Tag: john thompson

“He put his arms around me, and he knew …

“He put his arms around me, and he knew how I grew up, that I was a kid from his area, and had gotten into coaching, and he told me stuff that I knew he wasn’t telling everybody,” Williams said. “It was like talking to some figure from the Bible who I wanted to meet. Around there, a lot of people called him Big John, but I could never bring myself to do that. I always called him Coach Thompson. “I just knew that I didn’t have his kind of backbone, and I wish I did. He was like Moses to me.”

“You had to come from Maryland and D.C. …

“You had to come from Maryland and D.C. and Prince George’s County to know what Coach Thompson meant to us,” Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams finally said on the phone Monday. “I played in his gym one summer, and he cussed me out because I wasn’t doing something right, and man, it was an honor. Patrick [Ewing] and Alonzo [Mourning] were there playing pickup, and I felt for a moment like I was part of their family, because Coach didn’t talk to everyone like that. … He looked like my granddad, and every time I saw him …” The words dissolved into tears. Finally, Williams found five that explained why Thompson meant so much to him — meant so much to so many — and always will. “He stood up for us.”

“I wouldn’t be here without John …

“I wouldn’t be here without John Thompson,” Williams, a Notre Dame graduate, said on Monday morning. “He was a hero for us. We had our parents, and we had Len Bias, and Len died. And then we had John Thompson. “He was the first, along with Coach [John] Chaney, who stood up and said, ‘That’s wrong.’ They were offended when people tried to put them into a different class, and it gave me confidence to not put up with stuff that I knew was wrong. He taught Black kids to believe that they were valuable, and the athletes among us then knew that he was talking about us too.”

Several years ago, Williams had …

Several years ago, Williams had completed a nine-year NBA playing career, delivered New Orleans to the playoffs as a head coach, and found himself at Georgetown on a scouting assignment for the San Antonio Spurs. The old coach was long retired, but still sat on the court in a chair and watched his son, John Thompson III, conduct Hoyas practices. “He put his arms around me, and he knew how I grew up, that I was a kid from his area, and had gotten into coaching, and he told me stuff that I knew he wasn’t telling everybody,” Williams said. “It was like talking to some figure from the Bible who I wanted to meet. Around there, a lot of people called him Big John, but I could never bring myself to do that. I always called him Coach Thompson. I just knew that I didn’t have his kind of backbone, and I wish I did. He was like Moses to me.”

Patrick Ewing: Georgetown University, …