Analysis : Thompson’s Game Off the Court: Intimidation

Nearly seven years ago, John Thompson stood at the front of a room full of reporters in the Louisiana Superdome. His Georgetown basketball team was in its first Final Four, and Thompson was a reluctant part of history.

“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,” he said, his electronically amplified voice booming like thunder in a rain barrel.

“Other blacks have been denied the right in this country, coaches who have the ability. I don’t take any pride in being the first black coach in the Final Four. I find the question extremely offensive.”

The room fell silent. Thompson stood, 6-foot-10 and about 300 pounds, glowering over the room. In a startling moment, many had their introduction to John Thompson.

He had made himself understood without a doubt, yet, he is not a well understood man. Thompson has been called everything from an enigma to a complex amalgam of emotions, from St. John to the devil’s advocate and worse.

It seems, though, he doesn’t much care what people think.

“I don’t spend a lot of time being concerned about how people perceive me,” he said. “If I did, I’d be running for political office.”

Frequently in the news because of his basketball team, which has won 154 games in the past five years, including a national championship in 1984, Thompson is making headlines again with his loud protest of NCAA Proposition 42.

The rule denies athletic scholarships to college freshmen who don’t meet NCAA eligibility requirements, including minimum scores on entrance exams that Thompson says are biased against underprivileged students, both black and white.

Thompson said he had “a moral obligation” to take a stand, and walked off the court just before the tipoff of Georgetown’s home game against Boston College last Saturday.

“It’s what I believe in. It’s what I coach for. It’s what I teach for,” he said.

Many of his peers stand behind him. Others hint he’s chasing windmills. It doesn’t matter. If Thompson believes it, he does something about it.

Years ago, he told a reporter: “I know I’m not perfect, and as I’ve gotten older, I suppose I’ve come to accept the fact that life isn’t perfect and players are not perfect. I realize all this, but I resent the hell out of it.”

While Thompson seems to have his share of resentment, he’s not all hell’s fire and brimstone. He can be intimidating, sure. He can also be charming.

Perhaps one of the most telling remarks Thompson ever made about himself came out of a discussion he had more than 17 years ago with North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith. Thompson sought Smith’s advice in getting his own college coaching career started, and Smith obliged.

Later, Thompson said: “The most meaningful gift a man can give another man is his knowledge.”

Thompson grew up in Washington, in an atmosphere that promised little by way of knowledge.

His father could neither read nor write. Barely able to see without glasses, Thompson couldn’t read very well himself as he labored in Catholic grammar school.

Thompson’s mother once took him to a professional educator for evaluation, and the educator said: “This boy isn’t educable.”

Some of his teachers thought he was retarded and, after the fifth grade, the nuns at school found Thompson so intractable, they asked him to leave. He entered a segregated public school and got interested in basketball.

His basketball skills improved so dramatically that John Carroll High School asked him to return to the Catholic school system. He led John Carroll to 55 consecutive victories and two city championships, earning high school All-America honors and a free ride to Providence College.

He graduated from Providence in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Later, he got a master’s in guidance and counseling from the University of the District of Columbia.

He entered college as one of the most touted basketball prospects in the country, and he averaged 32.5 points on the freshman team. For the varsity squad next year, though, he averaged 12.4, and he learned something about overblown expectations.

That’s one of the reasons he shelters his players now -- keeps them in out-of-the-way motels during tournaments, holds closed workouts, and won’t allow interviews with freshmen until their second semester.

Early in Thompson’s tenure, the Rev. Edward Glynn, Georgetown’s faculty representative to the NCAA, said: “From day one, he was dedicated to making sure his players would leave school with more than the ability to shoot a basketball.”

After college, Thompson played with the Boston Celtics, although he didn’t play much as backup center to Bill Russell. Red Auerbach called Thompson a coach’s dream, “a smart, tough realist.”

After only two seasons, though, he quit the NBA. He went to Chicago in the expansion draft, and despite promises of big money and more playing time, he decided the NBA was no lifestyle for a newly married man.

“I didn’t feel that in being a basketball player, I could do enough meaningful things to fulfill myself as a person,” Thompson said.

He went back to Washington and got a job coaching at St. Anthony’s High School, where he spent six years and won 122 games before going to Georgetown.

Georgetown was 3-23 in the 1972, the year before Thompson arrived. In his first season, the Hoyas went 12-14. By 1976, they had their first 20-win season, and they have won at least 20 games every year since 1978. A career-long dream was realized last year when he got to coach the U.S. Olympic team in Seoul, although they lost to the Soviets and wound up with the bronze medal.

The first thing Thompson did after he got to Georgetown was hire an academic adviser, Mary Fenlon, whom he had met at St. Anthony’s. If Thompson sometimes shelters his players, he says they also are sheltered from him by Fenlon. He’s only allowed to see players during certain hours of the day.

In his 16 years at Georgetown, all but two of the players who stayed with Thompson for four years have graduated.

Thompson’s popularity has risen and fallen nationally, just as it has at Georgetown. Because of his winning teams and his emphasis on education, he was once widely known on campus as St. John.

His team won seven of its first nine games in the 1974-75 season, but Thompson benched his top scorer, Jonathan Smith, because he cut some classes. Georgetown lost six in a row and, during one game, a bedsheet hung from the seats said: “Thompson, the nigger flop, must go.”

Several years ago, Thompson’s shielding of players gave rise to the phrase, “Hoya Paranoia,” and the players also began earning a reputation for fighting. They blamed it on the other side, and Thompson bristled if anyone suggested he had embued his players with a “them-against-us” attitude.

Thompson does admit, however, he is an emotional coach. That’s one reason he closes practices.

Criticized for closing the workouts of his U.S. Sports Festival team in 1981, Thompson said: “I can tend to be offensive at times in my manner of coaching and my manner of doing things. I don’t want to do that publicly. It’s just a coaching idiosyncracy of mine.”

Once, the story goes, Thompson stopped practice and laced into a player who had been relaxing in drills. Using his booming voice, he told the player there was this freshman who wanted to come to Georgetown.

“He says he wants to come hebe because he knows he is better than you and that he will start,” Thompson said. “And you know, he’s right.”

Occasionally, Thompson has the time and inclination to let others know how he sees himself. If he’s sometimes good, he knows it. If he’s sometimes bad, he knows that, too.

But, when he glowers or shouts, he says, it’s not because he’s a mean-spirited man.

On the contrary, he says, “I’ve always been a happy-go-lucky guy.”

It’s just hard to tell sometimes.