when John Thompson and the Hoyas were in their prime. Let me tell you that not only did Thompson have to manage his guys as a basketball team and get them through the academics at Gtown, but he had to guide them through some blatant and very public racism. Particularly Patrick Ewing.

Ewing emigrated to Boston from Jamaica during his high school years. He was a shy, introverted kid who was bigger than everyone else. He faced some language and some academic hurdles from the beginning. When he came to Gtown, he was assigned a "handler" - a good friend of mine who was a student manager on the team and who essentially accompanied him everywhere. Ewing lived in an apartment on campus with this "handler" and some upperclassmen during his freshmen year. He stood out everywhere he went.

Opposing fans would shout horrible racist epithets at Ewing at every game. They would mock him with signs claiming he couldn't read or that he "ate bananas". He was called "Ape" all the time. Those were some of the more mild ones.. This happened at schools like Villanova, Providence College, etc. Good catholic schools.. Imagine that happening now????????

Thompson taught his guys how to handle this kind of stuff and channel their energies to the court. He taught them how to handle life.


And because I'm feeling nostalgic today, my wife and I met at Gtown. She, too, is a sports nut and made many of the same road-trips I did for Gtown basketball. She personally knew a bunch of the players, including Patrick Ewing. Ewing lived next door to her our senior year. Most people don't know that he was more of a 'gentle giant' than he looked on the court. He spent many of his off hours sitting outside in the courtyard near their apartments, headphones on, drawing or sketching. For the most part, students left him alone but when he was approached, he was very friendly.
 
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