Rodman: Isiah Thomas, not Bird, should have made Dream Team

IT was the greatest team ever assembled, but in Dennis Rodman’s opinion there was one man missing — and one who should have made way.

IT was one of the most controversial omissions in basketball history — the decision to leave Detroit Pistons point guard Isiah Thomas off the US men’s basketball team for the 1992 Olympics.

On talent alone Thomas’s case to be part of the Dream Team — arguably the greatest team in sports history — was hard to ignore. He’d led the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back championships in 1989-90, was a regular All-Star and one of the most dynamic point guards in the NBA.

But an alleged feud with Michael Jordan and other players around the league reportedly kept him from being selected.

Dennis Rodman, who won two championships with Thomas in Detroit, has long argued his teammate should have been on the team. “Isiah was one of the greatest players to ever play — especially at his position,” said Rodman, during a recent radio appearance on Sirius XM’s “NBA Today” show. “I mean, (he was) maybe 6’1” ... he could have played for the Harlem Globetrotters and the Detroit Pistons at the same time — that’s how good he was.”

Rodman also named the player he believes should have made way — and for the first time in history it wasn’t Christian Laettner identified as the odd-man out.

“I just think the fact that — I don’t know the issues of Michael (Jordan) and Magic (Johnson) and whoever, (Charles) Barkley, and stuff like that, if they didn’t like Isiah. But for me, I felt Isiah should’ve been on that team because of the fact that he deserved it,” Rodman said.

“I think that the fact that, even though a lot of people will try deny it or try to correct me when I’m wrong, he should’ve been there instead of Larry Bird. Because Larry Bird was hurt, injured, he could barely play, and he was on that last leg of his career.

“I understand, again, the presidential treatment, because he did so much for the game, but I think for Isiah, I think they should’ve put him on that team without Larry Bird, and that’s my opinion.”

Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Karl Malone (rear) and Michael Jordan walk off the court during a game against Angola in Barcelona.

Basketball historians have attempted to discover just how much influence Jordan had on Thomas’s non-selection.

A 2009 book about Bird and Johnson titled When the Game Was Ours quoted Johnson as saying “Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him”.

But it also featured comments from Clyde Drexler, another member of the team who had a rivalry with Jordan’s Bulls, which indicated it wasn’t a unanimous view.

“I don’t think Jordan wanted to play with Isiah,” Drexler said. “Two championships in a row, always an All-Star. And Isiah can’t make it?

“I didn’t like that. It’s not the players’ choice. It’s who’s supposed to be there. If you don’t like me, I don’t give a f***. We’re competitors. You’re not supposed to like me. But when one player has the ability to leave another player off, we’ve lost control of the system.

“The one thing in sports that’s been important to me is integrity. If someone is good, no matter what, I am never going to say he’s not. If you’re good, you’re good.”

A documentary on the Dream Team released in 2012 included comments from Jordan and his Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen which revealed their dislike for Thomas.

“I despised how he played the game,’’ Pippen said. “Isiah was the general (of the Pistons), he was the guy who would yap at his teammates and say, ‘Kick them on their ass. Do whatever you have to do.’ No, I didn’t want him on the Dream Team.”

Jordan added: “That was one of the stipulations put to me … that Isiah wasn’t part of the team.”

Originally published as Rodman: Isiah Thomas, not Bird, should have made Dream Team