Powers that be in the Sports Media have attempted to perpetrate a fraud over the past 20 to 25 years and revise NBA history.  They have tried to sell the unwitting public on the following 3 lies:
 
LIE #1) BASKETBALL IN THE 80s AND EARLY 90s WAS MAGIC-BIRD-JORDAN.  

It wasn’t.

Anytime you hear someone refer to that era as the “Magic Bird Jordan” era, you should correct them.  It was actually the “Magic-Bird-Isiah” era.  The truth is, Michael was just coming up and learning how to win while those three teams dominated (the Pistons in the later part of course).  When Michael started winning, it could easily be said that the Showtime era was over.  Jordan so dominated and changed the way the game was played that he really does deserve his own era.

*Consider this:  Isiah and HIS Pistons were the ONLY team to beat Jordan’s Bulls, Magic’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics in their prime years.  

Jordan’s Bulls really beat old-guard teams that were past their respective primes.  However, Jordan was so incredible individually, even while learning how to win as a team that his eventual surpassing of those teams was accepted as inevitable.

LIE #2: ISIAH AND JOE DUMARS WERE PEERS ON THE COURT AND THE CORE OF THE PISTONS.

They were not.

Dumars, who I LOVE as a player and with whom I actually share a birthday, has benefited greatly from the media’s disdain of Isiah Thomas.  He’s one of the saints turned deity by history, lol.

Joe Dumars was Isiah’s Pippen/Worthy/McHale.  He was the clear #2 and EVERYONE who watched knew it. INCLUDING HIM.

LIE #3: ISIAH AND JOHN STOCKTON WERE NEAR EQUALS ON THE COURT AND THE CORE OF THE PISTONS.

…Please.

This issue boils down to one very simple point, yet basketball revisionists choose to obscure it. If Stockton was so close to Isiah’s equal or slightly his better, then why over 20 years later is the “snub” still considered an outrage?

No one is crying foul over Kevin Johnson not being on the team, right?

Look, if you were someone who seriously followed the NBA closely during that era (as I did), the FACT is that Stockton was no where near Isiah’s caliber.  He just wasn’t. Anyone who tries to argue differently is trying to push an agenda.  Stockton led the league in assists because that was the way the Jazz were structured.  Stockton set em up, Malone knocked em down.  And it worked very well.  In fact, Jerry Sloan is probably, in some weird way, the grandfather of the current NBA offense which is pick-n-roll to the 10th power now!

Now, you’ll get some people who didn’t really see these two play but will saber-metric the numbers and claim Stockton was better.  He wasn’t.  Isiah was FAR more to the Pistons than Stockton was to the Jazz.  Isiah could simply…take…over…a…game.  Stockton couldn’t.  Isiah could create not just for himself but for his teammates as well.

I saw the two play…Isiah was the best small man to ever play until Allen Iverson showed up.

“The Snub” is one of basketball’s “high crimes”.  It marked a moment where the integrity of the game was upended by petty personal rivalries and politics.  Jordan robbed a deserving player of a special honor that could not be replaced. 

It’s also a shame that 20 plus years later, basketball still hasn’t admitted that. 

Well, he didn’t ‘deserve’ to be there. I think they should’ve just picked 12 NBA guys. But if the idea was to pick 11 NBA guys and 1 college guy, then Laettner was unquestionably the college guy at the time.

I can take an argument for Isiah over Stockton seriously. Personally, in fact, I think Isiah was better, although it was pretty close.

But what kills your argument is when you say insane things like this: “the writers, who hated and underrated Isiah for living and still do, say.”

Sure, writers have biases. But to act like there wasn’t support for and against Isiah’s inclusion in ’92 is ridiculous. I highly suggest you read McCallum’s book. There is a lot of interesting nuance in there, particularly about Daly’s and McCloskey’s unwillingness to fight for Isiah behind closed doors. It wasn’t the media that kept Isiah off the Dream Team. It was a combination of the fact that Stockton had closed the gap enough between the two around the time of the selection to make picking him over Isiah less egregious than it would’ve been a couple seasons prior and, more importantly, Isiah had zero allies, not even his own coach or GM, at the time. To blame the media is absurd.