John Thompson was part of Dean Smith’s Carolina family.

Roy Williams said it best when paying tribute to the former Georgetown coach, who died Monday at the age of 78. Roy called Thompson one of Coach Smith’s closest friends and recounted how Big John had been there for retirement ceremonies and tender moments in Smith’s last years and arrived two hours early for his funeral to sit alone in a pew and pray.

The two Hall of Famers, Smith and Thompson went back to the early 1970s, when Thompson was still a high school coach in Washington, D.C. and looking for a school where his adopted son Donald Washington would fit in during those early days of integration.

Thompson spent time in Granville Towers, where Washington would live, his 6-10 frame stretched out on a hallway floor talking to several UNC players about life in Chapel Hill. After Thompson got the Georgetown job, Smith asked him to join Bill Guthridge as his assistant with the 1976 Olympic team. They all won the gold medal together in Montreal.

Six years later, when Thompson had built the Hoyas into a national power, Carolina and Georgetown met in what is still considered among the greatest NCAA championship games ever. The Tar Heels won on Michael Jordan’s shot, and Thompson wrapped Smith in a big bearhug, so happy his mentor won his first title.

Smith said he was sorry it had to be against his protégé and close family friend. The Hoyas and Heels might have had a rematch two years later, but top-ranked Carolina lost in the Sweet Sixteen to Indiana. Georgetown went on to win its only NCAA basketball championship that year.

John Thompson was a larger-than-life legend in college basketball, keeping his players in a shroud of privacy while being very demanding of them. He gave a second chance to Allen Iverson, who had been arrested and jailed after a high school bowling alley brawl in Hampton, Virginia. Iverson became a college and NBA star.

Thompson was an imposing black man, 100 pounds heavier, a foot taller and 10 years younger than the understated Smith. But they were brothers in arms in touching the hearts and minds of their kids and friends.

Tune into a replay of that classic 1982 game between Thompson’s Hoyas with Patrick Ewing and the Tar Heels of Worthy, Perkins and Jordan on 97-9 The Hill Wednesday night at 8 p.m.

 

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