Isiah Thomas thinks these Knicks and Pistons are cut from the identical cloth.
The fabric he himself wove, that’s.
The Pistons legend and former Knicks president and coach sees similarities in each teams to his “Bad Boys” teams in Detroit and doesn’t see much separating them ahead of their first-round series.
“It’s going to be a really close series,” Thomas said Friday on ESPN radio. “Each teams are evenly matched. They each have the identical DNA and the DNA that comes with the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys. If you take a look at the Knicks culture and also you take a look at the Detroit culture, they’re eerily very similar. What we began in Detroit, [Pat] Riley left L.A., got here to Recent York and adopted our Bad Boy culture. That’s the DNA you see in each the Knicks and in addition the Pistons.”
That Bad Boys DNA, which helped the Pistons win two championships in 1989 and ’90, was physical and difficult, sometimes crossing the road to dirty.
Thomas saw that DNA disappear from Detroit until reemerging recently, and he has a powerful idea why — he believes what the Pistons were chastised for, Riley’s Knicks teams were praised for.
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“My answer may not sit well with some folks, but from a perceptions standpoint, it was stereotyped as dirty, as bad, or whatever you desire to label all of the negative languages, negative terms that were put across the Detroit culture — town itself, the people in Detroit and in addition the teams,” Thomas said. “And if what you’ve noticed is that everybody else — and I’ll even include Recent York by way of the Knicks — everyone else was allowed to play a rough, physical form of play and adopt it and have media support it. But national media, that very same form of play that was being played in Detroit, Detroit couldn’t play it, but everyone else could.
“You’ve had and what you’ve seen is coaches which have come into Detroit, whether or not it’s football, hockey, baseball, basketball, from Michigan State to Michigan, where everyone within the state of Michigan is actually going back to standing up for who we’re within the state of Michigan, what we represent and the culture that we’ve as in sports culture and as a state. And now, you’re seeing that culture being permeated again — key word: ‘again’ — across all of the sports. … Detroit has now reacquainted itself back with its original roots.”
The Knicks have been criticized this yr for losing a number of the toughness they possessed previously under Tom Thibodeau.
A variety of that stems from Karl-Anthony Towns, who — rightly or wrongly — carries a “soft” status across the league.
Thomas disagrees.
“No, there’s no drop-off in any respect,” Thomas said. “The Knicks definitely have toughness. … What you’ve got in Recent York by way of form of play and the DNA there, you need to never query the toughness of any of those people.
“Although sometimes you might not like the way in which Towns is playing, you possibly can never query his heart, his commitment and his toughness,” Thomas said. “The rebounds that he’s capable of acquire and the points he’s capable of put up on a nightly basis. I even have little question in my mind concerning the toughness of the Pistons or the toughness of the Knicks. That’s not a priority.”
Isiah Thomas thinks these Knicks and Pistons are cut from the identical cloth.
The fabric he himself wove, that’s.
The Pistons legend and former Knicks president and coach sees similarities in each teams to his “Bad Boys” teams in Detroit and doesn’t see much separating them ahead of their first-round series.
“It’s going to be a really close series,” Thomas said Friday on ESPN radio. “Each teams are evenly matched. They each have the identical DNA and the DNA that comes with the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys. If you take a look at the Knicks culture and also you take a look at the Detroit culture, they’re eerily very similar. What we began in Detroit, [Pat] Riley left L.A., got here to Recent York and adopted our Bad Boy culture. That’s the DNA you see in each the Knicks and in addition the Pistons.”
That Bad Boys DNA, which helped the Pistons win two championships in 1989 and ’90, was physical and difficult, sometimes crossing the road to dirty.
Thomas saw that DNA disappear from Detroit until reemerging recently, and he has a powerful idea why — he believes what the Pistons were chastised for, Riley’s Knicks teams were praised for.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Knicks within the 2025 NBA Playoffs
“My answer may not sit well with some folks, but from a perceptions standpoint, it was stereotyped as dirty, as bad, or whatever you desire to label all of the negative languages, negative terms that were put across the Detroit culture — town itself, the people in Detroit and in addition the teams,” Thomas said. “And if what you’ve noticed is that everybody else — and I’ll even include Recent York by way of the Knicks — everyone else was allowed to play a rough, physical form of play and adopt it and have media support it. But national media, that very same form of play that was being played in Detroit, Detroit couldn’t play it, but everyone else could.
“You’ve had and what you’ve seen is coaches which have come into Detroit, whether or not it’s football, hockey, baseball, basketball, from Michigan State to Michigan, where everyone within the state of Michigan is actually going back to standing up for who we’re within the state of Michigan, what we represent and the culture that we’ve as in sports culture and as a state. And now, you’re seeing that culture being permeated again — key word: ‘again’ — across all of the sports. … Detroit has now reacquainted itself back with its original roots.”
The Knicks have been criticized this yr for losing a number of the toughness they possessed previously under Tom Thibodeau.
A variety of that stems from Karl-Anthony Towns, who — rightly or wrongly — carries a “soft” status across the league.
Thomas disagrees.
“No, there’s no drop-off in any respect,” Thomas said. “The Knicks definitely have toughness. … What you’ve got in Recent York by way of form of play and the DNA there, you need to never query the toughness of any of those people.
“Although sometimes you might not like the way in which Towns is playing, you possibly can never query his heart, his commitment and his toughness,” Thomas said. “The rebounds that he’s capable of acquire and the points he’s capable of put up on a nightly basis. I even have little question in my mind concerning the toughness of the Pistons or the toughness of the Knicks. That’s not a priority.”
