Old Pals Aguirre, Thomas Are in Business as Pistons

Neither Isiah Thomas nor Mark Aguirre has any desire to engage in sentimental recitations of how, growing up in the K-Town section of this city’s West Side, they harbored dreams of competing together for the NBA championship. They did, but by now that’s not much on their minds. Nor do they dwell on the thrill of performing at Chicago Stadium with virtually everyone from their past watching.

“Business, just business,” says Aguirre, invoking the catch-all phrase he often uses to describe the myriad events of his professional career.

“It’s always nice to see friends and family and I have a lot of fond memories, but Detroit’s home for me now,” added Thomas. “As for our friendship, it just is. It’s the same as anyone else who has a best friend.”

Those two, and all of the other Pistons, are focusing now on the Chicago Bulls. Instead of being halfway to their predicted destiny -- a showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers for the league championship -- the Pistons find themselves tied with the Bulls at a game apiece in the NBA Eastern Conference finals.

The best-of-seven series, which will resume here Saturday, is tied because of strong efforts from Thomas and Aguirre in Tuesday’s 100-91 Pistons’ victory. Thomas scored 33 points; Aguirre had just eight, but helped stem Chicago’s rebounding domination during the fourth quarter.

But even if Detroit were up 2-0, it could be Thomas and Aguirre would feel the same way, just as with any two people who realize their dreams only to discover the ideal comes with its own particular set of problems.

During the afternoon before the Pistons’ victory, as the two players cavorted on the Palace floor, they were watched by Dick Motta, Aguirre’s former coach with the Dallas Mavericks and now a television analyst in Detroit. It was an odd sight; Aguirre and Motta so far removed from Dallas, where their running battles seemed as big as Texas itself.

Hours later, Motta was asked if Aguirre qualifies as a complex individual. He declined to discuss his former forward.

“Really, I don’t talk about him. It’s a rule that I have to have,” he said. “There’s really nothing I could say ... ,” Motta smiled slightly. “I’m the only complex person I know.”

Aguirre and Thomas have complex tendencies. Aguirre was the first pick and Thomas the second in the 1981 draft. Each has spent much of the subsequent time dealing with criticism. In Aguirre’s case, people carped that he was moody and selfish. Thomas, at various times, has faced charges that, while undeniably spectacular, he hasn’t always done what’s best for the Pistons on the floor.

Even worse, off the court Thomas has been accused of manipulating the team’s roster, most recently in the February trade that brought Aguirre to Detroit in exchange for Adrian Dantley.

Before the deal was made, Dantley was quoted in the Detroit News as saying, “They think I was trouble and they’re going trade for Mark Aguirre? Aw, it’s not fair to say that. I don’t know him. I only heard the rumors. I know how those things can be.”

After the trade, however, it was another Dantley doing the talking -- his mother Virginia, a Washingtonian who called Thomas, among other things, “a little con artist.”

This past weekend, Adrian Dantley said basketball is about “power and politics,” but Pistons Coach Chuck Daly said Thomas is innocent of engineering the trade.

“I do talk with him all the time about trades and there are people who feel that he’s too close with the owner (William Davidson), but we made this trade because Mark is four years younger than Adrian. The age factor was big.”

Aguirre averaged just 15 points during his 36 regular-season games with the Pistons and his playoff mark of 13.7 points is about half his career average, but Aguirre has plodded happily along.

The fact that Detroit has gone 34-5 in the last 2 1/2 months would seem to indicate the team has gotten its wish, although there are some Pistons who wonder if they got the same Mark Aguirre who played in Dallas.

“I know that there was probably some jealousy on the part of his teammates there, but I’m sure he was no angel, either,” said Detroit center Bill Laimbeer. “I’m sure there are things that he did there that might annoy us if he did them here, but the difference is he doesn’t do them because he knows that we wouldn’t stand for them.”

“I think everyone was concerned about what would happen because it was a major trade, but he’s done a good job for us,” said Thomas. “Things might have been harder on me, but when he got here we all sat him down, just like we would any other player. We told him that we needed A, B and C from him. We said we knew that he could do D, E and F, but he had to put them in his back pocket because it wasn’t what we needed to win.”

Aguirre said he has had no trouble in Detroit and that he’s “fabulously happy” to be with the team in whatever role it wants. One reason, he readily admits, is that he can simply become one of the guys on a Pistons team loaded with diverse, occasionally flamboyant personalities. Always soft-spoken, Aguirre said he can just float out of the locker room in the stream of quotes emanating from Rick Mahorn and John Salley.

“I can just get away now,” he said with a smile.

That isn’t always the case with Thomas, however, whom Aguirre said has taken him to task on numerous occasions.

“That’s what I like the most about our friendship, the fact that it’s clean,” Aguirre said. “It’s honest. Everything is always up front, whether it’s good or whether it hurts me -- and there have been lots of times that he’s said things to me that hurt. The friendship will always be that way.”