The Book of Basketball (82 page)

23. ISIAH THOMAS

Resume: 13 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … ’90 Finals MVP … Top 5 (’84, ’85, ’86), Top 10 (’83, ’87) … two All-Star MVPs … leader: assists (1x), minutes (1x) … 4-year peak: 21–4–11, 47% FG … career: assists (5th), steals (15th) … Playoffs: 20–5–9 (111 G) … ’90 Finals: 28–5–7, 11-for-16 threes … best player on 2 champs (’88, ’89 Pistons) and one runner-up (’88)

An unusually lengthy Pro/Con list for the only Pyramid Guy who ever threatened me with bodily harm:

Pro:
Holds the title of Best Pure Point Guard Ever until Chris Paul officially takes it away, as well as the guy who nailed the most categories on a “here’s what I want from my dream point guard” checklist: scoring, crunch-time scoring, passing, penetration, quickness, leadership, competitiveness, toughness, defense, ability to run a fast break and willingness to sacrifice his own numbers to get everyone else involved. Really, he had everything you’d want except a three-point shot. There’s a reason he became the best player on a team that won two titles in a row (and should have won three). If you doubt his leadership, watch what happens after the Pistons clinch the ’90 title on a last-second miss—everyone runs right toward Isiah and lifts him to the sky.

Con:
His poor career field goal percentage hurts him historically. My dumb explanation: Isiah averaged 105 threes during his first thirteen seasons and made a ghastly 29 percent (398-for-1,373), although you can’t totally blame him because of the league’s poor three-point shooting from ’81 to ’86.
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He was deadly from 18–20 feet; anything beyond was sketchy. Remove those threes from his resume (45.2 percent career FG) and he made 6,796 of 14,577 two-pointers (46.8 percent). You could say Isiah was born after his time: had he arrived 10–15 years earlier, he wouldn’t have been seduced by those dumb threes, and had he arrived six years later, he would have made a higher percentage. He’s the anti-Maravich in this respect.

Pro:
Routinely unstoppable in big games and big moments. Remember when he dropped 16 points in the last 91 seconds of regulation to keep Detroit alive in the ’84 Knicks series? Or the 25-point third quarter in Game 6 of the ’88 Finals? That’s what I loved about Isiah—he only brought out the heavy artillery when his team needed it. Of anyone I watched from 1976 to 2009 (and counting), only six guys abjectly terrified me in the last two minutes of a close game: Jordan, Kobe, Bernard, Reggie, Toney and Isiah. With LeBron looming.

Con:
Somehow got off the hook historically for the single biggest NBA crunch-time brain fart since the merger: setting up Larry Bird’s series-altering steal in the ’87 Eastern Finals. Actually, it was a two-part brainfart—he should have called time out, and he never should have thrown a lazy pass toward his own basket. Indefensible.
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Pro:
His overcompetitive/nasty/tenacious side made him a cross between a point guard and a pit bull and provided the spine for a series of especially tough Pistons teams. You have to admire any six-footer who threw the first punch in fights with Laimbeer and Cartwright, as well as anyone who would choke his own trainer during a game.
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Con:
That same overcompetitive/nasty/tenacious streak made him one of the poorest sports in any league. Isiah disgraced the Pistons after two playoff exits (the “if Bird was white, he’d just be another good player” nonsense in ’87, and the orchestrated walkout during Chicago’s sweep in the ’91 Eastern Finals), organized the freeze-out of Jordan during the ’85 All-Star Game, stabbed Adrian Dantley in the back with the Dantley/Aguirre trade, burned so many bridges that they decided to leave him off the
Dream Team (more on this in a second) and may have even been responsible for the Simpson/Goldman murders in 1994.
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Pro:
Mastered the “I’m giving up my own numbers to get everyone else involved, then I’ll take over the last three minutes if they need me” point guard conundrum faster than anyone ever. He also eked the best possible basketball out of one-dimensional scorers (Dantley, Tripucka, Mark Aguirre), guys who couldn’t create their own shots (John Salley, Rick Mahorn, Rodman, Laimbeer), streaky shooters (Vinnie Johnson, James Edwards), and even reluctant shooters (Dumars). If the ’07 Suns were like operating a Formula One race car for Nash, then running those Detroit teams was like operating a high-risk/high-reward hedge fund—you had to know when to ride a hot hand, juggle the egos of various investors, trust your gut over conventional wisdom and command an extraordinarily high amount of trust with everyone involved.

Con:
For some reason, that rare talent didn’t translate to any other walk of life: poor Isiah goes down as one of the worst coaches, worst GMs, worst TV guys and worst commissioners of the past thirty years. If you think what he did to the Knicks was bad, read up on what happened with the CBA; he could have invited all the players and executives into one penthouse suite, then rained bullets on them from a helicopter
The Godfather: Part III–
style and not done as much damage.

Pro:
If you’re penalizing Isiah for retiring after just thirteen seasons, don’t forget that he tore an Achilles during the ’94 season and felt like his skills had eroded just enough that he couldn’t have survived the nine-month rehab process and kept playing at a high level. I always appreciated him for that. How many great athletes walk away exactly when they should walk away?

Con:
Inexplicably kissed Magic before every game of the ’87 and ’88 Finals. We’ve never heard a good explanation. Ever.
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You can’t discuss Isiah’s career without delving into his incredible omission from the Dream Team. The reasons were simple: supposedly Jordan wouldn’t play if Isiah was involved, and enough of the other players despised him that the committee decided, “Screw it, Isiah isn’t worth the trouble.” Understood. But they picked that team after the summer of ’91, with Isiah coming off three Finals appearances and two Conference Finals appearances as one of the five most important players of that generation (along with Moses, Bird, Jordan and Magic). Leaving him off the Dream Team was like leaving Billy Joel out of the “We Are the World” video.
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You just couldn’t do it. His stats don’t totally reflect his impact during the first ten years of his career—although three straight first-team All-NBA’s, A Finals MVP and back-to-back titles certainly help—and the Dream Team would have cemented his legacy. So he was robbed. And then some.

One last thought: say what you want about All-Star Games, but they’re an accurate snapshot of who mattered in every given year. It’s like being a dad and getting the biggest leg of the chicken. In All-Star Games, the daddies get the biggest legs (or in this case, minutes). So that got me thinking … who were the chicken leg guys in All-Star history, the ones who simply
had
to play big minutes because they were who they were? Leaving out centers (it’s too easy for two great centers to split minutes in an All-Star Game), here’s how the career minute totals of forwards and guards broke down (minimum: six All-Stars except for LeBron/Wade) …

Averaged 28-plus minutes: Jordan (13 games, 382 minutes); Oscar (12/380); Cousy (12/368); Pettit (11/360); West (12/341); Magic (11/338); Elgin (11/321); Isiah (11/318); Doc (11/316); Bird (10/287); LeBron (5/151)

Averaged 23–27 minutes: Havlicek (13/303); Kobe (11/298); Duncan (11/263); Garnett (11/260); Iverson (9/239); Gervin (9/215); Barkley (9/209); Lucas (8/183); Frazier (7/183); Pippen (7/173); McGrady (7/172); Wade (5/127)

Averaged 18–22 minutes: Hayes (12/264); Malone (12/244); Greer (10/207); Stockton (10, 197); Wilkens (9/182); R. Allen (9/182); Drexler (9/166); Archibald (6/162); Wilkins (8/159); English (8/158); Nowitzki (8/146); Worthy (7/142)

Holy shit! Other than the random appearance from Lucas, the chicken leg breakdown went exactly like you’d think it would go, right? The Stockton/Malone numbers were low because they never cared about playing in their later years; Kobe’s numbers were skewed because he only played 3 minutes in the ’08 game; and the Garnett/Duncan numbers were low because they cost each other minutes splitting time. Other than that, it’s a surprisingly accurate reflection of which noncenters mattered most over the last fifty-plus years. And that’s the thing: Isiah
mattered.
He deserved to be on the original Dream Team. It’s true.
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22. KEVIN GARNETT

Resume: 14 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … ’04 MVP … ’00 runner-up … Top 5 (’00, ’03, ’04, ’08), Top 10 (’01, ’02, ’05), Top 15 (’98, ’07) … All-Defense (9x, seven 1st) … Defensive Player of the Year (’08) … ’03 All-Star MVP … leader: rebounds (4x) … 3-year peak: 23–14–6, 50% FG … ’04 Playoffs: 24–15–5, 43.4 MPG (18 G) … ’08 Playoffs: 20–11–3, 50% FG (26 G) … missed Playoffs three straight years … 2nd-best player on champ (’08 Celtics) … 20K-10K Club

Right after graduating from college, I became hooked on Watergate and spent a few weeks reading the Woodward/Bernstein books, watching and rewatching
All the President’s Men
and wasting too much time figuring out Deep Throat’s identity. That was right up there with “Who killed JFK?” for me. Who was Deep Throat? I had to know. Every time I watched the movie on cable from 1992 to 2005—and since it resides in my permanent “I can’t pass this up even though I just watched it three weeks ago” rotation, that was often—my favorite scenes were those hushed conversations in the dark parking garage with Bob Redford (playing Woodward) and Hal Holbrook (playing Throat). They always nailed the lighting just right; you could kinda see Holbrook, but not totally; and he was always sucking on a cigarette, acting furtively, talking in a raspy voice and doing everything you ever thought Deep Throat would do. When we finally learned in 2005 that Throat was a former FBI and CIA executive named Mark Felt, I was crushed. It was more fun
not
knowing. Turns out Deep Throat was a failing grandfather who wanted to make his family some cash before he croaked, so he outed himself for a quickie book. I found the whole thing wildly disappointing. Things were much more fun when Hal Holbrook was Deep Throat, you know? And if you’re an NBA fan, maybe it was more fun when Kevin Garnett toiled away in Minnesota as we wondered, “Exactly how great is this guy?”

We didn’t know the answer and were fine with this. We like arguing about this stuff. Here was one of the greatest forwards ever, one of the fiercest competitors in any sport, someone with a chance to finish with historic scoring and rebounding numbers, one of the killer defensive players of his era … and we had no clue how good he really was. He played with six quality players in his first twelve seasons: Joe Smith, Stephon Marbury, Terrell Brandon, Sam Cassell, Sprewell and Wally Szczerbiak. He never played for a decent coach and certainly didn’t have a cagey front office pulling strings for him.
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His NBA clock was ticking and he knew it; he had become an attractive single woman in her late thirties
with rumbling ovaries. Garnett’s famed intensity slowly morphed into something else: frustration and despair, with a touch of “I might kill everyone on my team tonight” thrown in. Still, he couldn’t ask out. He just couldn’t do it to everyone in ’Sota. To keep the domestic analogies going, he was like an unhappy husband who couldn’t stomach the thought of divorce because he didn’t want to hurt the kids.

There wasn’t a more tragic figure in the league. Heading into that 2006–7 season, Minnesota released Paul Shirley, who sent me a gushing email about KG’s everyday brilliance and declared that if KG had played on a contender his entire career, “people would speak of him as a candidate for best player ever.” Would that become KG’s legacy: the coulda-shoulda-woulda star who ended up being the Ernie Banks or Barry Sanders of basketball? Every time I watched him play in person, I always admired his command of the room, how he seemed larger than life at all times, how it was nearly impossible to stop glancing at him. The guy just
seemed
famous. He stood out. Applying my world-renowned Foreigner Test, if you brought an exchange student to his first NBA game and the guy was from Zimbabwe or Kenya and had no idea what anyone looked like, then you asked him to watch everyone warming up and pick the guy who seemed like he should be the best guy, Garnett would have been the one he picked.

That charisma never translated to playoff success: The T-Wolves got knocked out of the first round in Garnett’s first seven Playoffs appearances. In nine elimination games over that stretch (Minny won two of them), Garnett averaged an 18–11–6 and shot 40 percent.
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Things turned during his MVP season in 2004, when Garnett had a certified monster Game 7 (a 32–21 against the Kings) before Cassell got injured and they fell to the Lakers. Then the Spree/Cassell dynamic imploded, Minnesota made all the wrong moves to replace them (Ricky Davis and Marko Jaric, anyone?) and Garnett became the only top forty Pyramid guy to miss the playoffs for
three
straight years. (One fun tidbit during this stretch: We learned KG kept in shape by running on the beaches of Malibu every summer. The sheer comedy of a seven-foot black guy sprinting along the
sands of the whitest, most uptight place on the planet can’t be calculated. Some of his neighbors probably hadn’t seen a black person in twenty years. Imagine them glancing up from their morning coffee on the deck and seeing Garnett sprinting toward their beach house.) Wasn’t it his job to carry a subpar team? Wasn’t that what Barkley did in the late eighties and early nineties in Philly? And how much did his personality have to do with it? Every time I watched a Wolves-Clippers game during that stretch, I always pictured Garnett snapping afterward and killing everyone in the locker room except for Ricky Davis, who would have calmly watched the whole thing unfold while sipping from a malt 40. Poor Garnett had become the Tiffani-Amber Thiessen of the NBA, someone with all the tools who should have been more successful than he was. It just didn’t make sense.
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