WASHINGTON — A few minutes after his team had easily dispatched Virginia Tech in December of 1989, John Thompson walked into an interview room at Capital Centre for his postgame comments. As he sat down, he heard a security guard out in the hallway carrying on a conversation.
"Bill, Bill," Thompson said, turning angrily toward the school's sports information director, Bill Shapland. And then he began to shout, "I need someone to tell those people to shut up out there. Right now, tell them to shut up."
A moment later, Thompson turned back toward the assembled press corps and calmly dissected the basketball game, laughing and joking about an easy win, the play of his new point guard, David Edwards, and how impressed he'd been by Virginia Tech's Bimbo Coles, one of his former Olympians, whom he now praised as "the best guard in America."
The sudden flash of fury, followed so quickly by this placid, good-humored dissertation, seemed so odd, and somewhat unnerving to anyone who saw it. Yet his friends will tell you that was typical of the John Thompson they have come to know. Many of those same people will also admit they don't really know him at all. They have an idea, a theory, an opinion, on what makes the man, what drives the man, but that's all. He's a very simple guy, says one friend. He's a very complex person, says another. Just when you think he's taking the money and running to the Denver Nuggets, he decides to stay at Georgetown.
It has been that way all of his life, and John Thompson can also tell you what he is not.
"I am not Saint John," he once said. "I do not go to confession seven days a week. I am not a father figure to my players. They all have parents, mothers and fathers, and I think you insult those people when you call me a father image to their sons. It is not my intention to be a crusader for this cause or that cause. I don't want to be a social worker. Let's take this education thing. They all say, 'Thompson is wonderful because he stresses education, education, education.' Well, they hired me to coach basketball. If I say I want my kids to get an education, it's perceived as an extraordinary thing, that I'm a martyr or something. Why should that be?
"Usually, there is a good guy or a bad guy. I'm not interested in being the bad guy. Who is? But I don't know if I'm the good guy either. I make mistakes. I get angry. Sometimes I work the kids too hard. I'm like any other coach -- I'd love to have them concentrate on basketball. I have people on my staff who help me control those feelings. I need that check. I am not trying to be anything other than what I am, and I'm really not certain what that is."
