On a day to remember Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner paid homage to the fallen civil rights giant.

“I just think he was so ahead of his time,” Pastner said Monday. “Just a phenomenal leader.”

When he was coach at Memphis, Pastner used to take his teams to the National Civil Rights Museum in that city. The museum was built on and around the grounds of the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated in 1968. On one trip, Pastner bought two posters of King that he has held onto and that hang in the basketball office.

He also had an outgoing voicemail message that ended with a quote from King – “When your character is built on a moral and spiritual foundation, your contagious way of life will influence millions.”

“I’m a big, big Dr. King fan and, just studying him as a human being, he was so ahead of the curve,” Pastner said.

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