Isiah Thomas recently appeared on the Come and Talk 2 Me podcast with Mark Jackson, and one of the topics that came up was the now-infamous handshake incident between Thomas’ Detroit Pistons and the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls.
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Zeke and MJ have been rivals for over 40 years, dating back to when Thomas’ Indiana Hoosiers beat Jordan’s North Carolina Tar Heels in the 1981 NCAA Championship game. Thomas was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player, and he had the edge on Jordan throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s as his Pistons knocked Jordan’s Bulls out of the playoffs in three consecutive years.
Jordan finally got the upper hand in 1991, as the Bulls swept the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals en route to the first of six championships they would win with Jordan. This was the beginning of the end for the “Bad Boy” Pistons, and as legend has it, the Pistons didn’t stick around to shake the Bulls’ hands after getting trounced in four games.
Thomas made light of the furor surrounding the “non-handshake,” saying that although today’s players stick around on the court and shake hands with each other, that’s just not the way things were done back then. “Go find me the picture of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird shaking hands after a loss, after they played each other … That didn’t happen until 1991 when the Chicago Bulls, ’cause they cried all the time.”
Thomas went on to say that not only was shaking hands not the norm, not doing it was a sign of respect.
“When we beat the Celtics [in 1988], the Celtics walked off the floor, and we were happy that they had taught us so much. They didn’t need to be on the floor watching us celebrate. That was the respect that you gave to your opponent after you beat them.”
Even more than 30 years later, the handshake incident just won’t go away
Thomas and Jordan have been indirectly sniping at each other over the incident for years, with Jordan bringing it up in The Last Dance, a documentary on the Bulls that first aired on ESPN in 2020.
Though Thomas’ recent comments paint a picture that you just didn’t shake the other team’s hands back then, Jordan took it as the ultimate sign of disrespect, and he had the video footage to prove it. The Pistons had knocked the Bulls out of the playoffs three straight years before the Bulls finally turned the tables, and The Last Dance corroborated MJ’s account that even though it hurt, the Bulls did shake the Pistons’ hands after getting beaten.
“Two years in a row, we shook their hands when they beat us. There’s a certain respect to the game that we paid to them. That’s sportsmanship. No matter how much it hurts, and believe me, it f***** hurt.”
The feud between these two all-time greats seems like it will never die, and it all stems from their college coaches. Thomas was coached by Bob Knight, an undeniably great coach and infamously intense competitor whose resume includes three championships, throwing a chair across the court, and allegedly assaulting a student for not addressing him with respect. Jordan’s college coach was Dean Smith, a winner of two titles who was one of the most respected coaches to ever do it.
Jordan is known as the most competitive player in basketball history, which is what makes it so funny that Thomas believes so strongly that he and the Bulls were a bunch of crybabies. From 1991 on, Jordan and the Bulls ran the NBA, while the Thomas and the Pistons faded into obscurity. Thomas may enjoy talking about it now, but Jordan got the last laugh.
