Tag: Isiah Thomas

“But what bothers me the most and …

“But what bothers me the most and sticks out, when I first came into the league, and guys that I know personally, that played against him on a regular basis, talked about how dirty he was. Talked about how cheap he was as a player. He used to have this sweep move with the off foot that trip the guy he was guarding, and the officials would always put their hands together that they give when it’s incidental contact, play on. And as you’re tumbling to the ground, he would steal the ball and go the other direction. It was just dirty. Some can say, ‘Hey, if they’re not going to call it you might as well do it.’ But what also stood out for me that I never understood, he drove the CBA [Continental Basketball Association] into the ground because [former commissioner] David Stern wouldn’t pay him a couple more million dollars to buy it. How many people lost jobs because of that, and franchises that were legendary franchises like in Sioux Falls where thousands would come to the games. Coaches, players, people lost their jobs, but yet he was so petty that he just ran it into the ground and didn’t put any more money into it because he bought it and thought he could flip it, have the NBA buy it for millions of dollars in profit. “Now he’s out there whining about a personal attack on him. He’s basically trying to get every angle to get people on his side.

“Michael Jordan is No. 1,” Conley said. …

“Michael Jordan is No. 1,” Conley said. “His competitive nature, that’s the one thing I try to bring every night.” In a later response to a question about his favorite players growing up, Conley said he was a huge Seattle SuperSonics fan and in turn a big fan of Gary Payton, who spent 13 years with the Sonics. He also again mentioned Jordan along with Isiah Thomas.

Isiah Thomas: All I know is whenever …

Isiah Thomas: All I know is whenever I’ve seen these guys, personally, upfront with each other, I have never gotten that reaction from Horace grant. never gotten that reaction from Michael Jordan. They’ve always been nice, pleasant, pleasant, you know that. You know, so it’s easy to talk a lot of stuff on TV behind cameras or radio, but when we face to face, I haven’t got the reaction from you.

Isiah Thomas’ comments on ’88 Celtics series stirs up strong emotions

Isiah Thomas blaming the Boston Celtics for how his team handled losing to the Bulls in 1991 continues to irk his peers to this day.

The Boston Celtics were never going to be prominent figures in the new ESPN Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance”, but the ripples left in the wake of the mid-1980s championship teams led by Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish made for an interesting cameo.

While Boston was on the decline by the time Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and the “Bad Boy” Detroit Piston were fighting out for supremacy in the East, boh had to go through the Celtics and their aging core to do it.

“Detroit had a similar thing with Boston that we had with them,” observed Chicago guard John Paxson in the documentary. “I can still remember the first time that Detroit beat them. And I can remember seeing Kevin McHale come out to half court and shaking hands and things like that.”

This was, of course, in direct response to Pistons Hall of Fame point guard Isiah Thomas (not be confused with former Boston floor general Isaiah Thomas, more on that shortly).

After his Pistons were eliminated by the Bulls in 1991, the team chose to exit the court without shaking hands or congratulating Chicago, Thomas claimed it wasn’t just the norm in that era, but what they’d experienced themselves from the Celtics under similar circumstances in 1988.

This was of course rejected by Jordan and the rest of the Bulls to this day, and was refuted by Celtics employees working the game at the time as well.

“What Isiah said simply isn’t true,” explained ex-Boston video coordinator Jon Jennings via the Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach. “I was sitting right behind [head coach] K.C. Jones.”

The game already decided, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Danny Ainge were all benched at the end of the game, with Kevin McHale even going out of his way to greet Thomas briefly before play resumed and the game ended.

“K.C. and [assistant coaches] Jimmy Rodgers and Chris Ford were all talking about getting guys off the floor, because we were in the Silverdome, and you could just tell these folks were ready to storm the court,” explained Jennings.

A review of the contest by the Globe confirmed announcers had to ask fans to return to their seats with a foul called on a Celtics with just seconds remaining.

“That is honest-to-goodness what that was about,” he continued.

“It had nothing whatsoever to do with trying to show up the Pistons or a lack of sportsmanship. It was really the safety of those guys. I remember K.C. pointing at the guys, going down the bench and saying ‘OK, go to the locker room.'”

The reserves who were in the game stayed on the court until the buzzer sounded, and sure enough the parquet was flooded with fans almost immediately.

“One of the scariest experiences of my entire life was after that game ended,” Jennings continued.

“I was literally behind K.C. as we were trying to make our way to the locker room and you had all these people — it was a domed stadium — so you had this massive crowd and they were coming onto the floor excited and jumping up and down. It was crazy. It was absolutely pandemonium. Of course, they finally beat us, so you get it.”

“It’s nothing against the Detroit fans,” finished Jennings. “But I’ve never forgotten that feeling of trying to make our way to the locker room.”

In another interesting twist tying Sunday’s premier of episodes three and four of “The Last Dance” to Boston is the roasting poor IT got for his name sake’s paper-thin excuse for poor sportsmanship.

Named for the nearly-eponymous Detroit point guard after his father lost a bet with a Pistons fan, the younger Thomas spells his first name with two ‘a’s — and got sick of being blamed for Isiah’s choice of explanation.

While it’s literally been decades since those series went down, the history of the league has taken on much additional weight with the coronavirus pandemic robbing us all of professional sports of all kinds.

But it’s been an outstanding means of bringing forth new versions of old controversies — and learning anew the ways those events continue to affect our basketball present while we wait for a return to normalcy.

Just make sure you spell “Isiah” right if you’re going to get into it on Twitter.

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John Salley detailed what really started the beef between Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan

It wasn’t about Michael Jordan, personally.

Sunday’s third and fourth installments of The Last Dance generally focused on the Bulls’ road to dethrone the Detroit Pistons in the East. The Pistons were coming off three straight trips to the NBA Finals (and two straight titles) before the 1990-91 Bulls effectively ended that dynasty.

The subplot within that rivalry was the beef between Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas. The Pistons caused a huge stir back then when they walked off the court without shaking hands after getting swept by Chicago. In the documentary, Thomas tried to explain and rationalize the move.

But we could see — by the meme-worthy reaction — that Jordan still hasn’t entirely gotten over his issues with Thomas.

And to think, Thomas’ feud with Jordan didn’t even start on the court.

According to former Pistons player John Salley, Thomas’ entire beef with Jordan stemmed from Thomas’ nephew — a Chicago native — wearing a Michael Jordan Bulls jersey.

Salley said:

“Isiah goes home, and his nephew is wearing a Bulls jersey, a Michael Jordan Bulls jersey. He said, ‘Hey, what you doing?’ ‘We in Chicago. That’s my team.’ It’s his nephew. He was not really understanding that the great Isiah Thomas plays for Detroit, we don’t wear that. We wear this. ‘But I’m from Chicago. I’m down with the Bull movement.’ Isiah was mad at that. Not to Michael, personally. In his brain, ‘Every time I play against this dude, I’m gonna try to go off so my nephew sees this is the jersey you should wear.’ Never at Michael.”

That’s it! I must say, I appreciate that pettiness.

Yeah, Thomas had every right to be offended by his nephew sporting a rival’s jersey, but he went as far as to try to take that out on Jordan. Amazing, really.

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BJ Armstrong on Jordan’s heated reaction to Pistons: ‘That will always be there’

SportsPulse: Former Chicago Bulls point guard BJ Armstrong shared his thoughts on Michael Jordan being animated in the documentary when he had to discuss the Pistons walking off the court after Game 4 of the 1991 Eastern Conference finals.

SportsPulse: Former Chicago Bulls point guard BJ Armstrong shared his thoughts on Michael Jordan being animated in the documentary when he had to discuss the Pistons walking off the court after Game 4 of the 1991 Eastern Conference finals.

“In 1980 I was on the Olympic team,” …

“In 1980 I was on the Olympic team,” Thomas said on “Get Up.” “As a matter of fact, I was voted the Male Athlete of the Year in 1980 for the USA Olympic team. The only thing that’s missing from my résumé is not being on the Dream Team. Now, when the Dream Team was selected and I wasn’t a part of it, there was a lot of controversy around it. I still don’t know who did it, or why they say I didn’t make it.

“I know they say the criteria for …

“I know they say the criteria for making the team, I had fit all the criteria. And that’s a big hole in my résumé. That is the biggest hole in my résumé. That is the only thing on my résumé that I did not succeed at….I have succeeded at every level. I tried to do everything correctly and I thought I should’ve made the Dream Team. However, I wasn’t a part of it, that hurt me. And looking back, if I’m not a part of the Dream Team because of a lapse of emotion in terms of not shaking someone’s hand, if that’s the reason why I didn’t make the Dream Team, then I am more disappointed today than I was back then when I wasn’t selected.”

Thomas also said that during the 1988 …

Thomas also said that during the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals, most of the Boston Celtics walked off the floor without shaking hands after losing to the Pistons. Only Boston’s Kevin McHale shook his hand after Thomas had stopped him at halfcourt, Thomas said. “To us, that was okay,” Thomas said. “Knowing what we know now, in the aftermath of what took place, I think all of us would’ve stopped to say, ‘Hey, congratulations. “Of course, we would’ve done it. But during that period of time, that’s just not how it was passed. When you lost, you left the floor.”