Sporting News Conversation:

Isiah Thomas

SPORTINGNEWS.COM 11/22/2010 | 19

D ay after day, Isiah Thomas mounts his black Serotta and pedals along the outskirts of Coconut Grove. “Here in Florida, it’s a lot of flats,” says the

legendary Pistons point guard and second-year Florida International head coach, who will turn 50 in April, “but the wind is terrible. You ride one way and think you’re good. Then you ride the other way and—whoa! You wonder sometimes if you’re going to make it.”

When he had a basketball in his hands, there was never a doubt Thomas would get wherever he wanted to go. He was a national champion in college, a world champion in the pros, a 12-time NBA All-Star … and, OK, maybe not the best-liked superstar the game has known. But he backed down from no one, especially not those more commonly acknowledged as being the very best. (Magic, Michael and Larry, are you listening?)

The challenges have been far greater in Thomas’ post-playing days. First he helped get an expansion team off the ground in Toronto, but his relationship with the organization fell apart before the Raptors showed signs of winning. He then purchased the

Continental Basketball Association, but within two years the league folded. Next came three moderately successful seasons as coach of the Pacers before Larry Bird returned to the team as president of basketball operations and fired his ex-rival. And then came the Knicks.

Oh, the Knicks. In four-plus years as their president of basketball ops—which included two seasons as coach—Thomas failed to deliver a winner. His performance was widely panned as the team’s payroll became bloated with empty-calorie contracts. And he left New York in 2008, months after a sexual harassment charge brought against him by a Knicks marketing executive had exploded from Page Six into the national consciousness and from the courtroom deep into the Madison Square Garden coffers.

From MSG to FIU—a pretty big drop, no? Here’s Thomas today, guiding a Sun Belt Conference program that sucked fumes at 7-25 last season and hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1995. So what’s a little wind in Thomas’ face? After a preseason practice, he spoke with Sporting News’ Steve Greenberg.

How much different would my career have

been had I lost to Bird, Jordan and Magic—

had I let them win?

The Hall of Fame point guard says his feuds with basketball’s legends existed purely because he was the one guy who beat them all. Sixteen years after the end of his playing career, they still define his time on the court—and shape the way he is viewed off it.Photo by Sam Robles for SN

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Isiah Thomas

Knicks fans were more than happy to see Thomas go, but he’s confident he left the team in better shape than when he took it over.

SN: How many Golden Panthers does it take to beat one 49-year-old head coach in a halfcourt game of make it, take it—coach starts with the ball?

THOMAS: If it’s a halfcourt game? None of them can beat me. If it’s a halfcourt game and we’re playing to three and it’s make it, take it, I get it first, I think I would win. But if I missed, then they would win.

SN: It has been more than 16 years since your last game. In hindsight, were you ready to lose basketball—as a player—shy of your 33rd birthday?

THOMAS: Looking back, had I not had the opportunity to be a part-owner of the Toronto Raptors, I probably would’ve done as every other athlete did—had a change of heart and tried to make a comeback. Even though I was managing, I stayed close to the game and was still a part of the game. But if that wasn’t there and I was going to school and working on a degree or something, I probably would’ve gotten the itch to come back. And think I could’ve done it.

SN: You never came close to putting on a Raptors uniform?

THOMAS: I practiced a couple of times against the guys. Once I got my sick off, so to speak—because I’m an addict when it comes to basketball—then I was all right. I equate my basketball jones to an addiction, and it’s a serious addiction. I mean, like, I’m here. (Gestures at the FIU campus around him.) I’ve got to have it. It’s my love, my fix, and I don’t care where it’s at. I love it for real, and I need it.

SN: But it’s a little strange to see you coaching on the low rungs of Division I. Why take this particular job?

THOMAS: Because it’s hard. I’m a sick kind of guy that way. It’s like those guys who say, “Damn, I want to climb that mountain—I want to climb M t. Everest.” (Laughs.) I think that type of mentality is what I have. I want to take the hardest job and see if I can take it all the way to the top. I’ve never had an easy job; I’ve never taken the easy route, never taken the easiest path. I’ve always taken what was on the bottom because I come from the bottom. Being from the West Side of Chicago, that’s my mentality. I don’t want it easy. I want to take it from the bottom to the top. I don’t want to catch it on the top and go for a ride with it and say, “Look what I did.”

SN: You didn’t make it to the top in your previous job with the Knicks. Far from it. What do you say now to those who categorized your time in New York as a disaster?

THOMAS: In every situation that I left, the talent base that I left Toronto with; when I got fired in Indiana, the talent that was left and the team that we had; and in New York … we left a nice talent base there. When I left New York, there were two (future) All-Stars there, David Lee and Zach Randolph. (Both made it in 2010, Lee with the Knicks and Randolph with the Grizzlies. Lee has since been traded to Golden State.) Jamal Crawford was voted the sixth man of the year last season (with the Hawks). Any time you leave a team with two All-Stars and the sixth man of the year, and they’re all under the age of 29 at the time, you’d be hard-pressed in history to find another team that had those three components on it in one year. So I feel extremely comfortable with the talent base that I left New York with. I think that’s indisputable.

Now, the criticism that came with the job, I think some of it was just mean-spirited. Some of it was deserving because nobody’s perfect in the job; you do make mistakes, and I did make a couple of mistakes. But I think every executive who has a job in the NBA has made one or two mistakes in terms of a signing or a draft or a trade. I was no different.

SN: I know you consider yourself a good evaluator of talent. Given that, what was your biggest mistake?

THOMAS: I would say Jerome James. (Thomas signed the lightly accomplished free-agent center to a five-year, $30 million contract in 2005.) The reason why I say Jerome is because he was always injured; he never played. But that was a big contract. That was a mistake. Now, had he gotten out on the floor and been able to perform and play, maybe we would’ve seen some of the things that I thought I would see. That didn’t happen. But if you were to go down every other general manager’s ledger in the NBA, I’d be willing to say that they have one of those on their roster also. That’s the price of doing business sometimes. I still think the evaluation of Jerome’s talent was accurate. With his health, we don’t know.

SN: You used the term “mean-spirited” in regard to the criticism you endured with the Knicks. Was that just a matter of working in New York, or was it more about what you projected?

THOMAS: I’ll say this, I am extremely confident when it comes to basketball. And if you want to call it arrogant, OK, you can label it that. But I can be confident and arrogant about it because I’ve studied it a

Because it’s hard. I’m a sick kind of guy that way. It’s like those guys who say,

want to climb M t. Everest.” (Laughs.) I think

to take the hard est job and see if I can take it

what was o n the botto m because I co me fro m

top. I do n’t want to catch it o n the top and go for a ride with it and say, “Look what I did.”

Thomas says lightly regarded Florida International is the perfect place for him to coach because “I want to take the hardest job and see if I can take it all the way to the top.”

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lot; I’ve put a lot of time into it and know my subject matter extremely well, and I will debate that with anyone. John McLendon, who was a former student of Dr. James Naismith, was one of my first coaches, at the Martin Luther King Boys Club (in Chicago); he’s in the Hall of Fame. My high school coach, Gene Pingatore, is in the (local) Hall of Fame. My college coach, Bob Knight, is in the Hall of Fame. My pro coach, Chuck Daly, is in the Hall of Fame. And I’m in the Hall of Fame. Now, basketball is a game that you can’t master. However, I’ll debate my knowledge of the game with anybody. If that offends some people, I don’t apologize for that. The person who knows computers well or English well or science well, they’re confident about what it is that they know. I’m pretty confident about what I know.

SN: A game at Denver doesn’t mean what it used to for you. You’ll also be kicking around Monroe, Denton, Troy and Murfreesboro. Is the Sun Belt lifestyle fun for you?

THOMAS: See, I’m from the West Side of Chicago, and I wake up every morning and I’m still that West Side kid. Just because I was in the NBA, that wasn’t my lifestyle. I went to the arena and I came home. Been married 25 years; we’ve got two kids. I went and did my thing and I came home. To me, coming here is still, I do my thing and I go home. Am I in front of 20,000 people? Don’t have to be. That’s not what gets me. What gets me is, “Can I get you to set that down screen right?” (Laughs.) “Why can’t I get you to do this?”

SN: Why should FIU fans, and your recruits and their families, believe you’re dug in here ready to fight for them for a good while?

THOMAS: I would say the way sports is now—and this is with any college coach, and I’m not different than any college coach or any pro coach—there was an offer last year, and as long as I’m in basketball there will be offers. That being said, for myself it’s about lifestyle. It’s not about money anymore because the game has been very good to me. To me now, it’s about where I want to live, who I want to work with. My lifestyle? I like to ride my bike, I like to swim, and I like to go to the basketball gym. Those are my three things. Oh, I like my family and a good place to eat, too. (Laughs.) But I ride about 25, 30 miles a day and then swim, like, three times a week. So climate is a big thing now.

SN: What would it take to get you back into the NBA?

THOMAS: New York will always have an attraction. I will always be attracted to New York because it’s that thing, you know what I

mean? You want to climb that, you want to fix that, you want to win there. So I still look at New York as a place that I want to conquer. I want to go back and get a team and win there. That’s the thing in me. And Chicago will always have an emotional pull because I grew up there; it’s home. There aren’t many places that I would just jump up and leave and go to because they don’t fit my criteria. A lot of other coaches, money is still a big driver for them. I’ve had a long career in the game, so money is not the driver. I just love what I do.

SN: Are you better on the bench or in the front office?

THOMAS: If I were to evaluate myself on a professional level, at the NBA level, I would say as a G.M., putting together teams, evaluating talent, that is probably my strongest asset. Coachingwise, I think the jury is still out. And the reason why I say that is because I coached five years in the NBA; I had three good years and two bad ones, so I don’t think there’s enough time to really say. The three years that I coached at Indiana, I was pretty good. We lost to New Jersey (three games to two in the first round) and they went to The Finals. We lost to Philly (3-1 in the first round) and they went to The Finals. And we lost to Boston (4-2 in the first round) and they went to the Eastern Conference (semifinals). … (But) the two years in New York, under very hostile circumstances, I definitely wasn’t at my best. My frame of mind during those two years—I mean my mother was dying, the trial was crazy; I was just trying to get through it. Those two years coaching on the

bench, even though I did my best in terms of game preparation, keeping the team on track, trying to coach them through some extremely tough circumstances, I wasn’t doing that with a clear mind.

SN: Why are you known as a guy who feuded—with other star players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, with Larry Brown, maybe with anyone you felt was in your way or wasn’t on your side?

THOMAS: No, not that they were getting in my way. It’s like this, all right? In all my years of interviews that you read about me, did anybody talk to my teammates? You go talk to the guys that I beat: “What did you think of Isiah?” Well, shoot, hell no they don’t like me, because I beat them. Bird, Magic, Jordan—I’m the only person walking the face of this earth who can say honestly and legitimately, in head-to-head competition, I beat you more than you beat me. We played Chicago in four playoff series; we won three, they won one. OK? We played them a total of 22 times (in the playoffs); we won 12, they won 10. Played Boston in five playoff series; we won three, they won two. Played Boston I think a total of 28 times; we won 16, they won 12. Played the Lakers in two playoff series; we won one, they won one. But played a total of 11 games and we won seven, they won four. Now, in head-to-head competition, I think I can say, “My team beat yours more than you beat mine.” And that is legitimate.

Isiah Thomas

You can look it up: Thomas knows exactly how many times he beat Bird and Jordan in the playoffs.

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Thomas doesn’t have a lot of regrets about how he’s perceived, but he would like to

resurrect his friendship with Johnson.

Isiah Thomas leans back in his seat and smiles as he gathers his thoughts. “With all my jobs,” he says, “in Toronto, in Indiana, in New York, I always get it to a point where it’s, like, this close—and then some unexpected stuff happens. I’ve never gotten fired for a basketball reason.” His post-playing career, in brief:

ALONG THE WAY ...

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TORONTO RAPTORSPart-owner and executive VP, 1994-97

THE GOOD: He showed his talent-evaluator chops, drafting Damon Stoudamire, Marcus Camby and Tracy McGrady, and his on-court philosophy, building around what he calls the “Raptor 2”—favoring tall, versatile shooting guards and eschewing traditional power forwards.

THE BAD: In ’97 he attempted to buy the Raptors outright, but—on the day of closing, he claims—the team’s board raised the purchase price by $20 million in the name of opportunity cost, so he walked.

ISIAH SAYS: “Of my executive experiences, it was probably the most challenging of all of them because the job was to introduce basketball on the international stage. … Literally, we started with a piece of paper and an idea, and everything that the Raptors are today came from the ideas that we had in our heads.”

SN: I love how you know the numbers. You’ve given this some thought.

THOMAS: Well, yeah, because it’s like … (long pause) the arena that we play in, that’s where the playing field is level. It’s level in no other place. So in head-to-head competition, that’s when you really get to see, “OK, if you’re better than me, let me see it, and if I’m better than you, let me see it.” Once you walk outside of that, then the playing field gets a little uneven.

SN: People lauded Jordan and Bird for their competitiveness and will—they didn’t throw bouquets at anybody. You didn’t either, but why don’t a lot of people seem to like that about you?

THOMAS: Here’s a question I’ve always asked myself. How much different would my career have been had I lost to Bird, Jordan and Magic—had I let them win? How would you feel about me then? You’d like me a lot more, wouldn’t you? (Laughs.) Maybe I shouldn’t have beaten those guys because it seemed like beating them got me a lot of enemies. Walking out of the arena, it was like, “Who knew?” I was like, “Wait a minute, I just beat him.” Had I known, maybe I’d have been like, “OK, go ahead.”

SN: Even your great smile has been described in negative terms—as though it’s insincere, a mask that hides the real Isiah Thomas. Why don’t you get to be a little complex? Why don’t you get to have a range of emotions and personality?

THOMAS: I always felt that there’s a different criteria of judgment that I get judged on than some of the others. Like I said, the only place the playing field is level is in the arena. I didn’t play the media game. And then I took stands. I’m from an era—my mom, my family on the West Side of Chicago, we were activists; we took stances, political stances, stood up for what was right, what was wrong. When I came into the league, I took on the issue of stereotypes in sports; I took on the issues of agents taking too much money from the players. When I was president of the players association, agents were taking 20 percent of players’ money. We fought those situations. But those agents had media-friendly people, and they used them.

You know, this whole thing with Jordan and I was so overblown by the media. It made for great theater, but at the end of the day, and I always said this to him, what he and I together could have done for young African American men and still can do—us being separate is not good. The spike that

has been driven between Magic Johnson and I, that’s not good. I mean, for what? Again, as an African American male from the West Side of Chicago, from below the poverty line, I understand the symbolism of what we stand for, what we mean, and how important it is for that young generation that’s coming. And I fought against those things at a time when it was unpopular to fight against those things. And I took a lot of heat for it. I think I was probably one of the last ones. And a lot of good it got me, right? (Laughs.)

But, at the end of the day, I look at Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who in my opinion is—we don’t say he’s the greatest to ever play because he’s just so big; we can’t really relate to that. But, you know, I do know this: In next year’s draft, a young Lew Alcindor or a young Michael Jordan? I think everybody’s picking the Lew Alcindor. (Laughs.) Anyway, Kareem stood up; he fought. Bill Russell, he stood up; he fought. Muhammad Ali, those guys, they stood up; they fought. Not just for African Americans—they fought for humanity. And that’s what I stood up and fought for. My family’s mixed. I stood up and I fought.

SN: Go back to the so-called All-Star freeze-out, the 1992 Dream Team omission, and everything since. Do you have any regrets about your NBA relationships as a player, coach and executive?

THOMAS: There is one thing I would change if I could, and that would be Magic’s perception of me. He has chosen to believe one of his advisers as opposed to believing one of his friends. He has chosen not to be

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a friend of mine, but I will still be a friend of his—and I hope one day he wakes up and really sees the clear and true picture as opposed to being blinded by the one that’s been painted for him because that picture is not accurate. … He wrote this book with Larry Bird. (In When The Game Was Ours, Johnson writes that he, Jordan and others conspired to keep Thomas off the original Dream Team.) Had I known that he felt that, I mean, come on. We dined together after that; we hung out. If you felt that way back then, I guess you had to feel that way (during the Pistons-Lakers Finals series in 1988 and ’89). Why the big charade all those years? And why come out in the book and say that? But I am willing to forgive him.

SN: Are you still in touch with your old Pistons teammates?

THOMAS: I talk to (Dennis) Rodman, I talk to (John) Salley, I talk to (Bill) Laimbeer, I talk to (Joe) Dumars. I just talked to Earl Cureton. I talk to (Rick) Mahorn. I talk to Vinnie (Johnson). I talk to Buddha (James Edwards). I mean, we all talk. These are friends. And like I said, over the last 20 years of writing about Isiah Thomas, has anyone talked to—I mean, Bob Knight is in the Hall of Fame. Do you ever go talk to him about me? Do you ever go talk to any of my teammates about me? Why is the perception of me painted by those I beat?

SN: You’ve been at full speed since 1994, made a lot of moves, been on a real roller coaster. Has that ride been hard for you at times?

THOMAS: Yeah. I’ve had the fortunate misfortune of being a pioneer in a lot of industries. My first business venture (began) in 1992. I was on the cover of Forbes magazine (after) my partner, Rick Inatome, and I had purchased a company called American Speedy Printing out of bankruptcy. Rick started (Inacomp) and I was co-chairman of that company. I have a company now that I’m part-owner of, Dale and Thomas Popcorn, one of the largest distributors of popcorn in the United States. I was the first African American to ever own a league, the CBA; the first African American to ever be part-owner and president, with

the Toronto Raptors … a lot of firsts. When you’re out front, you make the path and you make some mistakes while making the path, and then others come along and they walk a much smoother path. Not that you’ve asked or wanted to be the first; it just seems that my progression in a very short period of time, I’ve done a lot. I don’t know why or how, but this is the path that I’m on.

SN: Nearing 50, what are you searching for? What would satisfy you, perhaps even redeem you?

THOMAS: Just don’t take it away.

SN: Basketball?THOMAS: I’m good as long as I’m in the

gym. Really. That’s my satisfaction. If the game went away, then I’d have a hard time with that.

For Rick Mahorn, former “Bad Boys” big man:

As a player, was Isiah Thomas on the same level as contemporaries Magic Johnson and Larry Bird?

“Yeah, why not? At that height (6-1), he competed and had desire more than pretty much anybody. And I’m not just saying that—I played more years against him than with him, and I didn’t like him when I was with the Bullets. But as we were rising up the ladder in Detroit, Isiah was our leader. And we beat those guys—the Birds, the Magics, the Jordans, the Dr. J’s—that’s all I remember.”

— Steve Greenberg

JUST ONE QUESTION

CBAOwner,1999-2001

THE GOOD: Wise or not, Thomas temporarily rescued the 53-year-old league from near-bankruptcy. Operating it as a single-owner entity, he nearly struck a deal with ESPN that would’ve featured exhibition games between CBA all-star teams and high-

profile college programs such as Duke, North Carolina and Indiana.

THE BAD: The CBA gasped to a halt soon after the NBA refused to allow Thomas to coach one of its teams while he was running another league. (David Stern’s NBDL plans didn’t help Thomas’ cause.) Thomas saw a potential deal to coach the Hawks go by the boards and wasn’t going to miss the Pacers

boat later in the 2000 offseason. ISIAH SAYS: “I had to sign an

agreement that said I couldn’t manage or have any dealings with the CBA even though I still owned it, that I couldn’t have my personality in it, couldn’t speak about it. The only thing I could do was stay in the NBA and let the CBA just kind of go away, and that’s what happened.”

2000 2001

INDIANA PACERSCoach, 2000-03

THE GOOD: He didn’t exactly inherit an NBA Finals team from predecessor Larry Bird; Mark Jackson, Rik Smits, Chris Mullin and Dale Davis all left the franchise in the months after its stellar 2000 postseason run. Yet Thomas kept the Pacers in the playoff mix all three seasons while bringing along young players such as Jermaine O’Neal, Ron Artest and Jeff Foster.

THE BAD: Three straight first-round eliminations didn’t help his resume. Perhaps more relevant, he wasn’t one of Bird’s pals—which became a factor when Larry Legend returned to the organization as president of basketball operations in 2003.

ISIAH SAYS: “I got fired, and the reason that was given to me was Larry Bird had a relationship with Rick Carlisle. He said that he felt more comfortable with Rick Carlisle, and so that was it—I was fired. End of story.”

NEW YORK KNICKSPresident of basketball operations, 2003-08Coach, 2006-08

THE GOOD: He used a second-round pick on Trevor Ariza in 2004. A year later he drafted Channing Frye and David Lee in Round 1 and packaged second-rounder Dijon Thompson in a trade for Suns first-rounder Nate Robinson. In 2008—after firing Thomas—the Knicks selected Italian forward Danilo Gallinari, whom Thomas had scouted at length and given a big thumbs-up.

THE BAD: He failed to lottery-protect the multiple future first-round

draft picks that went to the Bulls for Eddy Curry. He gave alarmingly big contracts to Jerome James and Jared Jeffries. He hired Larry Brown as coach then couldn’t get along with him. Of course, there was also the infamy of the sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Thomas and the Knicks by former marketing exec Anucha Browne Sanders.

ISIAH SAYS: “I call it a crazy, bad storm of a trial that happened in New York—the false accusations of what I was accused of and everything else. That had more to do with me being fired in New York than the basketball court.”

2003

FLORIDA INTERNATIONALCoach,2009-present

THE GOOD: No doubt about it, Thomas has the recruiting touch. Newcomers in Miami this season include two highly regarded junior college players as well as former Kentucky commit Dominique Ferguson (academically ineligible for the fall semester). A 2011 class that should easily be the Sun Belt’s best is on the way.

THE BAD: A smash debut 7-25 wasn’t. (How can the same team lose by 16 at North Carolina and by 17 at Florida Gulf Coast?) Sun Belt coaches have picked FIU to finish fifth this season in the six-team East Division.

ISIAH SAYS: “What we have here is that blank sheet of paper. We’re building something. We’ve got players coming in. Eventually, you want people to talk about the program. I want to build Gonzaga or Butler.”

— Steve Greenberg

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