The Last Dance: In Praise of One Lone Gold Hoop Earring

Is there a thread on ILH to explain why everyone hates Isiah Thomas?

start one!!!! also hi horseshoe!!!!!!!

hi m bise!!!

doug collins: “when i was coaching michael, he became the league mvp, the all-star game mvp, and defensive player of the year. now that’s greatness.”

are you talking about mj there, doug? or...

Is there a thread on ILH to explain why everyone hates Isiah Thomas?

― horseshoe, Monday, May 4, 2020 6:12 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

there are a lot of assholes in the nba but i think what sets isiah apart is hes the smarmiest person in the world, hes just fake as fuck and ppl dont like that, and then also players hated the pistons cause they played too rough and isiah was the pistons best player, is how i break it down to an extent

ty!

im sure there are also particular stories of shit he did u cld track down, if u do post them here thx

it bothers me that Isiah has a similar speaking voice to Smokey Robinson. I wish his voice was more jerk-sounding.

also there's that whole sexual harassment thing

i wish he were less handsome

yeah i mean hes exactly the type of guy to talk a corrupt billionare into hiring him then oversea a hellish work environment all the while acting like his shit doesnt stink

horseshoe otm

eveything about him is infuriating, gross or weird or all three

im sorry he had to be so attractive my thoughts are with you in these difficult times

ty

i hated him and respected him because he was the celtics' nemesis for awhile, along with reggie miller

i was only a casual basketball fan at the time - i watched the playoffs when the celtics were in it - but that was probably the peak of my fandom until the ewing-era knicks/heat rivalry, so it's been pretty amazing to hear the details behind what i only saw the outside of at the time, in passing

laettner was a #3 draft pick, but he was never good enough to justify going that high. if he had insisted on being paid like an nba star he would have ended up playing somewhere in Europe, because he was only suited to be a role player and the league knew that after two or three seasons of trying to elevate him to a star.

Drafted by one of the worst organizations in the history of the league, settled into being a pretty good starter/sixth man, a lot worse can happen at the number 3 pick

lol this allstar game footage all these alltime great and then antoine walker and vin baker

i love how there's always a couple losers on the all-star teams but the late 90s/early aughts were the zenith of the phenomenon

actually i guess there's so hq talent these days that we haven't had a true wtf guy like dale davis or whatever making a squad in a few years

loosening the positional requirements helped too

ok so i did just flip through the chapter in lazenby's book on jordan not making varsity as a sophomore. here's the quick version:

- the team was returning 11 seniors and 3 juniors
- 8 of the returning upperclassmen were guards
- jordan was 5'10" at the time, and the sophomore who made the team was 6'6"
- "he couldn't beat any of the upperclassmen 1 on 1 until the end of his sophomore year"
- sadly, the varsity coach was out of coaching 3 years after jordan graduated due to the onset of schizophrenia

Been thinking bout him since i first saw him. In the movie over the course of the season MJ gets into him for over 50k - this guy needed 50k he promised for his daughter and her husband for a mortgage payment. He won’t take MJ up on another bet. MJ SHOWS UP AT HIS HOUSE.

— SAFDIE (@JOSH_BENNY) May 4, 2020

omg I called it

haa

i just watched the ep and the dude is fucking around with his gun while michael is pitching quarters

https://i.imgur.com/KCE7JzL.png

I’ll keep watching this but kinda feel ESPN buried the lede here

love how there were at least four different pronunciations of kukoc in the first episode

Lol. I think Barkley STILL calls Dirk "No-wit-ski".

man how cool would it to be buds with john salley. just seems like the coolest, most thoughtful dude.

it feels churlish to complain about anything amid the incredible bounty of this series but the structure gives me whiplash. i get that it's a complex thing they're trying to pull off - the spine is the footage from 97/98, and they have to set up all the stories including key milestones in the team's progress. but sometimes i'm like, wait rodman's a piston again?? fuck

same

yah even as a diehard its a little hard to follow especially as the past clips get closer and closer to the 97-98 season

i really like the digressive style i think theyre doing a good job of keeping it interesting

they also show a graphic every time they jump around

i noticed that :) yeah it definitely keeps you guessing

man, today's jordan. the gap between what he was then and now. he's capable of a lot of nuanced reflection now - he has a kind of humanity that i never really credited him with. savvy, yes, humanity, no. and he looks like a sack of crap. you look at wennington, salley, pippen - they look great. they look alive. the gap with what jordan was - superhuman, alive to everything - and today is like.... fuck. feels like there's some layers of narcotization back there in the storeroom of his post-career life that he's somehow made his peace with or intermittently climbs his way out of.

yeah

when he said if he could change one think itd be to not have been a role model there was a lot there

i never thought i’d look at jordan and feel... pity?

he looks pretty normal to me minus the eyes. i think being an owner of one of the worst hoops franchises and not being able to figure it out eats at him every day tho.

i remember this article having some good inside nuggets:
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Michael-Jordan/michael-jordan-not-left-building

i agree w tracer that he seems sad and like he does booze and pills but its not like hes unraveling it just is what it is

Back in the office after his vacation on a 154-foot rented yacht named Mister Terrible

beautiful phrase

dark musings!

"I … I always thought I would die young," he says, leaning up to rap his knuckles on the rich, dark wood of his desk.

was listening to some pod recently and they advanced the idea that as an owner having so little control over outcomes would be driving him totally insane if he didn't detach in a pretty severe way.

to me he seems pretty normal among people who peaked early. they usually know when they don't have a second act. so he plays 36 holes of golf every day and hangs out with a family he seems to at least kind of like. it could be worse.

The Harvey Gantt stuff in E5 was really interesting. I'm familiar with the Jordan quote but didn't know it was connected to a specific political campaign.

Felt bad for Kukoc for being thrown into that impossible situation in the Olympics--here, go pitch to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; I got them nice and angry ahead of time for you--so was glad he made a good showing second time around.

he's capable of a lot of nuanced reflection now

That's the best thing about this. He wiggled a bit talking about Gantt, but for the most part, I never feel like he's shaping his responses. The things that drove him then still do--loved the Clyde Drexler showdown, the way he's able to speak respectfully about Drexler but still make it clear it was a mismatch.

it's fun to watch the glass of whiskey next to him go up and down

yeah, i imagine the quantum state of that tumbler is impacting the nature of this doc quite a bit