The rivalry between Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan appears to be alive and well.
Thomas took to Twitter on Thursday to call out a story by The Inquisitr explaining the origins of his rivalry with Jordan — and the longstanding theory that the Pistons legend froze him out of his first NBA All-Star game in 1985.
“Stop lying this story is not factual or accurate, tell the truth man,” Thomas wrote on Twitter, quote-tweeting the story. “Dr. J, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Sidney Moncrief and I did not freeze you out. If memory serves me correct I was injured most of the second half and Bird had a broken nose. Magic [Johnson] and [Ralph] Sampson dominated the game.”
Jordan was limited in the alleged “freeze-out” All-Star game, scoring seven points on 2-of-9 shooting in 22 minutes.
Thomas was long accused of conspiring with fellow veterans on the Eastern Conference roster to keep the ball away from Jordan — as well as having encouraged his close friend Johnson to push his Western Conference squad to attack Jordan on defense.
The story by The Inquisitr does not contain new information about the rivalry between the two NBA legends. It actually references comments Jordan made in a 1992 “Playboy” magazine interview, in which he claimed Thomas froze him out of the 1985 All-Star Game.
“If you go back and look at the film, you can see that Isiah was actually doing that,” Jordan said. “Once it started getting around that he was freezing me out, that’s when the ill feelings started to grow between us.”
The rift between Thomas and Jordan was hashed up in the 2020 ESPN docuseries, The Last Dance, which chronicled Jordan and the 1990 Bulls championship run.
Thomas has denied the alleged “freeze-out” on multiple occasions through the years.
Thomas said he decided to go public not to impugn Jordan, but to defend his own honor.
In 2001, Thomas said he decided to speak publicly about the situation and defend himself after his then 12-year-old son asked him why he froze out Jordan in the 1985 All-Star Game — after doing research on Jordan, his favorite player, for a school project.
“That’s when I said, ‘OK, I’ve got to do something about this because this is crazy,’” Thomas told Pacers.com. “My son asked me about it and I just said, ‘That never happened.’”
Thomas continued at the time: “When stuff is being written in books and kids are reading that, then that’s a problem and that should stop,” he said. “Before you write that, you should get a tape, look at the game and draw your own conclusions. It’s always, ‘This is what I heard happened.’ But they write it in such a way that it really did happen.
“No one ever asked Larry Bird. No one ever asked Julius Erving, or Moses Malone, ‘Did you guys sit down and do this?’ They asked me. I have to defend it.”
