John Thompson spoke truth to power 'when it was hard to do'

Let friends in your social network know what you are reading aboutJohn Thompson grew up tall and talented, wooed by the same basketball establishment he occasionally tried to turn... A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. John Thompson opened the palm of one of his catcher’s mitt-sized hands and pointed to it with the index finger of the other. The lesson of hard work was never far from his mind.“See this? ” he asked. “I never saw my own father’s palms this … light. Never.“I remember: He’d come home after work, wash ’em over and over, sit down at the dinner table and they always looked dark as this, ” Thompson said, pointing now to the back of his hand. “After a while I figured out the stain of all that hard labor wasn’t ever going to wash away. ”This happened during a conversation about fathers and sons at an NCAA tournament East Regional final in March, 2007. It was long after a lifetime of work had secured Thompson, who died at age 78, his own place on Easy Street. He was almost two decades out of the coaching business by then and already inside the Hall of Fame. If basketball had a main boulevard, his accomplishments would have earned him a prominent spot on that street, too:First African American coach to win a major college championship (Georgetown, 1984). Two-time NBA champion (Boston Celtics, 1965-66). NABC and three-time Big East Coach of the Year, plus an Olympic bronze medal (1988 Seoul Games) that Thompson was forever ambivalent about. Hard work was the bedrock of all those achievements, but Thompson viewed it as just the ante for a seat at the table. To keep it, and change the game from the inside, he knew he’d have to win early and often, keep working just as hard and fight even harder. It’s tough in this fast-moving moment of reckoning to mark where many of the pioneers of the social-justice movement made their most important stand, but not with “Big John. ”He took tough stands on so many issues that the system wound up bending in his direction instead of the other way around. Like Congressman John Lewis, another social justice warrior who passed recently, he knew “good trouble” when he saw it and wasn’t afraid to wade in.“I’ll never forget when Coach Thompson protested an NCAA rule that he felt discriminated against Black players by refusing to coach a game until it was changed, ” Kentucky coach John Calipari recalled in a tweet. “He was ahead of his time by speaking truth to power when it was hard to do. ”Thompson grew up tall and talented in Washington, D. C., wooed by the same basketball establishment he would later occasionally seek to turn inside-out. His parents sacrificed plenty to send him to Catholic schools as a youngster, and after heading to Providence College, he saw first-hand how the major programs exploited Black athletes, many of whom arrived on campus without the solid educational foundation he had.

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Article Link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2020/09/01/john-thompson-spoke-truth-to-power-when-it-was-hard-to-do/42368129/

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