“However, I have to concur with Rodman—if he were black, he would just be another nice guy”—Isiah Thomas makes fun of Larry Bird when remembering the Pistons’ 1987 Celtics defeat.

“However, I have to concur with Rodman—if he were black, he would just be another nice guy”—Isiah Thomas makes fun of Larry Bird when remembering the Pistons’ 1987 Celtics defeat.

The big games in the East were between the Boston Celtics led by Larry Bird and the Detroit Pistons led by Isiah Thomas, before Michael Jordan started his terror tour.The Celtics made three consecutive trips to the NBA Finals, beginning with the 1983–84 season and ending with the 1985–86 campaign. The emergence of the Bad Boy Pistons in the 1987 playoffs stood in their way of making it to yet another finals trip.

The Pistons’ brutal play and Isiah Thomas forced a Game 7, which they would cruelly lose to Larry Bird and the Celtics once more. After the game, when the postgame media interview was humming with intensity, tempers and tensions were high.
Jackie MacMullan remembers Isiah Thomas’s remarks on the finest player on the Celtics and the three-time MVP at the time in her Icons Club:
“Bobby Bird is an extremely talented basketball player.” He is, in my opinion, a very talented man. However, I have to concur with Rodman—if he were black, he would just be another nice guy.

Having witnessed the post-match interview firsthand, MacMullan clearly recalls the consequences from Thomas’ startling admission, “I was there in the Boston Garden visitors’ locker room that night.” I was shocked by what I had just heard. The inflammatory remarks quickly caught on and spread like wildfire. They were damning, and in my line of work, I’ve never seen such ferocity toward someone.”
“Afterwards, Isaac would say he was kidding around and being sarcastic. However, I heard him say it, and he meant it at that irritated moment.