You always think of Zeke as a villain, among a lot of former Piston players that were his teammates. But from reading some of his rebuttal comments in this article. I've to wonder: What does Zeke have to gain from spinning this? Perhaps, nothing... Hence, why this tiff (or falling-out) is all the more intriguing to read about.
I'm not going to challenge the credibility of either Magic or Zeke since I don't know the two personally outside of being a fan of the NBA and seeing them play every now and again on TV or through video clips. If any of what Zeke says is true. This is unfortunate. The things people do to sell their book or to gain sympathy or public attention to themselves. I mean there was that article no too long ago highlighting the resentment which resonated in Jordan's speech at the Hall Of Fame enshrinement. Criticizing him, and calling his actions that day petty. The point is: It's odd to read about as true a NBA star player you remember and maybe were a fan of as anything but a high character person. A facade, if you will. Then again, no human is perfect.
Interestingly, Bird has nothing bad to say about Isiah in the book, even though at one time Thomas was accused of saying that Bird was overrated because he was white. Bird, who is now president of the Indiana Pacers, fired Thomas as coach in 2003.
"Let's be real. I'm not going to say the things Magic said in private about Larry, but I do know the public stance he's taken [in becoming Bird's friend]," Thomas said. I know that's not how he felt about Larry Bird. Magic hated Larry, and he tried to make other people hate Larry. Magic was no friend of Larry Bird's during that time. And his Laker teammates will tell you that. And I'm sure they've got to be disgusted with the way he's carried on with this whole me-and-Larry bull.''
But that's another twist, as reported in detail by When The Game Was Ours: that the sport's most famous rivals -- Magic and Bird, who once considered each other enemies -- have grown to be friends, while the opposite has become of the relationship between Magic and Thomas, who famously greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek before each game of the '88 Finals, even as their friendship was souring.
The book tells the story of how Thomas and Mark Aguirre consoled Magic in his Boston hotel room as he stared out the window watching fans celebrating in the street after the Celtics beat the Lakers in Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals. Three years later in the same city, Thomas threw away Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals when Bird intercepted his inbounds pass and converted the steal to Dennis Johnson for the game-winning layup. When told that Magic now recalls engaging in an hours-long soul-searching conversation with him after that horrible loss, Thomas sounded skeptical. After a long pause, he said, "Sure. That could have been possible.
"The guy who reached out to me after that play was a Celtic and it was Bill Russell,'' added Thomas, who took the call from Russell the day after the game. "I was down dead on my knees after that play. He just called me up and said, 'Hey, we all make the mistakes, you've got to keep playing.' And he said it the way only he could say it. You know who else reached out to me? M.L. Carr [a former Boston teammate of Bird's]. For as hard as we played against the Celtics, I think we had a very personal relationship with them. They admired that we were trying to be like them. And we all said, to this day, they were the team that taught us, and everything the Pistons were, we took from their playbook.''
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/w ... gic/1.html
