Isiah Thomas, Game 6, 1988 Finals v. Lakers, when Isiah severely sprained his ankle en route to a Finals-record 25 points in the third quarter. In the voice of the ball.
The flu game was bullshit. That’s what Isiah told me afterward. Said he never bought it, said he knew Jordan was faking. You know, those guys had some history (laughs). To Zeke, that was just MJ trying to one-up him again. Maybe. I don’t know. How do you prove something like that?
You don’t have to prove a bum ankle. That thing swole up so big I thought somebody might start dribbling it. Oh, and the pain. He was a tough little guy, but you could see he was hurting, writhing around on the court like that. I remember Kareem—not exactly an emotional guy—sorta trying to peek out the corner of those goggles of his. Like he didn’t want to be caught looking, but he couldn’t help it. Nobody thought he’d come back. I figured Dumars would be handling me the rest of the night.
People forget, he had it rolling even before he got hurt. It wasn’t like he got hurt and then he started scoring. Most of those 25 points in the third quarter came before he went down. But the fact that he could play at all after that? Heroic. The fact that he was still scoring, keeping them in the game? That was something else. Epic, I guess you’d say.
You do this as long as I have, you get a feel. The way some guys handle you in tough situations. Isiah was one of the great ones, and I could tell that night. The other stuff—the coaching, the GM, the, uh, the stuff in New York? Yeah, I didn’t pick up on any of that. A ball can only know so much.
Ryan Jones is a contributing editor at Slam, the monthly basketball magazine. He spent seven years on the magazine’s staff, including serving as Slam’s editor in chief in 2005 and 2006. He wrote the first national magazine feature on a 16-year-old high school sophomore named LeBron James. He lives in Central Pennsylvania with his wife and two children. Follow him on Twitter at @thefarmerjones.
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More from “Talking To Talking Balls Week” at the Good Men Project:
Week One Links
Charlie Zegers: Shades of Willis Reed
Andrew Sharp: 2 for 18
David Matthews: The Logo
Nick Mancini: The ‘94 Knicks
Yago Colás: Nasty Infinities
Max Ornstein: Walt Clyde
Eric Freeman: Smush and Kwame?