Posted by rvhoss:

http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Thomas_Isiah.html

Along with his emergence as one of the NBA's brightest stars, Thomas became one of its most outspoken players. He caused a stir during the 1987 playoffs by parroting Dennis Rodman and saying that if Larry Bird were black he'd be just "another good guy" instead of being hyped as the league's best player. Thomas later apologized to Bird and claimed he was joking.

on the larry/rodman/isiah deal - rodman said that bird was very overrated. isiah said larry was a very, very good basketball player but he had to agree with rodman, if he were black, he'd be just another good guy. larry laughed the whole thing off. he agreed to have a conference with isiah to help him get the heat off. at the conference larry smiled and joked aw c'mon isiah you know my game is bad.
if any of you cats were around and watching hoops at the time you understood this was all meaningless and due to one thing - larry had torn the f'g hearts out of the pistons with that steal off isiah and pass to dj for the come from behind win. this was the '87 series one of the most incredibly painful things that could have happened to an athlete (isiah) - there were 5 seconds left in the game! - and one of the all-time greatest plays in the history of any sport by larry and dj.

as for the celtics being the good boys or the golden boys it wasn't true. they were f'g thugs and hated throughout the league for it. in bird's 1st year he had cowens, rick robey, ml carr, cornbread maxwell playing with him. they sma=acked the hell out of people. later on mchale was clotheslining people, bird was egging entire arenas on, ainge was nasty as hell,

Posted by BlueSeats:

oohah, your speculation is as good as mine regarding Isiah's motives toward Croshere and KVH, but I'm quite certain on the Bird comments. I had read it before and it was confirmed by Rodman himself on that interview show with Michael Kay, the name of which is escaping me.

Rodman said "If Bird was white, he would be just another good player", and when asked about Rodman's comments, isiah as team captain in battle, simply backup up his teammate. Rodman, on the show, said it was just a flippant comment, but he really appreciated isiah, his captain, backing him up. It was a matter of teammates in battle. It didn't matter what Rodman had said, isiah was gonna have his back. And Rodman was screwy even then, his wasn't an easy back to keep up with, but it was isiah's team and that was part of how he kept it together.

And while on a talent level we know the comment is absurd, I can understand how the detroit players, while locked in battle for the eastern conference, would be offended when so much talk is on the other team. I mean it's one of the things I loved about isiah and the "badboys", they were always the underdog, and always fighting against the "goodboy" charisma of Bird and Magic, but those little blue collar guys from detroit, with humongous hearts, took down both the mighty giants of the Celtics, Lakers and Bulls.

Isiah has never been placed in the "Magic, Michael, Bird" pantheon, but he beat them all. His heart was huge.

He beat them all.

Posted by bobs3304:

The Celtics of the 80's were the my favorite team of all time.

Marv is right on the money, they were the blue-collar, ruff-em-up "redneck" boys playing hard and kicking ass.