When ESPN aired its docuseries The Last Dance, which highlighted Michael Jordan’s basketball career while focusing on the 1998 Chicago Bulls, one legendary point guard caught a lot of heat. Hall of Fame point guard and two-time NBA champion Isiah Thomas.
Another standout point guard who received a lot of criticism in the midst of the NBA’s hiatus was Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving — for very different reasons from Thomas.
Regardless of the reasons they’ve been criticized, one might think Thoms and Irving could relate to one another in that vein. Whether or not that’s the case remains unknown, but Thomas does see another way in which he can relate to “probably the most creative player in the game,” which the Hall of Famer dubbed Irving during his recent conversation with Heavy‘s Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson of Heavy Live with Scoop B.
“He is really about exploring the art and the artistry of the game — I relate to that. I admire that,” Thomas said. “And then when you pair him with another creative mind like a Steve Nash, I just think the Nets are not only going to be exciting, but they have the potential to be just beautiful watching them play every single night.”
Thomas also praised the Nets for how they’ve developed as an organization through the years:
“I like that they have a basketball culture and they have basketball minds. So what they have is participants in the sport who have excelled at the sport — and what the Nets have done is basically rewarded the ‘workers,’ so to speak, and not only reward the workers by excelling and moving them to coaching positions and general manager positions and now the players have a voice within their team. So you really have from an educational standpoint — they say the best way to have pure education is to have participation and observation and therefore, you have total immersion. When you look at the Brooklyn Nets from a basketball standpoint, they have total immersion within the basketball culture and the organization. Now, can they bring all that education out and put it out on the floor and apply it.”