The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [35]
For whatever reason, Thomas always seemed to find controversy. He found it as a player, and he found it in his messy divorce from the Pistons following his playing days. He found it as an executive when he was accused of running the CBA (Continental Basketball Association) into the ground after twenty years as the Minor League of the NBA. He found it as the President of the Toronto Raptors, where he made several questionable personnel moves, and as coach of the Indiana Pacers, where he clashed repeatedly with the team’s top brass. Most recently, Thomas encountered controversy in his role of President of Basketball Operations with the New York Knicks, in his clashes with former head coach Larry Brown, and the following year with Brown disciple George Karl, an opposing coach.
When Isiah was still a college student at Indiana University, he was selected for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. Just months before the team was scheduled to go to Moscow, President Jimmy Carter pulled the United States out of the games, boycotting the games for political reasons. The American athletes therefore never had a chance to represent their country in Olympic competition.
In the 1984 Olympics, it was the Soviets’ turn to boycott the games, and the United States (with Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing) won the gold in basketball. By the time the U.S. men’s national basketball team played the USSR in the semifinals of the 1988 Olympic tournament, the U.S. had compiled an Olympic record of 77-1. But the USSR, led by professional players like Sarunas Marculonis and Arvydas Sabonis, shockingly defeated the American amateurs by a score of 82-76.
The loss led FIBA (International Amateur Basketball Federation) to vote 56-13 on April 17, 1989, to allow NBA players to play in future Olympics. (The U.S. actually voted against NBA participation.) This vote not only paved the way for the U.S. Dream Team, but it opened the NBA doors to great Europeans like the aforementioned Sabonis. The United States would finally be able to send their best and most deserving players to Barcelona for the 1992 games. And when Detroit Pistons head coach Chuck Daly was selected to be the coach for the 1992 U.S. Olympic National Team, it seemed like Isiah Thomas would finally get the chance to represent his country.
After all, Thomas had done wonders on the court in his Pistons career, mostly under the watchful eye of Daly. And there had to be some bias toward allowing at least one or two of the 1980 U.S. team a shot at the Olympics. The 1980 squad had some very good players, but by 1992 the best candidates (apart from Isiah) were Mark Aguirre and Buck Williams. Aguirre was a bona-fide scorer who had won two championship rings, played in three All-Star Games and averaged better than twenty-one points per game in his eleven-year career. Williams had toiled his first eleven years for relatively anonymous NBA stomping grounds New Jersey and Portland, yet he had averaged sixteen points and eleven rebounds per game. Buck had made three All-Star teams, and had been a valuable starter on teams that went to the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992. In addition, Buck had been named to the NBA′s All-Defensive first team in both 1990 and 1991.
USA Basketball, the organizing committee that selected the team, had an abundance of riches, and although they knew the games would be lopsided in favor of the United States regardless of whom they chose, still they ignored Williams, Aguirre, and Thomas.