He emphasized strong defensive play as well.“Georgetown University, the sport of basketball and the world has lost someone who I consider to be a father figure, confidant and role model,” Ewing, the Knick Hall of Famer, who will be entering his fourth season as Georgetown’s head coach this fall, said in a statement. John Thompson Jr., Legendary Georgetown Basketball Coach, Dies At 78 The Hall of Famer led the Georgetown men's team to 24 consecutive postseason appearances. Faculty and students rallied around him after a bedsheet with racist words was hung inside the school’s gym before a game during the 1974-75 season.Thompson sheltered his players with closed practices, tightly controlled media access and a prohibition on interviews with freshmen in their first semester — a restriction that still stands for Georgetown’s basketball team. tournament, losing in the first round in 1943.A burly 6 feet 10 inches tall, Thompson, who starred for Providence College before backing up Bill Russell at center on two Boston Celtic N.B.A. One of his sons, John Thompson III, was hired as Georgetown’s coach in 2004. John Thompson took over a moribund Georgetown program in the 1970s and turned it into a powerhouse that won a national title in 1984.WASHINGTON — John Thompson, the imposing Hall of Famer who turned Georgetown into a “Hoya Paranoia” powerhouse and became the first Black coach to lead a team to the NCAA men’s basketball championship, has died. He graduated in 1964 and played two seasons with Red Auerbach’s Celtics, earning a pair of championship rings as a sparingly used backup to Bill Russell.One of the most celebrated and polarizing figures in his sport, he took over a moribund Georgetown program in the 1970s and molded it in his unique style into a perennial contender, culminating with a national championship team anchored by center Patrick Ewing in 1984.John Thompson and Patrick Ewing celebrate the 1984 NCAA title and their win over Houston in Seattle.Georgetown reached two other title games with Thompson in charge and Ewing patrolling the paint, losing to Michael Jordan’s North Carolina team in 1982 and to Villanova in 1985.At 6 feet 10 inches, with an ever-present white towel slung over his shoulder, Thompson literally and figuratively towered over the Hoyas for decades, becoming a patriarch of sorts after he quit coaching in 1999.One of his sons, John Thompson III, was hired as Georgetown’s coach in 2004. I don’t take any pride in being the first Black coach in the Final Four. I thought that was the color of his hands. to modify it.Thompson kept a deflated basketball in his office to help his players realize that they need to prepare themselves for life after their athletic careers. Later that year, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.He was a basketball commentator on television and radio after that. He was fired in 2017 and succeeded by Ewing.In addition to his son John, Thompson’s survivors include another son, Ronny, a former assistant at Georgetown and head coach at Ball State University in Indiana, and a daughter, Tiffany Thompson. 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.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.
tournament appearance. 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. He was 78.His death was announced in a family statement released by Georgetown Monday. “Never.
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.Another son, Ronny Thompson, was head coach for one season at Ball State and is now a TV analyst. In 2000 he established the John Thompson Charitable Foundation, which awards grants to organizations that enhance children’s lives.John Thompson III, hired as Georgetown’s head coach before the 2004-5 season, reached the N.C.A.A. tournament’s Final Four in 1982 (a national championship was still two years in his future), he was asked about his feelings concerning that achievement at a news conference.“I resent the hell out of that question if it implies I am the first Black coach competent enough to take a team to the Final Four,” The A.P. tournament’s Final Four in his first season, but his teams never made it beyond the first round afterward. 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. The first Black coach to lead a team to the N.C.A.A. “Other Blacks have been denied the right in this country; coaches who have the ability.
championship in 1984. He never shied away from sensitive topics — particularly the role of race in both sports and society — and he once famously walked off the court before a game to protest an NCAA rule because he felt it hurt minority athletes.“I’ll probably be remembered for all the things that kept me out of the Hall of Fame, ironically, more than for the things that got me into it,” Thompson said on the day he was elected to the Hall in 1999.John Thompson was inducted in to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.Thompson became coach of the Hoyas in 1972 and began remaking a team that was 3-23 the previous season.