If you thought Roy Williams was cranky this week, spend a few minutes with Big John Thompson.
The former Georgetown coach held court at the Basketball Hall of Fame announcement, talking about his former player, Allen Iverson, who was selected for the Hall. In typical Thompson fashion, he ranged through topics far and wide and didn’t pull any punches.
“Coach,” said one reporter, “Rollie Massamino said …”
That was as far as he got. “Rollie is full of s**t,” Thompson answered.
Another reporter began a question by mentioning that Thompson was known for coaching big men.
“Yeah,” Thompson interrupted. “Well that’s a bunch of bulls**t too. That’s why Patrick (Ewing) can’t get a job. That’s what happens to guys that are tall. When you’re over 6-10, people say you’re just a big man coach. You get that label. The perception is that the big guys are not the guys that are thinking on the basketball court. Forget about race, that’s the perception. How many big guys are in the Hall of Fame for coaching? Go count them. I told Ralph Sampson and Patrick, ‘If you get a job, do not get the label of big man coach.’ That’s why I used to kick the a** of my guards in practice. You’re going to get all the jobs anyway.”
Thompson credited former UNC coach Dean Smith for helping to get athletic directors to look past the bias against big men, as well as the bias against African Americans. Smith was neither, but he was willing to speak out on Thompson’s behalf. “He paved the way for me,” Thompson said.
Then it was back to grumpy John as he discussed Iverson.
“He wasn’t perfect,” Thompson said of the shooting guard’s stormy career, on and off the court. “But I knew a lot of perfect people who weren’t worth a God d**m on the basketball court. His shortcomings were more on display than anyone else’s, while most of us like to camouflage a lot of ours.”
“You see kids, particularly black kids, with their hats on backwards and holes in their shoes and all that s**t, trying to make believe like they’re from the ghetto,” Thompson said. “When all the time, their parents are rich as hell. It works, because people see a black kid and assume he’s poor. That’s bulls**t. Allen was the real thing. He came from abject poverty.”
Iverson’s willingness to stand alone, despite the criticism, is something that gained Thompson’s respect, perhaps because the old coach sees a lot of himself in the player.
“That’s the thing that you like about him and hate about him at the same time,” he said. “He’s not somebody who cares a lot about getting validated. He came with the braids and the tattoos. He really changed sports. Now if you want to be different, you have to put on a coat and tie.”
Thompson was asked to preview tonight’s national championship game, and he responded with good-spirited gruffness.
“I’m mad at both teams, to tell you the truth,” he said. “Everybody asks me about Villanova (in 1985) all the time, but hell, we went there three times. Carolina beat us one time in the (1982) final game and Villanova beat us in the other one. So I tell people I hope both of them lose.”
Thompson finally gave a breakdown of the Wildcats and Tar Heels, from a coaching perspective.
“Both of those guys are my friends,” he said of Nova’s Jay Wright and Carolina’s Roy Williams. “Jay, I envy the hell out of Jay. I can’t understand how a guy coaches like that and comes away looking as good as he does. He’s all perfect and neat.”
“He does a very good job with those kids,” Thompson continued on Wright. “Ideally, what you want to see in a team, as a coach, he has done. When you see those kids play, they play with one another.”
Thompson is equally impressed with Williams, for reasons that are polar opposite of his respect for Wright.
“What both of these guys have done is phenomenal in different ways,” he said. “You look at that Villanova team, and you’ve got to ask how many of those guys are pros?”
Always a coach, Thompson waits for an answer. “None,” is ventured forth.
“That’s the phenomenal thing that Jay has done,” he said. “Now, you look at the Carolina team, and you ask how many of THOSE guys are going to be pros. (A lot.) And you’ve got to say that THAT’S phenomenal.”
“Talented people want to express themselves individually,” Thompson said of Carolina. “People will look at Carolina’s team and say, ‘Well, hell, I could coach that talent.’ That’s bulls**t. Ask the pros. They’ve got great players on pro teams, but they can’t get them to play as a cohesive unit. So what Roy has done to get that kind of player to play unselfishly, to give up something, is phenomenal.”
So who wins? The good college players who play as a team or the future pros who play as a team?
“I thought at the beginning, that Carolina was going to crush them and everybody they played,” Thompson said. “You look at them and say, ‘They’re going to crush them.’ But now, Villanova is scaring everybody. They’re the guys you look at and say, ‘Why the hell are they still playing like that?’ That’s a tribute to those kids. They play tough, and they play hard.”
Thompson never actually gave a prediction for the game, but by the time that oversight sinks in, he’s off on another topic.
“Today, if a kid gets 30 points, even if his team lost, that kid is happy. You see him doing that little dance and smacking their hands. They can’t learn a play, but they can do all those handshakes…”