John Thompson grew up tall and talented, wooed by the same basketball establishment he occasionally tried to turn inside-out. He recognized early on how the big programs exploited disadvantaged young Black men, and spent his entire coaching career at Georgetown trying to level the court. Like Congressman John Lewis, another social justice warrior who passed recently, Thompson knew “good trouble” when he saw it and wasn’t afraid to wade in. Kentucky coach John Calipari got it right when he said about “Big John”: “He was ahead of his time by speaking truth to power when it was hard to do.”