Thomas Is Bloody, Not Yet Beaten

The man scored 43 points, but left the arena on crutches. He limped away with a sprained ankle, a cut cheek, a half-shut eye, a sore back and a broken heart. This morning, Isiah Thomas knows a little more of what it is like to live and die in L.A.

Had he been in a fight, the referee would have stopped it. He was hurting from head to toe. But this was a game of basketball, the game of his life, and Thomas was ahead on points. With 60 grains of sand remaining in the hourglass, in the series and in the season, the Detroit Pistons had three more points than the Lakers did, so Isiah didn’t have time for the pain.

He was out of this world. He was I.T., the extra-terrestrial. He was making shots off the wrong foot, off the glass, off the wall. He scored 25 points in a single period, something no one in the National Basketball Assn. finals had ever done. Thomas scored one point less than the Lakers did in the third period. Of all the gym joints in all the world, he had to walk into theirs.

When Sunday’s war was over, though, all he had to show for it was a face scarred like Al Capone’s and a foot that wouldn’t fit into a shoe. An hour and a half after Detroit went down, 103-102, racked with battle fatigue, Thomas remained flat on his back in front of his locker, his swollen right ankle padded with ice and an Ace bandage. He closed his eyes and covered them with his wrist.

By then the locker room was nearly empty, and Thomas tried to sit up.

“Can I take this ice off, please?” he appealed to Piston trainer Mike Abdenour, like a little kid asking mommy if he could go out and play.

“No,” the trainer said.

Dr. Benjamin Paolucci, the team doctor, knelt before the player and touched the side of his ankle.

“How does that feel?” the doctor asked.

Thomas winced.

The doctor lifted the foot slightly and again asked: “How’s that feel?”

“It hurts every time you move it,” Thomas said.

Eventually the man the Pistons call “Zeke” slipped into his sweater and slacks, and asked somebody to call his wife and tell her that he was, pardon the expression, all right. Abdenour produced a pair of metal crutches and showed Thomas how to use them. They hobbled through the tunnel to a hotel van parked inside the Forum, and gingerly climbed aboard--bound not for the hotel, but for Centinela Hospital Medical Center.

“You be OK for Tuesday?” an onlooker asked.

Thomas shrugged.

“Who knows?” he asked back.

Zeke has had easier weeks. Oh, the week his mother stood on his Chicago front porch with a gun and told the local punks to keep away from her kid, that was a hard week. The week his college basketball coach turned his back on him for cussing in front of an Indiana civic group, that was a hard week. The week he tossed a basketball into Larry Bird’s hands and then tossed out a casual remark that caused Detroit fans to cancel their season-ticket orders, that was a killer week.

But this one rates right up there. It is moving right up the charts. In a week’s time, Isiah Thomas has:

--Been trying to win the NBA championship for the first time.

--Become a father for the first time.

--Missed practice twice because of an injured back.

--Struck, and been struck by, Magic Johnson, his best friend.

--Scored 43 points against the Lakers in a game that could have won the championship, only to see his team fall by a point.

Sunday’s game tested him body and soul. He took it and dished it out. He caused bodily harm to Byron Scott by sticking out a knee, and bumped James Worthy the same way as Pete Rose bumped Dave Pallone. In return, though not in retaliation, Michael Cooper stuck a finger in Isiah’s right eye, and someone or something else--”either a Laker or a camera,” Thomas said--left a bloody gash under his other eye, after a tumble out of bounds.

As for the ankle, he also had no idea what happened. A replay made it appear that Thomas accidentally stepped on Cooper’s foot, but Isiah couldn’t recall. “I’ve had a lot of accidents in this series,” he said.

When he scored 14 straight Detroit points during the third quarter, that was no accident. That was a deliberate attempt to take charge, to get the Pistons back in the game by shooting them back into it, particularly since the Lakers were doing everything in their power to prevent Adrian Dantley from doing the shooting.

Isiah had the eye. But in front of his own bench with fewer than five minutes left to play, Thomas felt a finger--Cooper’s--in his right socket, and had to call a timeout. This injury may have been fatal. When the Pistons rebounded Byron Scott’s missed free throws with five seconds remaining in the game, they had no timeouts left to request, and could not get off a last shot.

“If I wouldn’t have got injured so much, maybe we would have had one left,” Thomas said.

He donated so much to the cause--43 points, 8 assists, 6 steals--only to go home empty-handed. Over and over when it was over, Thomas repeated the same remark: “Nobody ever said winning an NBA championship would be easy.” Nobody, though, ever said it would be this hard, that it would be so hard, he might not even get to play in the final game.

“We didn’t come in here expecting a cakewalk,” Thomas said before leaving. “We came out here prepared to play two games, if necessary. When you play against the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers, they’re two of the best basketball teams ever to play in the NBA. With them, it’s got to go all the way. So, we’ve got to come back Tuesday. We don’t have a choice.

“If you’re asking me if we’ll play hard and give a great effort, I’ll say, ‘Yeah.’ If you’re asking me how well we’ll shoot or control the ball, I don’t know. We’re not asking of ourselves anything that we’re not capable of doing. But all you can give is the effort. If you play hard and win, fine. If you play hard and lose, you lose. As long as you play hard.”

And, as long as you play.

Isiah Thomas didn’t know when he left the arena that there was a chance he might miss Tuesday’s Game 7. When he squeezed his enlarged foot into a white stocking and limped away on it, he still wasn’t sure.

Another hour later came word from the hospital. X-rays negative. Nothing broken. But . . . the foot looked bad. The sprain was serious. Thomas was “doubtful” for Tuesday, a team spokesman said.

Doubtful. Doubtful Thomas.

They doubt he can play. They doubt he can get out there with his bad eye and his bad back and his bad foot and score any points, much less 43. They doubt he can overcome the pain for one more night. They doubt if they can convince Isiah Thomas he can’t play, but nevertheless, they doubt he can play.

You have seen what he can do.

You doubt they can do it without him.

ISIAH’S THOMAS’ THIRD QUARTER

Basket-by-basket recap of Isiah Thomas’ third period in which he set a championship series record by scoring 25 points in a quarter, breaking the record set by Joe Fulks of Philadelphia on April 16, 1947:

Time Shot 11:01 2 free throws 10:31 5 footer, right side 10:06 18 footer, top of key 9:37 12 footer, off drive. 8:14 14-foot banker 7:38 12 footer, left side 6:23 Breakaway layup 4:21 Leaves due to injury 3:29 12 footer, left baseline 2:59 14-foot bank 1:13 26 footer, right side, 3-pointer 0:46 Fast break layup 0:02 20 footer from left corner