His playing scowl ultimately dissolved into a more sanguine public face across 14 years as an assistant or associate head coach in four league cities, but John Thompson — known around D.C. parts as Big John — never subscribed to the personality theory in the first place.

“I think it was more that there’s a stereotype about centers,” he said, alluding to the rare giants who have wound up in coaching. “People tend to attribute thinking on the basketball court to guards. It’s a fallacy because, you know, there have been a lot of dumb guards.”

In recent years, Thompson said, with the pro game more perimeter-dominant than ever, Ewing’s case became even harder.

As he did when John III coached the Hoyas, Thompson attends Georgetown home games at the downtown Capital One Arena. But as Ewing’s team ran off a string of victories against lower-profile programs to begin the season, Thompson largely stayed out of sight and reporters’ range, giving his protégé space.

For the Butler game, though, Thompson occupied a baseline seat that was only a firm bounce pass away from the Georgetown bench, indicating he thought Ewing had aced his initiation. Approached at halftime, he snapped, “What do you want?” Then he offered an adjacent seat and said, “If I wasn’t mean, you wouldn’t know it was me, would you?”

This veneer of crankiness was a playful reference to the early-to-mid-1980s, when the Ewing-powered Hoyas reached three Final Fours and Thompson’s program had an air of unapproachability that even had a name: Hoya Paranoia.

“A lot of things we did was attributed to paranoia, but it wasn’t,” Thompson said. “It was the decisions we made as an educational institution. And in Patrick’s case, it was because of his talent and the demand being so much higher on him. Listen, Patrick has never been an antisocial person — he’s been a private person. He’s always been very unselfish, and a lot of those times he didn’t want to do things it was because he wanted other people to get some attention.”