One of the more authentically Chicago guys in terms of NBA players to ever come out of this city in my opinion. I remember listening to one of the Detroit Piston Gms talking about how he intentionally tried to screw up his pre draft interview just so that they wouldn't draft him with the No. 2 pick. Why? Because he wanted to be available for his hometown Bulls team to draft him with the 3rd pick. They took him anyway because they knew what he was up too and leaving Ricky Sobers available for the Bulls with the 3rd pick. And the rest is history.

One of the my guys told me years ago (Ironically) that Jordan told him personally that Isiah Thomas was the toughest player that he ever had to guard in the NBA. He was that damn good.

I’m impressed you didn’t call him “Zeke” once in this post.

leaving Ricky Sobers available for the Bulls with the 3rd pick.

I know that can't be right. Sobers has to be ten years older than Isiah.

I definitely didn’t say that.

There were three players who’d separated themselves in the draft class of 1981: Thomas, a sophomore at Indiana, and juniors Mark Aguirre of DePaul and Buck Williams of Maryland. Dallas had the No. 1 pick and New Jersey the No. 3 pick with the Pistons in the middle and McCloskey hoping the Mavericks wouldn’t pick Thomas.

Somebody else didn’t want the Mavericks to pick him: Isiah Thomas. When he visited Dallas prior to the draft, he told Mavs coach Dick Motta that he didn’t think he’d fit his system and that Aguirre was the best player in the draft. He then irked Mavs owner Donald Carter, who liked to wear cowboy hats, by refusing to don one of his Stetsons for the cameras.

But Thomas wasn’t trying to steer the Mavericks off of him so he could get to the Pistons. He was hoping to land with his hometown Chicago Bulls, who went into the draft with the No. 4 pick.

“He wanted to play in his hometown,” McCloskey recalled. “He told me, ‘You don’t have any players.’ I said, ‘That’s true. But I’ll get you some players.’ ”

Thomas tried the same tactics that worked in Dallas when he visited Detroit, where he met with McCloskey and his trusted longtime scout Will Robinson, who coached Detroit Pershing and all-time great Spencer Haywood before becoming the first black Division I head coach at Illinois State.

“Jack McCloskey was asking me all these questions and I was intentionally answering every one of ’em wrong and finally he looked at me and said, ‘I know what you’re doing but I’m going to draft you at number two if you’re there and you’re going to love it,’ ” Thomas said on a recent podcast with another Chicago native and NBA alumnus, Quentin Richardson. “So he walks out and Will Robinson walks in and Will goes, ‘Champ, if you’re lucky enough to get here to Detroit, this place will love you like no other.’ … And he was right.”

There wasn’t much Thomas could have done to scare off McCloskey, who said he would have taken Thomas with the No. 1 pick over Aguirre, a childhood friend of Thomas from Chicago’s west side and a player McCloskey would shockingly trade for eight years later with the Pistons on the verge of the franchise’s first NBA title. McCloskey was sold after scouting Thomas during his sophomore season and seeing him play “a perfect game.”

His story about when Knight came to visit. I know it's abject poverty....but still, it just never seemed quite authentic as it was put out there.

What part of it don't you buy? The part that a roach was crawling right by Knights head?

The part I would like to know the real story about is Isiah's brother and Knight getting into a fight.