John Thompson III says Georgetown won't shy away from any protests

NEW YORK — Nearly 28 years ago, Georgetown coach John Thompson walked off the court before his Hoyas were to play Boston College.

The move, made to protest Proposition 42, a controversial NCAA rule denying scholarships to freshmen who failed to qualify academically, sparked a great deal of attention.

Last season, the Hoyas — coached by Thompson’s son — were the first college team to don “I can’t breathe” T-shirts to draw attention to Eric Garner’s final words before he died after a police officer put him in a chokehold during an arrest for selling loose cigarettes. Players said they decided to wear the shirts to honor the families of black men, like Garner, who had lost their lives at the hands of white police officers. These shirts, too, received a tremendous amount of headlines.

Clearly, Georgetown is not a basketball program that shies away from issues of social justice.

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“Pops walking out on prop 42, that’s the same thing that Colin Kaepernick did,” John Thompson III said Tuesday at Big East media day. “It raised awareness, caused discussion and eventually got legislation changed.”

The younger Thompson believes we’re still in the early stages of the current protest, which began with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem. Other NFL players, college football players and even soccer star Megan Rapinoe have joined in on the protest; some have knelt during the anthem, and others have raised fists. Those who have joined the protest have explained their reasoning for doing so —from putting a spotlight on the issue of police brutality and racial profiling to actions that involve outreach to local police departments and meetings with state officials.

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“I think when Colin Kaepernick started this … I think he wanted to initiate — and I don’t want to speak for him, obviously he took a bold stance — he wanted to initiate discussion, to create discussion,” Thompson III said. “And then, to hopefully help facilitate change and understanding. Do I think we’re still in the infancy stages of that? Yes, I do. But I think it’s a process.”

Thompson said he and his players have had discussions about what’s going on, but at this time have not decided to join the protest, or what actions they would take were they to join.

“When and if they bring that to me, the guys will talk about it and we’ll go from there,” he said. “We did this last year with the ‘I can’t breathe’ T-shirts. It’s not just a question of, hey, let’s protest. It’s once we have discussions and I feel comfortable that they understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it as opposed to it being — I don’t want to minimize it by saying a fad, because that doesn’t sound right — but at the end of the day, everything that the guys in the NBA do, whether it’s braiding your hair, wearing an arm sleeve, wearing the under-tights or protests — everything they do, the collegiate kids are going to want to do. But we have to understand that it’s not that simple. We’ve had discussions about what’s going on.”

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The key, Thompson said, is educating the players so they know what the issues at hand are really about. And what their potential actions would mean in that context.

For these Hoyas, those are conversations that have come before them and will surely come after, too.

“We’ve never shied away from issues, whether it be Prop 42 or taking Allen Iverson out of jail,” Thompson III said. “It’s something we’ve never run from.”

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