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Monday, August 31, 2020
John Thompson: Iconic Leader and Coach
John Thompson's career spanned several eras and included two legendary teams--one that he joined as a player, and one that he built as a coach. Thompson's death yesterday just days short of his 79th birthday is yet another sad event in a year overflowing with death and tragedy; in the basketball community alone, we lost David Stern and Kobe Bryant in January, and then Cliff Robinson and Lute Olson within the past week.
Thompson won two NBA championships in two seasons as Bill Russell's backup center with the Boston Celtics. Thompson was selected by Chicago in the 1966 expansion draft, but he retired to begin his coaching career. Six years later, he took over a moribund Georgetown basketball team that had posted a 3-23 record the previous season and had made just two postseason appearances since 1952. The Hoyas improved to 12-14 in Thompson's first season, they reached the NCAA Tournament in his third season, and they rapidly developed into a powerhouse. From 1982-85, the Hoyas made three NCAA Championship Game appearances in four seasons, winning the 1984 title. Thompson bristled at any commentary about being the first black coach to win an NCAA Division I basketball title, noting that there had been many worthy coaches before him who did not receive the opportunities that they deserved.
Thompson is revered by the players who played for him, and respected by
his opponents. He was an assistant coach for the 1976 U.S. Olympic team
that won a gold medal, and in 1988 he coached the final all-collegiate
team that the U.S. sent to the Olympics; that squad won a bronze medal, a
disappointing result but in retrospect perhaps not as surprising as it
may have seemed at the time: other countries were rapidly closing the
gap with the U.S. basketball team, and it no longer made sense to send
collegians to compete against seasoned professionals.
Thompson was a central, indispensable figure in the rise of the Big East as a power conference. A good argument could be made that no basketball conference was ever as dominant in a single season as the Big East was in 1985, and Georgetown was right in the middle of that dominance, losing in the 1985 NCAA Championship Game to Villanova, a fellow Big East team.
The phrase "Hoya Paranoia" was often used to describe the attitude of Thompson's teams. "Hoya Paranoia" is partially an image intentionally created by Thompson to intimidate opponents, and partially a media invention to
stigmatize the team as a group and the players as individuals. Thompson's Georgetown teams were known for playing tough, physical defense. The anchor of that defense during Georgetown's glory days was Patrick Ewing. Racist fans taunted Ewing with vile chants during Ewing's collegiate days, and they held up signs saying "Ewing is an Ape" and "Ewing Kant Read Dis."
I interviewed Ewing and he was far from being a paranoid or intimidating or mean person. He is an intelligent and thoughtful person who was generous with his time with me, a writer who he did not know and who he could have easily brushed aside (as an NBA assistant coach, he did not have to do media availability and was not required to speak with me).
Ewing told me, "Coach Thompson is a great person and a great coach. I felt that I came
to Georgetown as a boy and left there as a man. He taught me a lot of
things not only on the basketball court but also in life. He played the
position so he could give me a lot of insights about the center
position." For the past three seasons, Ewing has served as the head coach for Georgetown after paying his dues for many years as an NBA assistant coach. One can imagine how much pride Thompson felt about Ewing's accomplishments, and how much pride Ewing must feel about following in his mentor's footsteps.
Thompson coached two other Hall of Fame centers: Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning. Later, Thompson coached Hall of Fame guard Allen Iverson. Iverson was sent to jail for four months as an 18 year old for his alleged role in a bowling alley altercation, but Iverson was subsequently granted clemency by the Virginia governor prior to the Appeals Court overturning Iverson's conviction based on insufficient evidence. Throughout Iverson's ordeal, Thompson stood by Iverson, so it is no surprise that after Thompson passed away Iverson sent out a heartfelt message including these words: "Thanks For Saving My Life Coach."
Many years ago, I tried to schedule an interview with Thompson, but it never worked out. I respected his basketball acumen and I would have been fascinated to speak with him not only about basketball but also his status as a leader and role model.
Patrick Ewing: Fifth Member of "Dream Team" to be Inducted in Basketball Hall of Fame
When Patrick Ewing is officially enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame tomorrow, he will be the fifth member of the legendary Dream Team to earn that honor, following in the footsteps of Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler and Magic Johnson. It is possible that all 12 Dream Teamers will eventually be enshrined; the only players about whom there could be the slightest question are Chris Mullin and Christian Laettner but Mullin has already been a Hall of Fame finalist twice, while Laettner's great college career may be enough to convince voters of his worthiness (keep in mind that the Hall of Fame honors all levels of the sport, not just--or even primarily--the NBA).
Speaking of great college careers, Ewing led Georgetown to the NCAA Championship Game three times in four seasons, winning the 1984 title after an 84-75 victory over Houston and fellow 2008 Hall of Fame inductee Hakeem Olajuwon. Ewing earned the 1984 NCAA Basketball Tournament Most Outstanding Player Award. He also made the AP All-America First Team three straight years and won the 1985 AP NCAA Player of the Year Award. Not surprisingly, the New York Knicks chose Ewing with the first overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft. Although Ewing won the 1986 Rookie of the Year Award, he only played 50 games that season and 63 games in his second season, raising questions about whether or not his balky knees would enable him to enjoy a long career. Hall of Famer Hubie Brown--Ewing's first NBA coach--explained to me how Ewing's role changed when he made the transition from college to the NBA: "The thing that we immediately saw as a coaching staff was that he could score. He was a better scorer than he was a rebounder and shot blocker. He came out of college as a rebounder and shot blocker. Well, for NBA standards he was below average in both of those categories but he was a prime-time scorer."
Although Ewing ranked ninth in the NBA in blocked shots as a rookie, he was not yet a complete defender. Brown recalls, "The blocked shots never came when he was playing his man. The blocked shots would only come in the back of the zone traps when he was moving from one side of the lane to the other. So, that was kind of interesting. What had to happen was that the weight programs designed by the training staff had to build up his lower body strength and his upper body strength for the rebounding and the shot blocking on his man, not in the rotating of the defense--that had to improve. If you go back and check his stats, you will see that. You will see how the stats progressively got better. That came with (A) knowing the league and (B) building his body and changing his physique. He was a scorer from the first day of practice."
Ewing averaged at least 20 ppg in each of his first 13 seasons but he did not average 10 rpg until his fifth year in the NBA; after that, though, he averaged at least 10 rpg for nine straight years. Ewing never led the NBA in blocked shots but he averaged at least 3 bpg for five straight seasons and he ranked in the top ten in blocked shots each of his first 12 seasons (and 13 times overall). Ewing's 2894 career blocked shots rank sixth in NBA/ABA history (that statistic has only been tracked since 1973-74 in the NBA and 1972-73 in the ABA). Reinforcing Brown's comments about the differences between Ewing's game as a collegian and as a pro, Ewing never made the All-Defensive First Team and he only earned three All-Defensive Second Team nods. However, Ewing ranked in the top ten in scoring for eight straight years, peaking at 28.6 ppg (third in the league) in 1989-90.
Ewing averaged 21.0 ppg, 9.8 rpg and 2.4 bpg during his 17 year career, earning 11 All-Star selections, one All-NBA First Team selection and six All-NBA Second Team selections; All-NBA honors were hard to attain for centers during that era: Ewing's career overlapped with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Robert Parish, Olajuwon, David Robinson and Shaquille O'Neal. Ewing never won an MVP, but he finished in the top five in the balloting six times (1989-90, 1992-95). The only real blank space on his resume is that he never won an NBA championship; he led the Knicks to the 1994 Finals, but Olajuwon avenged his 1984 NCAA Championship Game loss to Ewing by leading the Houston Rockets to a seven game. Ewing's Knicks also made it to the 1999 Finals but he injured his Achilles tendon during the playoffs and was not able to play in the Finals.
For those who don't know about Ewing's game or those who forgot, here is a video featuring 13 of his greatest NBA plays:
Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls presented the main roadblock for Ewing's Knicks; the Bulls eliminated the Knicks from the playoffs in 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1996. The only time Ewing beat the Bulls in the playoffs was 1994, when Jordan was playing minor league baseball, and even then the Knicks needed help from a bogus Hue Hollins foul call against Scottie Pippen in the pivotal fifth game. Ewing became somewhat notorious for his annual guarantees that the Knicks would win the championship but when he was later asked about this he sensibly replied that he could not very well pick his team to lose. While that is certainly a valid point, Ewing probably would have been better served to find a way to express confidence in his team's chances without making guarantees that became punchlines after the Knicks were eliminated.
Ewing had a feathery soft shooting touch but he was never quite the same after suffering a devastating injury on December 20, 1997 when Milwaukee Buck Andrew Lang fouled Ewing as the Knick center tried to catch a lob pass from Charlie Ward. Ewing landed awkwardly on his right (shooting) wrist, suffering a dislocation that was so severe that one of the bones almost poked through the skin. Ewing missed the rest of that season and never regained full range of motion in his wrist; it took a strenuous rehabilitation program just to make it back in the league at all but Ewing persevered to play four more seasons. "It definitely affected me," Ewing told me several years later. "My shot wasn’t as pretty, wasn’t as pure as it had been."
After finishing his playing career in Orlando, Ewing accepted an offer from Michael Jordan to become an assistant coach with the Washington Wizards. Ewing later became an assistant coach in Houston, where he served as a mentor for Yao Ming, and Ewing is now an assistant coach in Orlando, where Dwight Howard is his current pupil; it is hard to imagine two centers who are more different than Yao and Howard. With Yao, the challenge was to get him to play more aggressively and be more of a physical presence. While Ewing worked in Houston, he told me that his message to Yao was all about mentality: "First of all, you have to be confident. You have to believe in yourself. That is one thing that I tell Yao: 'No matter what happens, believe in yourself and never doubt yourself.' I think that Yao is going to be a great player. He has great offensive skills and he just has to believe in himself and dominate." While Yao needed to work on his mindset, Howard still needs to work on his skill set in terms of developing back to the basket post moves and any kind of reliable shot outside of the paint. Yao showed marked improvement during Ewing's brief time in Houston and it will be interesting to watch Howard's development over the next few years.
During his playing career Ewing did not expect to become a coach but now he hopes to become an NBA head coach one day: "Why do something if you are not striving to be the best at it?"
Patrick Ewing: From "Hoya Destroya" to Yao's Mentor
Patrick Ewing won an NCAA title, two Olympic gold medals and led the New York Knicks to 13 playoff appearances, including two trips to the NBA Finals. He was selected to the NBA's 50 Greatest Players List and ranks 14th in NBA history in regular season points (24,815; 21.0 ppg) and sixth in blocked shots (2894; 2.4 bpg). My HoopsHype article examines his playing career and looks at the next stage of his basketball life: serving as a mentor for Yao Ming, who is emerging as the NBA's most dominant center. You can find the article here (9/30/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
Patrick Ewing earned the nickname "Hoya Destroya" while leading Georgetown to three NCAA championship games in four years--taking the 1984 title with an 84-75 victory over the Houston Cougars. Ewing was selected as the 1984 NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player. Ewing averaged 16.4 ppg, 10.0 rpg and shot .658 from the field that season for the 34-3 Hoyas, winning the Naismith Award and AP National Player of the Year honors. The Hoyas had a 15-3 NCAA Tournament record during Ewing's career, including close losses in the 1982 and 1985 championship games.
Ewing has fond memories of his experiences in the newly formed Big East Conference. "Georgetown ran the Big East--even before me," Ewing says. "They fell off a little bit after I left, but right now they are on a rebuilding track. Those were some great years. We had a lot of rivalries, a lot of great players and a lot of memories--some good times. It was great. Every school had two or three NBA players on their team. Pitt, Georgetown, St. John's, Syracuse. The conference was great. A lot of those players stayed at home, staying close to the East Coast; most of those guys were East Coast ball players. We were known and revered all over the country."
Bill Wennington faced Ewing both during Wennington's college days at St. John's and in the NBA, most memorably during a couple playoff series when Wennington was a backup center for the Chicago Bulls (1994-99). "Patrick was a guy who improved every time you played against him; he was always getting better," Wennington recalls. "I remember playing against him when we were both freshmen. Going in to play against him, obviously he was the big name and it was always a big game. You could see his game developing as he got older....When I was at St. John's, I always looked to those games during the season as benchmarks in terms of how my game was doing compared to him. In college, I just tried to keep my body in front of his and between him and the basket. In the pros, we tried to double down on him a little bit more, make him pass the ball out of the post."
Concerned that teams might tank games to obtain the first pick in the draft, the NBA instituted a lottery system involving all non-playoff teams. The team with the worst record would no longer automatically receive the first pick.
Ewing was the big prize in the NBA's first draft lottery, selected by the New York Knicks with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1985 draft. New York lost in the playoffs to the eventual NBA champions in 1983 (Philadelphia 76ers) and 1984 (Boston Celtics) but injuries to star forward Bernard King and other key players caused the team's record to plummet to 24-58 in 1984-85.
The Madison Square Garden faithful hoped that Ewing's arrival would immediately vault the Knicks back into playoff contention.
Hall of Famer Hubie Brown--Ewing's first pro coach--recalls his initial impressions of his star rookie center: "The thing that we immediately saw as a coaching staff was that he could score. He was a better scorer than he was a rebounder and shot blocker. He came out of college as a rebounder and shot blocker. Well, for NBA standards he was below average in both of those categories but he was a prime-time scorer."
Ewing averaged 20.0 ppg and 9.0 rpg and won the Rookie of the Year award despite a knee injury that limited him to 50 games. He averaged just over two blocked shots per game.
"The blocked shots never came when he was playing his man," Brown says. "The blocked shots would only come in the back of the zone traps when he was moving from one side of the lane to the other. So, that was kind of interesting. What had to happen was that the weight programs designed by the training staff had to build up his lower body strength and his upper body strength for the rebounding and the shot blocking on his man, not in the rotating of the defense--that had to improve. If you go back and check his stats, you will see that. You will see how the stats progressively got better. That came with (A) knowing the league and (B) building his body and changing his physique. He was a scorer from the first day of practice."
Ewing's situation shows how tough it is to be a great NBA post player. Despite being a dominant inside force in the college game, Ewing had to get stronger in order to have similar success at the professional level. Ewing worked diligently and his statistics improved correspondingly. After not producing more than 9.3 rpg in his first four seasons he had a streak of nine straight years of averaging 10-plus rpg. His blocked shots per-game average increased from 2.1 as a rookie to 2.3 to 3.0 to 3.5 to a career best 4.0 in his fifth season. Ewing had six seasons with 200-plus blocked shots and ranked in the top ten in blocked shots 13 times.
The Knicks failed to qualify for the playoffs in Ewing's first two seasons--in no small part because he missed 51 games due to injuries. But after that he led New York to 13 straight postseason appearances, including trips to the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999.
"There are good memories and bad memories, but they are still memories," Ewing says. "It's hard right now because I'm working for the Rockets and the Rockets are the team that we lost to in '94. We came so close. The next one against the Spurs, unfortunately I wasn't able to play. That was the toughest one to swallow because I had to sit there and listen to all the noise that the fans were yelling and I wasn't able to get out there and try to shut them up. That was heartbreaking."
The Knicks went 8-3 with Ewing in the lineup during the 1999 playoffs, but Ewing was forced to the sidelines with a torn Achilles tendon after an 88-86 loss to Indiana in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Knicks eventually won that series but were only 4-5 in the playoffs that year without him.
Just the fact that Ewing was still playing in 1999 is a testament to his work ethic and tenacity, because he suffered a devastating, potentially career-ending injury in a December 20, 1997 game at Milwaukee. Andrew Lang pushed Ewing as he tried to catch a Charlie Ward pass and Ewing crashed to the ground, dislocating his right wrist and tearing ligaments. The injury was so severe that one of the bones almost poked through the skin. Ewing missed the remainder of that season. He never quite regained full range of motion in the wrist but his relentless, determined rehabilitation work enabled him to resume his career. "It definitely affected me," Ewing says of the injury. "My shot wasn't as pretty, wasn't as pure as it had been, but I still was able to shoot and I was still able to get it done."
Ewing helped the Knicks reach the Eastern Conference Finals in 2000 before concluding his career with brief stops in Seattle and Orlando. He only made the All-NBA 1st Team once but he earned six All-NBA 2nd Team selections and finished in the top five in MVP voting six times while playing in an era of great centers--including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Robert Parish and David Robinson. Ewing was selected to the NBA's 50 Greatest Players List, won two Olympic gold medals (1984, 1992) and currently ranks 14th in NBA history in regular season points (24,815; 21.0 ppg) and sixth in blocked shots (2894; 2.4 bpg).
Ewing now works as an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets. He admits that he did not expect to become a coach. "When I retired I didn't want to just sit at home and not do anything," Ewing says. "Michael Jordan offered me a position in Washington and I started out as a coach. That was something he allowed me to try to see if I liked it. I liked it and I kept with it. The situation happened in Washington that he moved on and then Jeff Van Gundy, who I played for in New York, offered me a position in Houston and I took it. I'm still enjoying it, I'm still learning and hopefully one day I will get a head coaching job."
Ewing is very serious about eventually becoming a head coach, declaring, “Why do something if you are not striving to be the best at it?” Ewing can draw on the knowledge he gained while playing for two legendary coaches, John Thompson at Georgetown and Pat Riley with the Knicks. "They are two different people," Ewing observes. "Coach Thompson is a great person and a great coach. I felt that I came to Georgetown as a boy and left there as a man. He taught me a lot of things not only on the basketball court but also in life. He played the position so he could give me a lot of insights about the center position. Pat Riley is more flamboyant. He is a great 'Xs and O's' coach. He made his name in L.A. with 'Showtime' and then came to New York and helped put that franchise into the spotlight. They are two great coaches and I learned a lot from both of them and I admire them both."
Ewing appreciates the importance of preparation: "I think scouting is great. It gives you insight and makes you a better player. There is a saying, 'What puts you apart from the other players and what makes you a great player is if after the scouts see you and they know everything that you are capable of doing that you can still go out there and do it.' That is the mark of a great player. Some people can have good nights every now and then, but the great players have good nights 99 percent of the time."
One of his trademarks as a player was aggressiveness. Is it possible to transmit that trait to others as a coach? "That was just the way that I was," Ewing says. "That’s just in my nature. You can bring it out in a person, but I think that you have to be born with it."
So how does he try to "bring it out" of Yao Ming, who has been criticized for not being aggressive enough? "First of all, you have to be confident," Ewing explains. "You have to believe in yourself. That is one thing that I tell Yao: 'No matter what happens, believe in yourself and never doubt yourself.' I think that Yao is going to be a great player. He has great offensive skills and he just has to believe in himself and dominate."
Yao seems to be taking that advice to heart, particularly since the All-Star break. He is averaging career highs in points (22.5 ppg) and rebounds (10.2 rpg) and is the highest scoring center in the league. Ewing also averaged career highs in his fourth season (22.7 ppg, 9.3 rpg), setting the stage for the highest scoring season of his career the next year (28.6 ppg). It will be interesting to see if Yao can make similar progress in 2006-07. If Tracy McGrady gets healthy and Yao continues to develop, that dynamic duo may yet deliver Ewing the championship ring as a coach that he just missed getting as a player.
"A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)
"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery--in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks."--Edgar Allan Poe
"In chess what counts is what you know, not whom you know. It's the way life is supposed to be, democratic and just."--Grandmaster Larry Evans
"It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence."--Tom Callahan
