NC State legend David Thompson just turned 70. His birthday party fit him perfectly

They held a party Saturday for David “Skywalker” Thompson, the N.C. State icon and basketball hall of famer, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. And it was just right for the man they were honoring.

Thompson’s daughters, Brooke and Erika, planned the party. It was big but not too big, memorable but not over the top, family-oriented but not schmaltzy.

A few people made short speeches — his old 1974 N.C. State teammate Tommy Burleson, his daughter Brooke (who turned 43 on the same day) and his cousin, 1983 N.C. State national champion Dereck Whittenburg, were all among them. But after they all talked, Thompson didn’t address the crowd of about 75 people all at once — which, if you know him, made perfect sense.

Thompson — for all his fame, his 44-inch vertical jump, his being commonly known as “Michael Jordan before Michael Jordan,” his having a statue dedicated to him outside Reynolds Coliseum in 2023 — is the most unassuming superstar you will ever meet.

He’s quiet. Family-oriented. More comfortable with one-on-one interactions than he is with giving a speech. So at his birthday party Thompson slowly worked his way through the crowd, one or two people at a time, remembering something important about everyone while occasionally stopping to play with his two grandchildren.

I was happy to be invited. I’ve known Thompson for 30 years. One of the first stories I wrote for The Charlotte Observer was about Thompson, Bill Walton and their iconic on-court meeting at the NCAA Final Four in 1974.

Walton, who died in May at age 71, and UCLA lost that game to N.C. State in double overtime. But Walton would nevertheless grow to love Thompson and wrote the foreword for Thompson’s autobiography.

“As a player, David Thompson was Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James rolled into one,” Walton wrote. “There has never been anyone like him.”

When we had a moment Saturday, I asked Skywalker how age 70 felt.

“No different than 69 did yesterday,” Thompson said, smiling and gesturing at the party. “But this is nice, isn’t it?”

It was.

Thompson’s daughters threw him a party full of love, family members and friends, but not one overstuffed with old trophies and highlight films. His daughters had remembered that Thompson’s wife, Cathy, had given him a 50th birthday party 20 years ago as a gift. And now that Cathy had died in 2016 after her valiant fight with diabetes and kidney disease — she and David were married 37 years — the women decided to make a big deal of their dad’s 70th birthday.

So they rented a party venue in Monroe, not far from Thompson’s home in Charlotte. They made up a sheet of trivia about their dad, since he’s always liked games. “He’s just a big kid at heart,” Erika Thompson said of her father. And then they started asking people to come. Dozens of family members and friends did. So did former Thompson teammates like Burleson and Phil Spence (N.C. State) and T.R. Dunn (Denver Nuggets).

Burleson, Thompson’s 7-foot-2 teammate at N.C. State — he was incorrectly listed by the Wolfpack at 7-4, but that’s another story — took the most circuitous route to the party. He began in Las Vegas, where he had some business, and flew into Houston Friday, planning to be there in plenty of time.

There Burleson ran into hurricane-related flight delays and a computerized airline rerouting that wouldn’t get him back in time for Thompson’s bash. That wouldn’t do. So Burleson took a taxi to the other major airport in Houston and barely made a last-minute flight to Asheville arranged by his son. What followed was a $300 Uber ride from Asheville to Charlotte, a 3 a.m. hotel check-in and, finally, an on-time arrival to Thompson’s party.

What made it so important to Burleson to be there?

“No person caused more change in my life than David Thompson,” Burleson said. “We were a brotherhood. We don’t beat UCLA without David. And his family accepted me, a hillbilly from Avery County. He’s just such an outstanding person.”

As a player at N.C. State, Thompson was the two-time National Player of the Year and averaged 26.8 points per game over his three seasons, without the benefit of a 3-point line and with dunks outlawed in the college game (so he and point guard Monte Towe pioneered the alley oop instead).

In the pros, Thompson played nine seasons, once scored 73 points in a single contest and averaged 22.7 points per game. He was named MVP of both the ABA and NBA all-star games. He would have had an even greater career had injuries and his twin addictions — to alcohol and cocaine — not knocked him out of the NBA before his 30th birthday. Thompson has since been sober for more than 30 years and has spoken many times to kids about his mistakes and his strong belief that God saved his life.

As it was, Thompson still made the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996 and then was Jordan’s surprise presenter in 2009 when Jordan entered the hall himself. If you go by collegiate careers only, Thompson arguably is the greatest ACC basketball player of all time. I’ve also run into at least a dozen people over the years who played pickup basketball with Thompson at one Charlotte YMCA or another, each of them giddy about the experience.

But little of all that history was referenced at Thompson’s birthday party Saturday. There were a few photos of Thompson in his heyday. But mostly the talk was about who Thompson is, not who he was.

N.C. State fans had a lot to celebrate over the past 12 months — Final Four berths for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, a third consecutive women’s cross-country national title, nine wins in football and a College World Series berth in baseball were among the highlights.

Add this to the list: David Thompson turned 70 and acted, as usual, like he was no big deal. We all know differently.

Get Product Recall Updates