Coach

I woke up to learn of the passing former Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson, a coach who is on my personal Mount Rushmore of college basketball coaches. While he was a college coach, he also was a coach in so many other ways. There isn’t much I can add that will already be said about one of the top collegiate coaches in Division I history. But I will cite two things that I will always remember him for.

He coached the 1982 title game against the Tar Heels of North Carolina. After Michael Jordan hit the go-ahead jump shot with 17 seconds to go, Georgetown brought the ball up court for the last shot. Point guard Fred Brown mistook James Worthy for a teammate and mistakenly passed him the ball, giving Carolina the title. Brown said that Coach Thompson with an arm around him told him, “You've won more games than you lost.”

Two years later, he led the Hoyas to the school’s first ever Division I championship, making the coach the first African American to win such a title.

The second instance was his stand regarding Proposition 42. This rule denied scholarships to freshman athletes who meet only part of the standards of Proposition 48. Prop 48 calls for the athlete to have a 2.0 grade-point average in high school and a minimum 700 score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In a game before Boston College, coach Thompson walked off the court in protest of the rule. Said Thompson: “I feel it is a discriminatory thing, especially for a kid who is at a low socioeconomic level.” In fact, he said that he would not coach again until the NCAA showed tangible movement reconsidering the measure.

By that Tuesday, the NCAA agreed to meet to reconsider the vote.

There are coaches and then there are coaches. Mr. Thompson was one of a kind.