There are few things as fun in sports as rivalries between teams and players. When those players happen to be among the best of their generation, it gets even better. Magic vs. Bird is probably the most well-known rivalry in the history of the NBA but in terms of aggressiveness and nastiness, the rivalry between Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Isiah Thomas’ ‘Bad Boy’ Detroit Pistons is unmatched.
There was a lot of bad blood between the two teams, with Jordan failing to beat them on multiple occasions thanks to their physical play as the Pistons went on to win two championships. The story of how Thomas and the Pistons refused to shake the Bulls’ hands after they finally lost to them became popular after The Last Dance documentary and IT credited it with his omission from the 1992 Dream Team.
The rivalry has continued to this day, with things like Isiah liking tweets discrediting Jordan’s GOAT case and Thomas has now taken another shot at Jordan’s legacy, talking about how a false narrative has been painted around MJ’s achievements. Thomas went on the ‘Point Forward’ Podcast with Andre Igoudala and Evan Turner and spoke about how Jordan never actually had to go through the likes of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and that he was the one to do that.
“So this whole narrative about, ‘Jordan went through [Larry] Bird, he went through Magic [Johnson], he went through Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar].’ Nooooo. Timeout. That’s my story! That ain’t Jordan’s story,” Thomas said on the podcast.
“Jordan didn’t go through Magic, Kareem, Bird if I remember correctly. Jordan beat, he beat us [the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons] in ’91 at the end, and then he beat [Charles] Barkley, Shawn Kemp, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing. These were the people he beat. He didn’t beat Magic, Bird, and Kareem. But y’all been sold this story, ‘Oh, he was in the ’80s getting down.’ No, no, no, no, no.”
Now, this isn’t entirely true, since Jordan did beat Magic Johnson and his Los Angeles Lakers to win his first title in 1991. While he never managed to beat Larry Bird, he had arguably the greatest playoff performance against the Celtics when he dropped 63 points, the most any player has scored in a playoff game. IT may be underrated since he and the Pistons did also to on these legends and win, but Jordan’s consistency in his prime is hard for anyone to match.
