We’re Not Just One Thing

I just bounced from a video in which John Salley claimed that Magic was the one who blackballed Isiah Thomas from the Dream Team to this NBA TV piece about Magic’s relationship with Thomas.

A couple of observations here. I agree with Salley that the Bad Boys, at least by 1991, weren’t all that bad. Laimbeer was a proper jackass, of course, and could be dangerous in the career-ending injury sense. But the rest of the team played hard and made hard fouls like pretty much everyone left over from 80s basketball.

The other thought is one I’ve had a thousand times about Isiah Thomas. On the court, Thomas was a handful and a half. Maybe you can’t argue that he was a better pure point guard than Johnson, but I might try to make that case anyway. If someone told me that Michael Jordan threw up every morning before a Pistons game, I’d believe it without hesitation. But off the court, Thomas seems like nothing so much as a Baptist deacon who wouldn’t be out of place calling on an infirm parishioner, casserole in hand. He is soft-spoken and elegant, but always no more than 1/8 inch from a big smile and barber shop hilarity. I’ve seen the punches he threw, but I’ve seen enough of Rodman not throwing punches to know which was worse. And, yes, I’ve seen him choking Bendan Malone in a moment of frustrated rage rally directed at Ben Cartwright. (Watching that that incident from start to finish, I have to say the look on his face was fury close to tears, something you rarely see in an adult. Later that season, Thomas would break his hand and get a two-game suspension after fighting with Cartwright, who was known for hurting players.)

It’s not hard to see what I’m talking about in the clip below. I don’t agree with Thomas about Laimbeer and maybe Rodman (who I love as a player), but I’m beginning to suspect his argument that the image was mostly propaganda, from both opponents and the Pistons, is correct.

Like Thomas says, go back and look at the film. The players he swung at must have averaged a good eight inches on him. He was disrespected and abused. In an era when men were unselfconsciously men, with all the aggression and compassion and occasional stupidity that implies, when you were disrespected and abused you would occasionally take a swipe at someone.

I remember Steve Kerr, also on Open Court, once describing John Stockton as a great guy and a “dirty bastard.” No need to describe him as one thing or the other. He could be, and had to be, and was both.

(Or, in a more serious vein, Meg Smaker talking about her captivity by Colombia’s vicious AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group known for raping those they didn’t disembowel. “Far from the blood-thirsty psychopaths I’d imagined,” Smaker told Filmmaker Magazine, “these were just your run-of-the-mill young men and women. It was quite unnerving.” Of course, they weren’t just run-of-the-mill, as they were also psychopaths. The banality of teenagers talking about makeup doesn’t erase the mass murder; but nor does the killing, and whatever psychosis prompted it, erase the banality.)