Ranking the 75 best players in NBA history for 75th anniversary

Ranking the 75 best players in NBA history: No. 38 – Isiah Thomas

On NBA 50 at 50 List

Career: 1981 – 1994

Achievements: Two-time champion; All-NBA (5x); All-Star (12x); Finals MVP; ninth in career assists; 18th in career steals

Isiah Thomas is both underrated and overrated as an all-time great, which seems like an impossible paradox to work out. The facts are that he won two titles with the Detroit Pistons, the “Bad Boys” who fought their way past Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers and fought off Michael Jordan’s Bulls to win two titles before Jordan became inevitable. He made 12 All-Star teals in 13 seasons in the league.

Thomas is underrated because of how remarkable it was for a team without a transcendent star (read those names from the last paragraph) to win two titles. Those Detroit teams were tough, defensive units who fought and clawed and gave no ground. Thomas’ impact is also downplayed because of how much his peers simply did not like him, including how he was frozen out of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team.

At the same time, Thomas is often overrated by casual fans of the game. He is a well-known face of this era of basketball and he won two titles, so he is looked at as a star in the same conversation as his contemporaries. The truth is that Thomas was an inefficient point guard who was a sieve on defense, and his teams often played better when he was off the court. The Pistons won their two titles not when Thomas found another gear, but when he ceded some of the load to Joe Dumars and Dennis Rodman came into his own as a truly special and dominant defensive force.

Thomas was a very good player; not elite, not a superstar, but he earned a place on this list and was the face of a team in the Bad Boys that played a key role in the story of the NBA.