Elast year, after the premiere of the documentary series ‘The Last Dance’, there was much talk about the role of Isiah Thomas villain, allegedly banned by Michael Jordan for him Dream Team de Barcelona 92, and almost 30 years later it is still an issue that generates social gatherings and debates in the NBA.
Thomas was the visible face of those Pistons who earned the League’s hatred for the hardness, bordering sometimes the violence, with which his players were used. The aggressiveness of Billy Laimbeer, Ricky Mahorn, Dennis Rodman, John Salley y el propio Isiah Thomas, which came to be branded as thugs for not a few rivals, I won them Many enemies.
Mahorn, Dumars, Rodman, Thomas and Laimbeer, five of the Pistons’ Bad Boys
Some of them, the most powerful and influential, were the leaders of that mythical Dream Team, the first and most genuine of America’s dream teams. With Michael Jordan leading the way, more players like Larry Bird, David Robinson o Scottie Pippen joined in and generated a stream of opinion to pressure USA Basketball with the intention of leaving out the legend of the Pistons of the Games of the Dream Team of Barcelona 92.
Isiah Thomas never overcame that veto and even today he continues to blame them for their absence from that appointment, but his criticisms don’t focus on rejecting Jordan or Bird, but in that of Scottie Pippen. His veto hurt him more than the myths of the Bulls and the Celtics, or so he says to ignore them ..
I don’t care if Michael Jordan or Larry Bird said, ‘I don’t want Isiah to be on the Dream Team.’ But Scottie Pippen? Let man. You can’t say anything … man, go over there
“I do not care if Michael Jordan say, ‘I didn’t want Isiah to be on the Dream Team.’ I don’t care if Larry Bird said, ‘I don’t want Isiah to be on the Dream Team’. But Scottie Pippen? Let man. You can’t say anything … Man, go over there, “says the one with the Pistons, who even today that emptiness that was made hurts then.
Isiah Thomas does not forgive Pippen to join that veto and gave a public touch years later. It was like telling him ‘But who do you think you are to comment on that issue?’ As if he thought himself bigger than he really was. And the truth is that next to Jordan and Bird I know it was a small thing.
