Thompson Was More Than a Coach at Georgetown

My phone started ringing around 8 o’clock Thursday night. I got calls from New York, from Connecticut, from New Jersey, from Chicago, from here in the Washington area. Every call was the same.

“What do you hear about John Thompson?”

The word was out that Thompson was going to hold a press conference at 10 o’clock Friday morning, and the rumors were flying.

“I hear he’s going to coach the Clippers,” one guy said.

“It’s the Bulls,” another guy said. “Michael Jordan said he’d play if Thompson coached.”

“He’s stepping down because of his health,” someone else said.

What do you hear? Huh? Whaddya hear?

The anxious, almost desperate buzz about Thompson speaks to two things:

1. Thompson’s stature. In 27 years at Georgetown, Thompson has become more than a basketball coach. Even in these days when his basketball team is in decline--as it has been for most of this decade--Thompson casts a huge shadow. He is a figure with a giant presence locally and nationally, a presence so large that he could face down a drug dealer and tell him to stay away from his players, as he did with Rayful Edmund some years back. How many coaches could do that? Or would dare? Thompson has crusaded for racial equity in sports, he is a person of intellect and heft. He’s on the short list of college basketball coaches who are bigger than life. There is Thompson, Bobby Knight, Dean Smith (even though he retired) and Mike Krzyzewski. Everybody else is on lower rungs, looking up.

2. Thompson’s control. His program is run like the Kremlin. Nobody knows what’s happening inside but John. He is the most maddening person I have ever tried to cover.

And the most interesting.

Thompson is a magnificent contrarian. If you say the sky is blue, he will say it’s yellow, and tell you why this is so. He’ll turn your every question around and point it at you like a dagger. For someone who was always so contemptuous of the press, and paranoid about how it interfered with the secret ways he had of coaching his team, he was always the most charming and loquacious of interviewees. When he started talking, you couldn’t shut him up. And you didn’t want to, because you always learned something--even if you always felt scolded in the process. I have no higher praise than to call him a worthy adversary. And I will miss his endearing crankiness.

It turned out that Thompson wasn’t going to the Clippers or the Bulls, or anywhere. He was staying at Georgetown. He would do whatever the people at Georgetown asked him to do. But he was finished as Georgetown’s coach. Thompson has “personal matters” to attend to, matters about his “private life” relating to an ongoing divorce.

“I am not retiring ,” Thompson said, choosing his words carefully. “I have resigned as head basketball coach at Georgetown University.”

He paused to let the distinction--and all the ramifications--sink in.

“I’m not tired of basketball,” he said, “I love basketball.”

Thompson asked and answered the more obvious questions pre-emptively.

“Is he healthy?” Thompson said. “Yes, he’s healthy. I’ve got boxing gloves in the back, if you want to see. Is he afraid of the challenge of young people today? No. Is he going to ride off into the sunset. No. I intend on being here at Georgetown, and getting in the way.”

Later, Thompson would say this sudden departure--smack in the middle of a terrible season, with the Hoyas’ 0-4 record in conference--”has nothing to do with our record. . . . It is personal. I am John Thompson, who’s fragile and weak. And I have to address some things.”

These are terrible times for personal lives and private matters. You need only go across town from Georgetown University to Pennsylvania Avenue to know that. There is no shelter in our culture of celebrity.

By leaving now, Thompson has done for his longtime assistant, Craig Esherick, what Thompson’s friend and mentor, Dean Smith, did for his longtime assistant, Bill Guthridge--rewarded his loyalty by making sure he would take over the program. Had Thompson resigned at the end of the season, perhaps Georgetown would have been tempted to look elsewhere. Perhaps not. But this way things are kept in the family. “He’s one of mine,” Thompson said proudly of Esherick. Georgetown is Esherick’s now. Thompson said he has “no intention of coaching here again. That’s it.”

The program Esherick gets, though, is flawed. It has been 14 years since Georgetown was in the Final Four. Thompson hasn’t recruited a highly prized player since Alonzo Mourning in 1988. (Allen Iverson fell in his lap; Iverson’s mother called Thompson asking him to help her son.) Though Thompson says he is still “enthusiastic” about recruiting, there are many who think he long ago grew weary of courting self-centered 18-year-olds who want nothing more out of college than playing time. Recruiting is a demeaning business.

I don’t know if we’ll see Thompson coach again. He has certainly not closed the door to coaching. I suspect if he does coach, it will be in the NBA. Although my guess is he would rather be a general manager or a team president. Basketball is his life’s work. I wouldn’t think he would abandon it.

He leaves Georgetown having built a basketball program. It’s there should he ever care to turn around and see it.