8601170839
DETROIT FREE PRESS
860420
Sunday, April 20, 1986
METRO FINAL
1D
Photo Associated Press
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1986, Detroit Free Press
ISIAH TRIES TO PUT HIS AILMENT OUT OF HIS MIND
ATLANTA -- He didn't want to see the blood. The playoff game was just
minutes away, his teammates were all around him in the locker room, and he
felt the burning sensation like a match inside his belly. It was the worst
time it could happen. But it was happening. So Isiah Thomas did what Isiah
Thomas will always do; he hid the pain, from others and from himself. He
sneaked off to a bathroom stall and kept his eyes closed when he used it,
because there was blood in his urine, there had been for days, and he just
couldn't look at it. Not now. Not minutes before the game. When he was
finished, he walked out, eyes forward. "I didn't care if it was red or blue
or green or pink," he said. "I didn't want to know."
Block it out. Think basketball.
This had been happening on and off for nearly two weeks, the result of an
ulcer on Thomas' bladder revealed by an April 7 biopsy. He had played four
games since first noticing the problem after an April 4 contest against
Milwaukee. And when he wasn't forced to confront his own blood, he walked
around burning like a man who had just drunk nine beers and then found all
the bathrooms locked. "All the time," he said glumly. "Can you imagine
feeling that way all the time?" It was so bad Wednesday night that he called
the Pistons' team doctor after midnight and there was talk of sending Thomas
back to Detroit. The doctor advised him to go. "He advised me," Thomas
emphasized. Meaning, Isiah makes the decisions. And the decision was to stay
and play against the Atlanta Hawks.
Block it out. Think basketball.
It would be easy to call this a story of bravery, but if Isiah Thomas is
brave, he is also frightened. It would be easy to call this "playing with
pain," but that would leave out the mental anguish that led Thomas to the
most unnatural game of his professional life Thursday night, a game he says he
"lost to himself." It would be easy to call this nobody's business -- the
Pistons might prefer it that way -- but that's as wrong as hiding Thomas'
stats after a great performance.
Call it no fun. Suddenly, he is playing while trying to keep his mind
from thinking "something's just gonna bust out there." Suddenly all the
lights are not turning green for him. Suddenly, there is worry.
Suddenly, Isiah Thomas, baby-faced Isiah Thomas, always- smiling Isiah
Thomas, maybe the most popular athlete in Detroit, suddenly that Isiah
Thomas has been forced to confront his mortality in a bowl full of blood.
During the playoffs.
No fun. No fun at all.
On Friday afternoon Thomas, 24, sat on the bed in his hotel room at
Atlanta's Ritz Carlton, his sneakers untied, his sweats dangling loosely over
his body. He would prefer that he didn't have to talk about this, that this
kind of story never be written. "It's so . . . personal," he pleaded. Moments
earlier, there had been joking about the soap operas on his TV and Thomas had
been laughing hard, with that well-known infectious laugh, so loud and hearty
it ought to have a beard and a lumberjack hat on it. And then, an awkward
pause. The question came up about the bladder, the ulcer. The laughing
stopped. He lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair, back and
forth. He said nothing for a minute. And then he said, "Who told you?"
Illness fits Isiah Thomas badly, like a raincoat six sizes too big. He
feels funny inside it. And fortunately, until now, he has pretty much avoided
it. So at first he said, "I don't want to talk about it." And then he talked
about it anyhow, because he is honest, even when he is hurting. He always has
been.
"The tests came back Wednesday afternoon," he said, sighing. "Right after
we got here. They showed me the medical report and the first question I asked
was, 'How did I get it?' They said they didn't know, only that I had it. The
next question I asked was, 'When's it gonna go away?' They said it takes time.
"That afternoon it happened (blood in his urine) and then again that
night. I didn't sleep much at all. They said, 'You want a sleeping pill?' but
I said no. I remember seeing 5 a.m., 6 a.m., 7 a.m.
"I tried to block it out. Substitute the worrying about it with
basketball."
He smiled, but it was a sad smile.
"That ain't working," he said.
Thomas played well statistically Thursday, scoring 20 points with 16
assists and six rebounds, but the Hawks beat the Pistons badly, 140-122, in
the opening game of the first-round playoff series. "It was the first time in
a long time when I really didn't get into that comfort zone, that feeling of
just peace. I looked at my numbers afterward and I said, that was hard.
Instead of just playing for fun and letting the energy flow it was like, 'Make
it! Make it!' "
He leaned back against a pillow and stared at his fingers as he spoke. "I
knew it was wrong from the beginning. Billy (Laimbeer) asked me before we
started, 'You OK?' And I was just thinking, 'Wilkins! Willis! Spud!' I was
concentrating so hard. Our trainer said, 'You OK?' And I was thinking,
'Wilkins! Willis! Spud!' Just blocking everything out."
The mind game cost Thomas his spontaneity, his joy. And anyone who has
ever watched this young guard play knows that joy is as much an ingredient
in his success as is accuracy. His energy is contagious. His mere presence is
worth points and rebounds to his teammates. It just works that way.
"I have to just relax and not think about it. Not worry about anything.
That's my game.
"I remember my brother once said something about the game on the street,
the hustling, the cons. He said the best way to beat the game is not to play.
If you don't play, you can't lose. I played the game mentally Thursday and I
lost. I can't do that again."
It wasn't easy Saturday. Game 2 was ugly, a mean season, with words and
elbows flying as often as foul shots. Thomas was plagued by foul trouble in
the first half, was forced to sit for the last six minutes, and for a while it
seemed that, despite decent numbers, the magic was still just out of reach.
And then came the third quarter. A shot in the body from Tree Rollins left
Thomas scowling, mad, pumped. He charged downcourt, and the shots started
falling. Lay-ups. Jumpers. He put the ball between his legs twice, three
times, four times, then threw in a long jumper to tie the score at 84. When
the buzzer sounded he'd poured in 18 points in that quarter alone. It wasn't
a smiling performance. But it was effective, and under the circumstances,
even a bit remarkable.
And it wasn't enough.
Despite Thomas' heroics (36 points, nine assists), the Pistons lost again
to the Hawks in a roaring, unfriendly Omni arena, 137-125, and they are one
game away from elimination in the playoffs.
And afterward, Thomas was sad, as you might expect. But it mattered not a
bit that an ulcer had settled inside him. Basketball is a roommate of his
heart. That was the part that hurt the most.
For the record let it be said that: 1) Thomas is no martyr. If the press
hadn't discovered this he would tell almost no one, including most of his
teammates; 2) There is no indication that he is risking serious injury by
playing, even though he was advised against playing after the initial biopsy.
That's the outer crust of this story. The malady, the wait, the recovery.
But beneath the surface lies another element, a part that breathes. Because
Isiah Thomas still has a corner of his heart that believes he will live
forever. Which is what makes looking at something like this so hard.
"I tell Lynn (his wife) if we're ever in a plane crash and they don't
find my body? I ain't dead!" He laughed. "Or if the thing lands under water
and they can't go down there and look? I ain't dead!"
He laughed again, loud and hard. Never go away, Isiah. But there is a
moment in everyone's life when he gets a peek at mortality hiding behind the
curtains. And the image sits on the brain. "This is the scariest physical
thing I've ever had happen," Thomas admitted. "It's inside your stomach. I
mean, how many people really know where your kidneys, liver, bladder are all
located at? I don't know bleep about what's in there. There was just . . .
blood. It's like, you don't know. It doesn't matter what doctors say or
anybody else says. . . . I just don't feel right."
Yet, Thomas never considered not taking part in these playoffs. He kept
repeating how his problem "is nothing" next to the need to win Saturday's
game, and if you can't understand that, you've never met Isiah Thomas.
Most everyone knows the arc of his love affair with basketball; from the
poorest end of Chicago's west side, to Indiana University, to Detroit and
all-star status. All by age 24. And if nets and rims could grin they would
surely do so when Isiah Thomas takes the court.
His enjoyment of the game is transparent. But until Wednesday he didn't
know how binding. "It's like being in love with a girl who treats you badly.
Your head tells you one thing, your heart tells you another."
His heart said play. No hospitals. No more tests. Not until the playoffs
were over.
That's the way it's going to be.
"There is nothing I can think of that would keep me from shooting jump
shots. Nothing. For me it's the only thing in the world. There's nothing
less."
"Living," someone grimly suggested.
"For me, that is living," he said.
All right. No need to make this more serious than it is. Thomas is
concerned, understandably so, that the whole thing will get blown out of
proportion. He's concerned for his wife and his mother, that they not fear for
his health. He's concerned that the Pistons' first two playoff losses will be
attributed to his medical problem.
"I'd just rather not deal with it all," he said Friday. "I don't want some
guy coming up to me, asking me about it, or somebody holding up a sign. I
don't want to be constantly reminded of it, even when this is over."
He sighed. His voice grew uncharacteristically cross. "If I don't play
good basketball then, damn it, I don't play good basketball. I don't need an
excuse why I didn't play well."
No one will ever know what Isiah Thomas went through Thursday night or
Saturday afternoon, or what he will endure for the rest of these playoffs and
beyond. But imagine if that which you held most precious, which provided you
with your livelihood, which made you feel magical, special, gifted, imagine
if that were suddenly under attack, as Isiah Thomas' body is under attack,
and maybe you could understand. He's not trying to be heroic by playing. But
it's coming out that way.
"This will have to live with me," he said, his voice lowering. "I'm not
gonna have to live with it. This just isn't the time. That's all."
He shook his head. "It just isn't the time."
And on he goes, trying to play one kind of game and trying to avoid
another. You wish it wasn't so. And yet there is a belief in watching him that
everything will turn out all right, that there's really no choice but happy
endings for Isiah Thomas. There is something inspiring in the way he is
handling all this, and maybe when it's all over, he'll retell it with the
howling laughter that is as much a part of him as his fingerprint.
The playoffs continue. The world goes around. Lousy things happen to good
people. But somewhere between the blood and the basketball is a blessed man
with a won't-quit smile who wants to live forever, and he simply isn't ready
to be told he can't.
CUTLINE:
The Pistons' Isiah Thomas tips the ball away from Atlanta Hawks center Tree
Rollins and into the hands of teammate Bill Laimbeer on Saturday.
DPISTONS;BASKETBALL;ISIAH THOMAS;HEALTH;MAJOR STORY;Pistons