Michael Jordan is a winner, as everyone knows. But before Jordan won his duo of threepeats with the Chicago Bulls, he was merely the best scorer in the NBA trying to figure out how to beat the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons. And for a long while, it was a puzzle even the great MJ couldn’t solve. Against the Pistons, Jordan won just one out of four playoff series…
Why? Because there were players in his way, most notably Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas, the man Jordan purportedly kept off the Dream Team. Did Thomas freeze Jordan out of an early NBA All-Star Game? Nobody will ever truly know, but Jordan’s feelings about it apparently forever set him in opposition to Thomas.
But was the Jordan-Thomas animosity really more about Thomas’s Pistons repeatedly beating Jordan’s Bulls in the late 1980s, winning two straight titles before Jordan was able to finally win a chip in 1991? Remember, Thomas’s Pistons against Jordan’s Bulls in the playoff? 3-1, Thomas with the edge.
(At least one fan believes the grudge couldn’t have come from the alleged All-Star snub: “I’ve seen highlights of that game and MULTIPLE times Isiah passed him the ball, MJ just did not play well in that game shot horrible.”)
All this hubbub is back because Thomas still wants a “public apology” from Jordan, since Jordan didn’t just diss Thomas during his career, but put some finishing notes on the disrespect in his self-adulating documentary, The Last Dance.
Isiah is still mad about being called an a-hole in the film, and he says The “beef will continue” and that public apology is due and he’s not backing down. After all, Thomas says, he’s “from the West Side of Chicago.”
Hey, couple of GOATS here?
