“You hit him, he was crying”: Isiah Thomas once revealed how Michael Jordan persistently complained about fouls to David Stern
The feud between Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas hasn’t shown signs of fading even a bit. It seems to be getting heated with every passing year.
Since the release of “The Last Dance,” the bad blood between the two Hall of Famers has only gotten more intense. Thomas, in Cedric Maxwell’s episode, added more fuel to the fire with what he had to say about Jordan’s Chicago Bulls:
(14:15 mark)
“The Bulls, Jordan, every time you hit him, he was crying… Going to David Stern’s office having a meeting about getting hit, getting fouled, you gotta change the rules.
"I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I watched Dr. J [Erving] get beat up, I watched Magic [Johnson] get beat up [and] I watched Bird get beat up. I done get beat up. Everybody get beat up. Now we gotta change the rules ‘cause he getting hit?’"
"Zeke" had an even more scathing remark about the NBA favoring Jordan last year in another interview:
"Y'all want him to win; y'all changed all the rules so he can win. Wait a minute now; these are the facts."
Isiah Thomas’ Detroit Pistons played a brand of physical basketball that most fans, including a few analysts, called dirty. They particularly had rules designed to contain Michael Jordan, who was a one-man show in Chicago.
“Air Jordan,” at that time, was becoming the face of the NBA and was pushing the league to heights never before seen. The league probably felt that it needed to do a better job of keeping Jordan from the abuse of the tactics like the one employed by the “Bad Boys.”
Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls eventually overcame the Detroit Pistons’ physicality to rule the NBA
The Detroit Pistons were the Chicago Bulls’ biggest stumbling blocks to NBA dominance. From 1988 to 1990, the Bulls increasingly got better but they were still booted out of the playoffs by the "Bad Boys.”
In 1991, the Bulls finally came through. They swept the Pistons, forcing their former tormentors to leave the court before the game was over. Detroit’s walk-off was a signal of their descent from power.
Isiah Thomas would argue that old age had finally caught up with them, which is why the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan dominated the NBA.
When Chicago won its first championship in 1991, “Zeke” was 29, Joe Dumars was 27 and Dennis Rodman was 29. Only Bill Laimbeer was past 30 among Detroit’s championship core. He was 33 at that time.
The emerging Bulls had finally learned how to deal with the Pistons' bruising physicality. Once they did that, no one could stop them.
Isiah Thomas told Maxwell that the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan refused to take lessons from them. With the way Jordan and crew demolished the Pistons, “Zeke” might have underestimated the Bulls’ resilience and ability to learn and adapt.