Isiah Thomas brutally sabotaged his own NBA draft

Isiah Thomas is a Detroit Piston in every way that matters. Two championships. A Hall of Fame career. One of the most revered legacies in franchise history. But long before any of that, he was a kid from Chicago with a very different plan.

And when that plan fell apart on draft night, the result turned out to be one of the great accidental success stories in NBA history.

How Thomas tried to rig his own draft

Thomas entered the 1981 NBA Draft as one of the most coveted prospects available, fresh off a Most Outstanding Player performance at the NCAA Tournament with the Indiana Hoosiers. Most analysts had him pegged as a top-two pick.

But the Chicago Bulls owned the fourth pick, and Thomas, who grew up on the West Side of Chicago, had already decided where he wanted to play. His strategy was straightforward and risky. He planned to perform poorly enough in every pre-draft interview that teams ahead of Chicago would lose interest and pass on him.

He started with the Dallas Mavericks, who held the first pick. When their head coach asked who the best player in the draft was, Isiah pointed to someone else, naming Mark Aguirre. He then told the coaching staff that their system, which leaned heavily on forwards, was not built for the way he played.

The coach left the meeting angry. Thomas left it satisfied.

The Pistons saw right through it

The Detroit Pistons held the second pick, so Thomas sat down with general manager Jack McCloskey and kept up his act. He answered every question poorly, doing his best to seem like a bad fit for the organization.

McCloskey was not fooled. He told Thomas directly that he could see exactly what was happening, and that he would still take him at number two if he was available. Thomas did not take the news well.

Pistons scout Will Robinson then delivered a message that stayed with Thomas for decades. Robinson told him that if he wound up in Detroit, the city would embrace him like nowhere else could. He acknowledged that Chicago meant everything to Thomas, but made clear that Detroit would offer a kind of love that was hard to find anywhere in the league.

Robinson was right.

What happened after the draft

The Pistons selected Isiah with the second pick in 1981, and the rest became basketball history. Over the next decade, he led Detroit to back-to-back championships and emerged as one of the defining players of his era. The Bulls, his hometown team, never got the player they had been waiting for.

Thomas ended up where the game wanted him. The city he grew up loving watched from a distance.

SOURCE: Basketball Network