![]() (His other son, John Thompson III coached Georgetown from 2004 to 2017 and reached the 2007 Final Four). “Pops didn’t go out of his way to try to say, ‘We aren’t hoodlums, we aren’t thugs,'” Ronnie Thompson, who played for his father from 1988-1992, told TIME in a 2014 interview. “Instead we’re going to embrace that, and now you figure out what you’re going to do.” “This idea that we’re not going to bend over backwards to prove to you we’re not what you say we are,” says Boyd. Thompson, meanwhile, sought to turn stereotypes inside out. Read more: How California’s Historic NCAA Fair Pay Law Will Change College Sports for the BetterĪccording to Boyd, rappers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, took some cues from Thompson and Georgetown. And I think that Georgetown informed a great deal of that sentiment.” This was a sentiment that was very popular at that time. “If you’re going to call us ‘thugs’ and ‘brutes’ and ‘animals,’ OK, we’ll embrace that,” says Boyd. Thompson, however, used such loaded language to his advantage. It was, ‘We are going to get in your head, and make you uncomfortable to the point where you’re going to question how bad you really want this.'” Boyd doesn’t remember hearing the word “thug” gaining notable usage until it was applied to Georgetown basketball in the 1980s. It was more than the fundamentals of basketball. Georgetown’s style, says Boyd, was “so Black … They played basketball the way it was played in the streets. He’s not laughing when things aren’t funny.” He’s not scratching when he doesn’t itch. “He’s not raising the octaves in his voice when he speaks. “Here’s a coach who is unapologetically Black,” says Boyd. During the conservative Reagan-era, there were few outspoken Black college basketball coaches at the highest level. Thompson had played as a backup to Bill Russell with the Boston Celtics in the 1960s and witnessed his legendary teammate advocate against the overt racism of that era. ‘Wow, it worked for them, maybe it’ll work for us too.’” But a lot of teams kind of stole that persona to help them win. “We played hard-nosed, rough, very defensive-minded, in-your-face basketball. “We had a very nasty disposition,” former Georgetown center Alonzo Mourning told TIME in a 2014 interview. These teams all defined an era of college basketball, and the allure of March Madness, for a generation of fans. and Arkansas, whose pressing “40 Minutes of Hell” style catapulted the Razorbacks to a national title in 1994 and runner-up the following year, borrowed Georgetown’s DNA. Teams like the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), which won the 1990 NCAA championship Michigan’s Fab 5, who reached two straight title games in 19- and introduced baggy shorts to gyms across the U.S. 16 in the AP national polls 10 times Georgetown broke the top five. In his nearly 27 seasons as Georgetown coach, Thompson compiled a 596-239 record, winning the 1984 national championship over Houston, and reaching the national title games in 19 for 19 straight seasons, from 1978 through 1996, his teams reached at least No. ![]() Not that Thompson’s impact on the game itself wasn’t profound. But what he meant to the sport of college basketball is in many ways far more important than championships.” “He didn’t win as any titles as John Wooden and Coach K. “In the world of college basketball, Coach Thompson is certainly in a class by himself,” says Todd Boyd, professor of race and culture at the University of Southern California and author of Young, Rich, Black and Famous: The Rise Of The NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture. ![]() Today’s athletes walking off the courts and fields of play, in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake and other instances of police violence, are carrying on his legacy. He took social stances at a time when few sports figures sought to do so. His passing is even more acute, and instructive, in this moment. He spotted systemic racism far before the term became part of the vernacular, walking off the court right before a game in 1989, in protest of NCAA eligibility regulations he felt were inherently stacked against the young Black athletes that college basketball, as an institution, was purporting to uplift. ![]()
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