Fifteen years later, Isiah Thomas still swells with pride when he talks about the “Bad Boys” sweeping the Lakers for the 1989 NBA championship. And Thomas’ wild competitive streak swells up, too.
“We had lost to them the year before, and we were going to beat the [bleep] out of them,” Thomas recalls feeling before those Finals began. “And we did.”
When the Pistons, the nastiest team in NBA history, sunk L.A. in four straight games, cries came that the glitzy Lakers were injured. Magic Johnson was banged up, missing Game 4 and playing only five minutes of Game 3 with a sore hamstring. Byron Scott missed the whole series with a hamstring tear. The Knicks president gets riled up at anyone looking to minimize the Pistons’ accomplishment.
“The same thing happened to me the year before and I didn’t say I was hurt,” said Thomas, whose sprained ankle left him hobbling severely on the court in Detroit’s 1988 Finals defeat to L.A. “That’s the way it goes. Injuries were part of the game. I’ve always contended the Celtics and Lakers felt like they were in an exclusive club. They didn’t like the fact we kicked their [butt]. And we did kick their [butt].”
The Hall-of-Fame point guard will be at the Palace Thursday when the Lakers-Pistons Finals switches to Motown for Game 3. The Pistons are organizing a “Bad Boys” reunion for the occasion. “I’d do anything for any of those guys,” Thomas said.
Thomas makes no bones about his enjoyment in seeing Jack Nicholson’s favorite team fall to the “Bad Boys.”
“I admire and respect what [the Lakers] have done,” Thomas said. “But when I had to compete against the Lakers, I [bleeping] wanted to dominate them and we did, did it so much [that] Pat Riley changed his style of play.”
The Pistons repeated as champions the following year, beating the Blazers in five in the ’90 Finals. “The second one was validation,” Thomas said. “The Lakers weren’t hurt that year and they didn’t even make The Finals.”
Thomas embraces the “Bad Boys” nickname, the embodiment of players like Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, John Salley.
“It’s one of those cult things,” Thomas said. “It was what we were and who we were. As a competitive business, people used it against us, made it seem like we were outside the lines. We didn’t manipulate the stats. All we were about was playing basketball and being one of the best defensive teams to ever play the game. Teams wanted to be pretty back then and we were about stopping you from being pretty.”