The Indomitable Isiah : Piston Guard Plays With Joyous, If Reckless, Abandon

Has it come to this?

This package arrives in the mail from Hartenstein and Associates, a public relations firm in Dallas. On the cover in big red letters is printed, “Isiah.”

Inside are five pages of ad copy, starting with, “Isiah Thomas is, without a doubt, the best pure point guard in the NBA,” going on to note, “Sportswriters exhaust the English language to praise the caliber of his game.”

Etc., etc. What does that make Magic Johnson? Without a doubt the best impure point guard in the National Basketball Assn.?

Whatever has happened in the career of Isiah Lord Thomas, once the sweetest breath of fresh air, now just another perennial all-star, with fans, critics, scar tissue and days he’d rather forget?

Maybe that should be weeks, or months. Try last May, when he threw that in-bounds pass to Larry Bird that cost the Detroit Pistons Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, and within the week nodded in affirmation of a judgment by teammate Dennis Rodman--jokingly, he insisted later--that the same Bird was over-publicized because he was white.

If there had been an Isiah-is-overrated movement before, it peaked there, beating upon his reputation like waves from a heartless sea.

Sportswriters exhausted the English language, all right, describing the caliber of his play in big games as selfish, not to mention inadequate. Worse things were muttered about Thomas, who is as engaging as any player alive, such as: He’s a phony.

Etc., etc. Similar things happen every spring in the playoffs, when the pack converges on some prominent member of a losing team who has played badly in a big game.

Can you remember when Magic Johnson put up that air ball in the Houston series in ‘81, and dribbled out the clock and missed some free throws against the Celtics in ‘84, and people said he was a bad big-game player? Honest.

But there’s another round of playoffs every year, and suddenly Thomas is on the verge of being rehabilitated.

When the Pistons beat the Celtics in this season’s East rematch--with Isiah personally accounting for two of the four victories--the pack began enumerating his virtues and glossing over his bad games. He went 3 for 11 in Game 6, but reporters noted that while Isiah may not have made many shots, he hadn’t really gone wild and was now, finally, playing like a point guard.

Of course, the Pistons won Game 6 and the series. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Of course, after two games of the NBA Finals, Thomas is 11 for 30. He’d better turn it back on or rehabilitation, like heaven, may have to wait.

What happened?

The short answer is, Michael Jordan came along, and Thomas slid into the second rank of guards.

There should be no shame in this, since Jordan may be the finest player who ever laced up a basketball sneaker, whether it and an entire line of athletic wear were named after him before he ever played a pro game, or not.

Thomas, gracious publicly, complained privately when the annual All-NBA entry of Magic-Isiah became Magic-Michael. He probably liked it even less this season, when the second-team guards were John Stockton and Clyde Drexler.

Can you imagine it? Stockton, this very nice, sound, but still somewhat limited player, beats out Isiah Thomas, the Nureyev of the point guards.

It’s a hard world to get a break in. Isiah, who wears his great big heart right out there on his wristband, whose game is joy and fireworks, not to mention volatility and risks-gone-wrong, whose mid-season funks have led him to consider retiring more than once, is trying to cope.

First of all, Thomas comes from the most impoverished of backgrounds, the youngest of nine children in a family kept together by their mother, Mary, on the west side of Chicago.

If he looks rather unmarked by it--he is so sunny, so self-possessed, so genteel--appearances can be deceiving.

In a recent Sports Illustrated profile, he conceded that his brother, Larry, was once a procurer and a heroin dealer. Two other brothers went into detox programs. It would be silly to think that Thomas made it out of the same surroundings without taking some psychic losses.

But he was always the one who stood out.

“What I remember most was his authenticity,” said Rick Majerus, then a Marquette assistant coach who recruited him, now head coach at Ball State.

“He was a really genuine person. There was no hype to him. He didn’t play any mind games. He was very straight.

“The neighborhood was extraordinarily tough. I used to say they addressed the arrest warrants to ‘Occupant.’ Everybody was under arrest.

“There was garbage strewn everywhere, a typical ghetto. You talk about abject poverty, human failing, suffering, they had all that in Isiah’s neighborhood.

“You’d go in there and here was this young guy who’s got this big smile. He was unbelievably optimistic for someone who had gone through all the misfortune that had occurred in his family. He was very focused.

“Here’s this cherubic kid. Back then, he certainly didn’t look like someone who was able to control a game, but he did. Another thing that struck me, he really cared about his teammates. He knew he was good, but he wanted the light to shine on those guys, too.”

Said another coach who recruited Thomas: “He had these brothers, G.G., Lord Henry. These guys were just . . . out there. They were jivey-type guys. They could have come out of the cast of ‘Colors.’ They weren’t malicious. They weren’t into doing somebody in or stealing cars, but they all had their own opinions and ideas about basketball.

“But Isiah had this way of disarming them. He’d just kind of smile and it would make you feel better.”

Thomas wanted a degree and even after leaving Indiana as a sophomore, returned to work on it. He was the second pick in the ’81 draft, and a star from the moment he hit the NBA.

Even so, there are holes in his game. He lacks the judgment of the game’s two preeminent stars, Bird and Magic, and he does not have Jordan’s mind-bending talent to challenge all the rules and get away with it 50% of the time. Isiah breaks all the rules and gets away with it 25% of the time.

And yet . . .

When have you ever seen another player his size dominate, say, one game of every four? Thomas is listed at 6-foot-1, is probably no more than 6-0 and may really be 5-11.

“I would say he’s 6-foot,” Majerus said. “Barely 6-foot.”

Said Piston Coach Chuck Daly: “I’d say he’s in the top three or four players in the league. You’ve got to understand, he’s only 6-1 or 6-2. Let’s say he’s 6-2. The guy picks up more hard fouls than anyone in the game because when he goes to the basket, he’s so elusive, people grab him and bump him and hold him.

“He’s not 6-9 like Magic. He’s not 6-9 like Bird or Akeem Olajuwon. He’s not 6-5 like Michael Jordan, and that’s a factor.”

Daly came to the Pistons five seasons ago, when Thomas was just heating up as a superstar, and tried to cool him off just a little.

“Before I arrived, I was doing TV color commentary work in Philadelphia,” Daly said. “I saw them play five-six times. They were starting Vinnie (Johnson) with Isiah.

“I thought, ‘Great talent but that combination is the worst transition backcourt in the league.’ (Laughing,) Isiah drives to the basket and Vinnie goes for the rebound. They were so naked in the backcourt--it was ‘The Naked and the Dead.’ ”

What Daly has done, besides slowing the club down, and putting Joe Dumars alongside Thomas, is to note, gently but publicly, those myriad occasions when Isiah overreaches himself.

Like this season’s game in the Forum, which the Lakers won narrowly.

“Isiah had 42 and got the last shot blocked,” is the way Daly remembers it, adding charitably--or wisely, “That was probably my fault for calling that play.

“I didn’t really want to ever calm him down that much because I knew we needed what he has to give, to win games.

“You don’t know anything about a guy until you coach him. I knew what a talent he was. He’s such a competitor. He wanted to win so bad it obscured his judgment at times.

“He still does at times. He’ll go one on five. He thinks he can score on them--and he does a lot of times.”

Said Majerus, who watched Thomas for one season as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks:

“One thing I learned was that every NBA team belongs to one player. We were Sid Moncrief’s team. We went to him on everything, deciding how we’d play a pick-and-roll at halftime, how tickets to the game would be distributed.

“Detroit is Isiah’s team. The thing that impresses me is how quickly he incorporated (Adrian) Dantley into their offense, how he started getting him the ball down in the blocks.

“They’ve got Bill Laimbeer, who’s a shooter. Vinnie Johnson, who’s from that school where an assist is a turnover. Vinnie never got a shot for anyone.

“And here’s Isiah, getting shots for everybody.”

That’s some lion’s heart that Thomas waves around for all to marvel at, and you can see that in myriad ways, too.

His charity work is legendary. It pre-dates his image-conscious days and goes far beyond the typical athlete-lends-his-name-to-a-worthy-cause. Thomas has thought up his own projects, such as “No Crime Day” in Detroit, and done the organizing, bringing in celebrities, following through personally.

A Detroit reporter noted that it was a limited success, however.

“ ‘No Crime Day’ made it four seconds,” he said. “There was a murder at four seconds after midnight.”

Whoever said the kingdom of heaven was going to be established on Earth? The effort is what counts.

Thus, when you see Thomas, captured in a PBS feature in a moving speech to kids at his old high school, laying out the sins of his life and imploring them to disregard his success and work for something more attainable--their educations--you are left with the feeling this is really someone special.

“I guarantee you one thing about his community involvement,” Majerus said. “It’s not orchestrated by the club. His concerns about gangs, drugs, education, are instinctive, and it comes from his upbringing.

“Over the years, I’ve run into Isiah a few times. I think, two years ago at Glenn Rivers’ wedding, we sat down and talked. Isiah had his wife there, and it struck me, how considerate he was to her.

“You talk about somebody who hasn’t changed. He still goes back to do his high school camp. He raises money for his high school. Here’s a guy everyone raps. It’s always been puzzling to me. I’ve known him since he was 18. I enjoyed recruiting him. I can’t say that about a lot of kids.

“I’m a big Isiah fan and I have no reason to be. I didn’t get him for Marquette. I don’t know him that well. He can’t do anything for me. But whenever I see him, he comes up to me with that big smile.”

This is no sad song. Thomas earns $900,000 a season and the team is re-doing his contract, to bring him up to true superstar level. He has a home in the suburbs of Detroit, a family and friends who stand by him in all eventualities, such as Magic, who consoled him through the long night after the pass to Bird.

Who could ask for anything more?

Well, maybe he’d like to be remembered as one of the greatest players ever.

Thomas is smiling now, his little Cheshire-cat grin. The Pistons have just finished shooting around in the Forum, hours before Game 2, when the Laker defense will cut him out of the Piston attack, and he’ll turn in that curious, quiet 5-for-14 game.

The questions are difficult, about his perceived loss of stature. He sails through them.

“I’m very much aware of it,” he says without rancor. “I understand that to be in the position I’m in, you just have to have a thick skin.

“The hardest thing is that, instead of people questioning my basketball abilities, people would criticize me as a person. And I don’t think anybody knew me well enough to say if I was this way or that way, just because of the way I play a game of basketball.”

Has he heard the standard rap: Larry Bird’s forum is the NBA finals, but to Isiah, the two-time All-Star MVP, it’s the All-Star game?

“I’ve heard it but, uh, (grinning) this is America. People are entitled to their own opinions. If that’s what some people feel, that’s OK. In terms of it being true or not true, I know it’s not true.”

What does he think his place should be among players?

“I don’t know. . . . I do know this. As a person and as a human being, if that’s the only thing I’m remembered for is playing a stupid game of basketball, then I haven’t done a very good job in my life. When I’m done playing basketball, I would hope that this is not the only thing I’ll be remembered for.”

Does it ever occur to him to just play it safe, to dare less?

“In the past, I’ve had to be daring in order for our team just to be competitive,” he says. “We didn’t have the talent that we have on this team now. Last year was the first time we really could compete on a level with the Celtics or the Lakers.

“In the past, I’ve had to do everything on the basketball team just for us to be a competitive team--not for us to be a very, very good team, just for us to be competitive. I think people don’t understand that because I don’t fit the mold of a typical point guard.”

Actually, this little daredevil doesn’t fit the mold of a typical anything.

More’s the pity.

Much more’s the glory.