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the court, including Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, Adrian Dantley, or Thomas himself, thought to do it, either.
    Isiah’s best option was Laimbeer, a good foul shooter, and LarryBird knew this, too. So Bird faked as if he was covering Dantley and darted toward Laimbeer just as Thomas, now pressed by the five-second clock, threw it in that direction.
    This was classic Bird, who always had trouble staying in front of his own man but, like a classroom busybody, was a master at horning in on everyone else’s affairs. Bird thought for a moment about fouling Laimbeer, but, as he said later, Thomas’s pass “seemed to stay in the air forever.” Bird made the steal, then immediately whirled, found teammate Dennis Johnson streaking down the lane, fed him a perfect pass, and watched as Johnson banked in a layup that gave the Celtics a 108–107 victory and a 3–2 series lead.
    It was not then that Thomas severely hurt his chances of being on a Dream Team that wasn’t even born yet. It was a few minutes later.
    Thomas was caught in what was then the worst place for an NBA player who had just lost a tough one—the visitors’ locker room in ancient Boston Garden, one step up from a junior high lavatory, complete with tepid water, open stalls, and the aroma of a prison mess hall. It was crowded, the air thick with tension, the season all but gone, and much hostility toward the Celtics already roiling in Isiah’s system. Indeed, a fight between Bird and Laimbeer, Isiah’s good buddy, had erupted during Game 3, a 122–104 Pistons victory. Laimbeer had been fined $5,000 for taking Bird down, and Bird $2,000 for throwing the ball at Laimbeer.
    Dennis Rodman, a rookie, then (as far as we know) dressing only like a man, decided to offer an opinion on Bird. I wasn’t there for the beginning of the conversation, but Rodman said that Bird was “overrated” and had won three straight MVP awards “just because he was white.” The attention then turned to Thomas, which was when I arrived. Thomas was asked about Rodman’s comments and said he “had to agree with Rodman.” Then, his brain, evidently in full lockdown mode, added: “Larry Bird is a very, very good basketball player. But if he was black he’d be just another guy.”
    Then Isiah did the Isiah laugh, familiar to anyone who had been around him, a little chuckle, accompanied by the part-angel, part-devil Isiah smile.
    Days later, when he went on an ask-for-absolution tour that culminated at the NBA Finals in Los Angeles, Isiah, standing next to an obviously uncomfortable Bird, would offer up the laugh as proof that he was joshing. But the laugh, then as now, never comes across that way. It is inscrutable, one that could mean he was joking or could mean he was as serious as a priest at high mass. It was impossible to tell. Isiah was, and remains today, a solipsist, his reality the only reality.
    At the press conference Isiah made some legitimate points about how black athletes are sometimes adjudged differently than white athletes. Whites are frequently called “heady” and “hardworking,” while blacks are presented as just naturally talented. There is something to that, but it was a subject for a different time and, in any case, should not have included Bird. Better that Isiah’s defense would’ve been:
I blew it. I was mad. You ever stand half naked in Boston Garden in front of an audience and been asked about a hated rival?
    But he didn’t. Though there were other reasons that Isiah never ultimately made the Dream Team—many point to the alleged All-Star Game freeze-out of Jordan, which had occurred two years earlier, and others pointed to the backroom politicking he had done during the 1988–89 season to force the Pistons to get rid of Adrian Dantley in favor of his buddy Mark Aguirre—I think that this was the major strike.
    Detroit still had hope, even after Isiah’s double gaffe. The Pistons beat the Celtics 113–105 at home to tie the series but,