Listen To The Drum

"It's his hair, man. The Georgetown students used to rub Medley's head for good luck. He was a mascot. Like a bulldog or a horse. His hair grew in tight, kinky curls so it was beady to the touch. Little curly knots so it's like rubbing pebbles. That's how he got his name.

"One day in the athletic office an assistant track coach who'd been a Georgetown student was telling me about all the fun they'd had with good old Pebbles. I asked him flat out, 'Did you ever think of Pebbles as a man?' That's all I said. I left it at that."

In his office Thompson keeps a photo of Pebbles. He'd found it in a student-run, end-of-semester flea market. In the picture a bosomy white coed, in a tight white T shirt emblazoned with ALL DAY SUCKER, is doing mock battle with Pebbles, a tug-of-war over a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Pebbles' long, bony black hand clutches the neck of the bottle; the girl holds on, too, though it's not clear whether she's poking the bottle at him or attempting to slip it from his grasp. Thompson, indefatigable watcher of game tapes on the tri-level video hookup in his office, has spotted the key detail that gives the photo its story. It's not the laughing girl or Pebbles' sad-eyed grin, but the outpatient hospital band around one of the black man's blade-thin wrists. Pebbles was on leave from the alcoholic ward when the photo was snapped. Nobody meant any harm, nobody was aware of the cruelty of teasing Pebbles with booze, except the black coach who spots the telltale bracelet and keeps the icon around so he won't forget.

"When I came to Georgetown in 1972, I inherited Pebbles." Thompson says. "An early version of Dancin' Harry. He'd jump around and clown around, acting a fool in front of the students. I didn't want him anywhere near me. He embarrassed the hell out of me. I'd try to hide when I saw him coming. It got so bad I told Mr. Jabbo about him. Mr. Jabbo worked at Number Two Boys Club since I was a kid, with Mr. Wyatt, Mr. Julius Wyatt. The guys down at the club can still ask me anything, I'll do it. Mary Fenlon [the Hoyas' academic coordinator] calls them my Amen Corner. They're at all our games. That picture on the wall is of Mr. Wyatt, fixing the batting helmet on a little kid. The attention he gave to all of us who went to Number Two Boys Club is amazing. And he was tough. Didn't care who you were. And there were some mean jokers there. You came in the Boys Club, Mr. Wyatt would say, 'Take off that hat, buddy boy.' And believe me the hat came off.

"Mr. Jabbo was always good to us kids, too. Sent some of his boys from the club up here to play ball for me. I'd have to tell him, 'Mr. Jabbo, you can't bring tuna fish and coats to these kids now. They're NCAA athletes.' 'John,' he'd say, 'I don't care nothing about no NCAA. These my boys. They poor boys. Don't have nothing.' And he'd drive his old wreck of a station wagon right on campus. Park it behind the gym. 'Where's my boys?' 'Where's my children?' Have some of every damned thing packed in the back. Canned food. Bread. Shoes. Don't know where in the world he'd collect all that stuff. Brought a pair of pimp shoes once. Heels six inches high with some kind of fluid in them and little goldfish swimming around. I said, 'Hey, Mr. Jabbo. These are pimp shoes. Where'd you find these things?' 'Got to take care my kids, John. Where you hiding my boys?'

"Anyway, I told Jabbo about Pebbles. Jabbo and Pebbles go way back, you see. To those days when they sneaked in and played ball on Georgetown's fields. So Jabbo took Pebbles behind the stands in the field house and said about me, 'This boy worked hard to get here. He worked real hard, and he's trying hard to make something good here. Now, we wouldn't want to do nothing to mess it up for him, would we?' Cool, you know, but you better believe Pebbles knew what Mr. Jabbo was talking about. So Pebbles cooled down his act a little bit. But he was always hanging around. The more I thought about him, the more I understood maybe I had been too hard on him. Like Pebbles was doing the best he could. He was more or less raised on the campus. There's an old photo somewhere of him in knickers and suspenders, just a kid, with students all around him. He grew up here, and they expected him to be a clown, a mascot. That's all he knew and that's what he became. The students didn't see anything wrong. It's what they were taught. So I became a little ashamed about being angry at Pebbles. I named one of our basketball awards after him—the Raymond Medley Award [for sportsmanship]. His life wasn't easy. He did the best he could. I keep his picture to remind me.

"It's funny how people come around, black people, and accuse me of forgetting where I came from. Then whites accuse me of being racist. You know there're some things I'll never forget. I was raised a Catholic. I remember going in second to pray. All that talk around me about holiness and the Gospels. Then the black folks waiting till the white folks had finished before we got our chance to pray. How's anybody going to forget stuff like that? Or the public housing projects? Yet whites and blacks will tell you in a minute who you're s'posed to be. That's not what Dr. King died for. He didn't say give up one kind of slavery for another. No matter who it is, black or white, I don't want anybody giving me orders, deciding for me who I ought to be.

"Nothing's simple. Nobody has all the answers. John Thompson's never written a book telling other coaches they should play 10 people, sit in the middle of the bench, in the back of the team bus, that they better close their practices, keep their freshmen from talking to the press till after January of their first season. See, certain things have worked for me. I tried them and they worked. Which doesn't mean that's the only way. But it's my way. I'm not going to try and force other coaches to change. I did what came naturally to me. Yet people get worried because my ways are different from theirs. Hey, what's Thompson doing in there? Is he using race as a weapon? Is he preaching us against them? That kind of nonsense bothers me. I'm not going to ask anybody's permission to be a human being.

"Lots of people are very threatened when blacks make statements instead of asking questions. Individuality is the American myth. We preach it but reject it in people. I didn't even know what I did was different till somebody identified it as different. I'm strongest when presenting something the way I'm comfortable, the way I've learned. When I find myself having to constantly explain, I feel weakened. It's a threat when a person, especially a black person, wants to be creative and that creativity doesn't conform to guidelines that already exist. It's a free country, right? A reporter's free to describe what I'm doing and hold me accountable, but don't try to interfere, don't try to step in and form what I'm doing. That's arrogant and ridiculous.

"I choose coaching because I can put something of John Thompson in it. I can express who I am in my coaching. If I couldn't do that, it wouldn't be worth the trouble. I'm a human being, I do some things well and others not so well. I tell people I'm not perfect and I resent every minute of not being perfect. I work hard to get better."