Isiah Was Out To Lunch When McCloskey Taught GM School

Isiah Thomas must have been absent that day. Maybe he was off shooting a DTE Energy commercial with his mother, or a Metro Detroit Ford dealers spot with Sparky Anderson, or perhaps he was working on his jump shot on his custom-made basketball court inside his mansion.

Regardless, he was clearly missing the day Jack McCloskey taught GM class.

But Joe Dumars was present and accounted for -- that much is certain.

McCloskey, the crusty Pistons GM who was the architect of the Bad Boys championship teams, had quite a circuitous route to the NBA mountain top. He was a coach in the Ivy League -- where he met Chuck Daly. He coached the sad-sack, expansion Portland Trailblazers -- and was fired just weeks before the team drafted a hippy, Grateful Dead-loving redhead named Bill Walton. But he was there when the Blazers drafted LaRue Martin -- perhaps the biggest #1 draft bust in league history.


Jack McCloskey


Then he got out of the game altogether. In an interview with me between the two championship years -- in the summer of 1989 -- McCloskey said he invested into a tropical island and was leaving basketball altogether.

"That didn't last very long," he said with a smile and a wink.

He needed to get hoops back into his blood, so he took an assistant's job with the Lakers under Jerry West. From there it was on to the Indiana Pacers -- as another one of those trusty, clipboard-toting assistants.

Then Bill Davidson came calling.

I'm not sure how Davidson, the Pistons owner, knew about McCloskey, but wherever he got his information from, I wonder if he also used that source to pick lottery numbers for him.

So on December 11, 1979 -- a date that should be celebrated as a Detroit holiday for basketball fans -- Jack McCloskey was plucked off the Pacers bench as Slick Leonard's assistant and thrust into the general manager's seat at the Silverdome.

And though it took him ten years -- "We were basically an expansion team," McCloskey told me in '89 -- the Pistons became world champions. Twice.

It's probably not the straightest path, but McCloskey went from an Ivy League coach to a fired NBA coach to an island owner to a couple of assistants job in the league to general manager of an NBA champion. So if you've got the time -- say, 20 years -- then that's a route you might consider.

Joe Dumars, no doubt walking around with pages of Jack McCloskey's book stuffed in his pockets, took over the Pistons in the summer of 2000 and, four years later, turned the team into NBA titleists. And not one player that was on that 2004 championship team was on the roster the day Dumars took control. Impressive indeed.

Dumars' similarities to McCloskey are eery.

Gutsy trades: check (re: Jerry Stackhouse for Rip Hamilton; Rasheed Wallace when everyone said he was a cancer).
Risky free agent signings: check (Antonio McDyess)
Bold free agent signings: check (Chauncey Billups)
Unafraid to change coaches: check (Rick Carlisle and Larry Brown: see ya!)
The ability to recognize his own errors and move on: check (Rodney White, Mateen Cleaves, Darko Milicic).
Shrewd deals that fleece the competition: check (Grant Hill for Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins; the Sheed deal; Tony Delk).

Dumars' team is prepping for another long playoff run after setting the franchise record for most wins in a season. They have the best record in the entire NBA.

Isiah Thomas' future is clouded with issues, on and off the court. Many were of his own doing.

Come to think of it, that couldn't possibly have been a one-day class that McCloskey was teaching. So where was the Pistons' point guard when his backcourt counterpart was taking notes?

Oh, Isiah!