Isiah Thomas Wants to Be Seen as Magic, Not as an Illusion

Isiah Thomas is trying to do it all. He is trying to take the Detroit Pistons to the National Basketball Assn.’s championship round for the first time. He is trying to watch what he says, so that nothing distracts from the basketball, as last season’s words about Larry Bird did.

And, Isiah Thomas is trying to climb that last rung. He wants to do what the great ones have done, win a pro championship, and he wouldn’t mind doing what else they have done--namely, become known as one of the greats of the game.

He is close, you see. Everybody knows that Thomas is the leader of the Pistons, the star who turned the franchise around, the little man who raised the town’s expectations, after seasons in which 30 victories were too much to expect. Isiah is the guy CBS or TBS promotes in the papers when the Pistons are on television. He is the perpetual All-Star who was even that game’s most valuable player twice.

But Thomas still comes up a bit short when it comes to being grouped with his forgive-and-forget friend Bird and his best buddy Magic Johnson and his not-so-buddy-buddy rival Michael Jordan. They are on another level, somewhere in the stadium stratosphere. They have the championship trophies or the MVP hardware or the nationwide endorsements. They are on everybody’s “A” list. Isiah is sort of a B+.

Although he says he doesn’t lie around at night thinking about it, Thomas surely wouldn’t mind being thought of in the way that Dennis Johnson of the Boston Celtics referred to this season’s MVP, Jordan, the other day. “Michael refined his game this year to what you’d call the Larry and Magic Level,” Johnson said.

Like Jordan, Thomas won a national championship with his college team but has been laboring ever since to raise his pro squad to that level of play. Each man is getting closer and closer. Jordan finally took the individual honors this season, doing enough to improve Chicago’s record to overcome the team accomplishments of Bird’s Celtics and Johnson’s Lakers.

Thomas, though, could do what Jordan couldn’t. He could lead his team to the NBA championship. It could happen.

“Winning the championship means everything to a player, on every level,” Thomas said. “On this level, I think everybody’s been wondering what team is going to come along and challenge the Lakers and Celtics, be considered as good or better than those teams. To me, we’re the closest of anybody.”

Obviously, the Pistons have their work cut out for them. They are tied at a game apiece with Boston in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals, which resume today at the Pontiac Silverdome. Beating the Celtics is never easy. And, even if they do, the Pistons then would have to beat the Lakers, who, like the Celtics, would enter the series holding the home-court advantage.

It can be done, though. Detroit proved it meant business by taking Game 1 of the Eastern finals at the Boston Garden, 104-96, and by knocking the Celtics to the canvas for a seven-count in Thursday night’s Game 2. The Pistons led that one with seven seconds to play in overtime, with a three-point lead constructed on Thomas’ super-clutch three-point shot.

Teammate John Salley kissed Isiah on the cheek after that one, when the Pistons returned to the sideline after Boston called a timeout. The whole team was giddy, confident that it would carry a 2-0 edge back to the Silverdome, where the Celtics haven’t been able to beat the Pistons in their last eight tries.

Came Kevin McHale’s miracle shot, though, and the worm turned. McHale made a three-point shot--his second in 22 career attempts--on a busted play, scooping up a loose ball and shooting it into the hoop before Detroit had time to foul, and Boston went forth to a 119-115 victory in double OT.

It was a long, long night for Isiah Thomas, and he was drained and subdued when it was over. His normally soft voice was practically inaudible. He had just played 45 minutes of racehorse basketball--no Piston played more--and for the second night in a row had led his team in scoring and assists. For the series, he is averaging a tad under 30 points a game, and is playing superbly under the kind of conditions that can turn a star into a superstar, or lift a superstar up to Larry-, Magic- and Michael-level.

“We’re definitely still in good shape,” Thomas said. “If we win all of our home games in this series, we win the series. We go to the championships. We win all our home games and there’s nothing Boston or Boston Garden can do about it.”

How tempted Thomas must have been to do another dissertation on the Garden, as he did a year ago, regarding how hard it is for enemy forces to win there. Anybody not raised or currently residing in New England who watched the first half of Game 2 objectively came away wondering what the Pistons had to do to get a referee’s call to go their way, and then came the biggest call of the night, on McHale’s three-pointer, that brought the Celtics back from the grave.

Closeups seem to indicate that McHale did, indeed, have his toes on that line when he shot the ball, but because referee Jack Madden saw it otherwise, and because the use of replay in the NBA is forbidden, and because none of Madden’s colleagues saw it any better than he did, the ballgame was tied, 109-109, and sent into a second overtime.

Forgotten after Boston won was Thomas’ excellent effort, particularly his three-point bomb with a hand in his face that gave Detroit an apparently insurmountable lead with seven seconds remaining in the first overtime.

Like most top players, Thomas wants the ball in that situation. He wants the shot. You could tell he wasn’t about to let anybody else turn that one loose, even with deadeye shooters such as Vinnie Johnson, Bill Laimbeer and Adrian Dantley on his side. Thomas is not shy in situations like these, and there will be those who argue whether this is bad or good, whether he is fearless or selfish. Detroit Coach Chuck Daly picks fearless. “Isiah had ice water in his veins out there,” Daly said. “What an effort.”

Not so impressed was Tommy Heinsohn, the former Celtic player and coach who now broadcasts their games on New England’s Sportschannel cable network. Heinsohn lit into Thomas on Thursday night’s telecast. He accused him of throwing Celtic guard Danny Ainge to the floor, with no mention of what might have provoked him.

“He’s getting away with all kinds of stuff out there,” Heinsohn said, loudly. “He deliberately threw Danny Ainge to the floor! Call a foul on him!

“I’m getting a little tired of Isiah Thomas,” he went on. “This game’s gonna get out of hand, and all because Isiah Thomas got away with throwing Danny Ainge to the floor. Isiah can jump on somebody’s back, or throw somebody to the floor. I’m just getting tired of Isiah Thomas and all his mouthing off. He gets away with more than anybody.”

At that point, Thomas went over to talk to the referee.

“Now he’ll go and try to smooth-talk with Madden,” Heinsohn said.

The telecast cut to a commercial, but the announcers’ voices could be heard over closed circuit.

“I don’t like Isiah,” Heinsohn said to broadcast partner Mike Gorman.

“I can tell,” Gorman said.

Later in the game, when Thomas missed the rim with a jump shot, play-by-play man Gorman said: “Major league airball.”

Heinsohn added: “Major league clutch airball.”

After Thomas’ major league three-point shot gave the Pistons a 109-106 advantage in the first overtime, Heinsohn said nothing about it.

Thomas has an impish face and manner, and a reputation for doing good. Piston officials can regale you with favors he has done, benefits he has attended, strangers to whom he has handed money. Detroit civic leaders are still impressed with the “No Crime Day” that Thomas personally instigated, a 24-hour period in which the basketball player led a movement asking for a holiday from crime in the city. Motor City cops did very little business that day.

On the other hand, Isiah is no saint. He has a temper, as witnessed by his manhandling of Ainge, or by his wickedly swatting at a shot by Robert Parish, going over his back, in Thursday’s game, after Parish had knocked Thomas to the floor. The glare Parish gave the Piston guard after that one was one to put into the “if looks could kill” file.

Thomas alienated many people last season when he seconded a teammate’s opinion about Bird being overrated, then gained many back after contending that he was misconstrued and apologizing to Bird and the Celtics anyway. Bird was quick to make peace with Thomas; he has not forgiven the teammate, Dennis Rodman, in the slightest.

“These basketball games are so important, to the present and to the future, that I don’t want anything else to get in their way,” Thomas said. “I’m here to play ball, and that’s it. I have opinions about some of the people who are playing, and sometimes I’m going to express them. But it’s the basketball that means the most. I want to win a championship. I want us to play the Lakers or whoever for the championship and have people talking about the Detroit Pistons in the same breath they talk about the Lakers. It can happen. It can be happening in the next couple of weeks.”

He doesn’t feel like getting into a muss or fuss with Danny Ainge or Boston Garden or Tommy Heinsohn or anything else. He has more on his mind, and Ainge in his face.

Still, he has to be careful. The jokes he made about K.C. Jones after Game 2--and he was joking, now, so don’t let anybody tell you otherwise--can backfire on him if somebody repeats the words without the feeling. Isiah’s smile doesn’t turn up on tape recorders. Playful sarcasm doesn’t always come off in cold newspaper ink.

After McHale picked up the wild pass that had been intended for Bird and made his desperation shot, Thomas made repeated references to “K.C.’s brilliance” and “K.C. being the genius that he is, the great coach,” in an attempt to joke that for Boston, it was all a designed play. Again and again, Isiah spoke of it as “K.C.’s genius play.” After a tough loss like that, such remarks can sound sarcastic, sour grape flavored. Everyone can’t be expected to assume that Isiah is kidding. He has a dry sense of humor, and it’s not always easy to tell.

What he hopes to be doing is joking and laughing whenever and however he wants, once these NBA playoffs are over.

“We’ve got a damn good basketball team,” Thomas said. “People pay too much attention to the fact that we supposedly play rough, to our so-called bad reputation. We want them to know we’re more than that, that we’re a damn good basketball team, capable of being champions.”

Detroit’s leading player is equally capable. There’s a level above him, just beyond his fingertips. He can see it. He can feel it.