Phil & Wlady:
I don't follow the NBA enough to know where to come down in your
debate, but I do know enough about Isiah Thomas, the Knick coach
whose impact on the franchise has been utterly ruinous since the
moment he arrived. Whatever his role in instigating the brawl was
or wasn't, it's pretty lame to hear him justifying it with what
amounts to a bruised sense of fair play.
"We had surrendered," he said of his team at
the moment in the game when the fight started, and then, referring
to the Nuggets regulars, "those guys shouldn't have been in the
game at that time. They were sticking it to us pretty good. They
were having their way with us pretty good."
Isiah was upset that the Nuggets were showing
up his squad. This from one of the worst sportsman the game has
ever seen, exemplified in his leading his Detroit Piston regulars
off the court in the 1991 conference finals, refusing to shake the
hands of their conquerors, the Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan.
That is right up there with the most graceless moments I've ever
seen in sports. Another came after one of Larry Bird's greatest
games, when an opposition player told the press that if Bird were
black, he'd be just another player. Who said that? Isiah Thomas, of
course.
topics:
Sports
