Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Awards and Accomplishments
1980 Named to the Associated Press All-Big Ten team, the first
college freshman to receive the honor
1981 Led Indiana Hoosiers to the NCAA basketball championship;
named tournament MVP
1982 NBA All-Rookie team
1982-93 Played in All-Star Game every season but his last
1984 All-Star game MVP
1984-85 Became first player in NBA history to average more than 20
points per game and make more than 1,000 assists in the
same season
1984-85 Set NBA record with 1,123 assists
1985 Named Michiganian of the Year
1986 All-Star game MVP
1988 Set NBA Finals record for most points in a quarter (25), and
most field goals in one quarter (11)
1989 Led Pistons to the NBA championship
1990 Led Pistons to the NBA Championship
1990 Named NBA Finals MVP
1996 Named to the NBA Greatest 50 Players of All Time Team
2000 Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame;
uniform No. 11 retired by Pistons
For Thomas, the move to the suburban, all-boy, nearly
all white school was tough. Just getting there was an
ordeal. To get to the Westchester, Illinois, school,
Thomas rose at 5:30 a.m. for a one-and-a-half hour bus
ride, which concluded with a long walk to the school’s
front door. Thomas knew the sacrifice was worth it if it
would get his basketball skills noticed.
On the court, he regularly scored forty points a game.
During his junior and senior seasons, Thomas led the St.
Joseph Chargers to a 57-5 record, along with a disheartening
second-place finish in the 1977-1978 Illinois state
high school championship tournament.
Delivered Hoosiers a National Championship
Colleges across the United States courted Thomas,
and he chose to play at Indiana University under coach
Bobby Knight. At 6-foot-1, Thomas was small for a college
player, and Knight nicknamed him “Pee Wee.”
What Thomas lacked in stature, he made up for with
his skills, particularly his supernatural ability to make
shots against defenders who towered over him. During
the 1979-1980 season, Thomas’ freshman year, he escorted
the Hoosiers to a 21-8 record and the Big Ten
Championship. Leading his team in scoring (423
points), assists (159), and steals (62), Thomas was
named to the Associated Press All-Big Ten team, the
first freshman to receive the honor. Thomas was so popular
at Indiana that classmates greeted him with standing
ovations when he entered lecture halls following a
game day.
His sophomore year, Thomas delivered the Hoosiers
to the 1981 National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NCAA) Tournament title game, where they beat the
North Carolina State Tar Heels 63-50, with Thomas ac-
A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story
Thomas
Isiah Thomas’s mother’s life story was dramatized in a 1989 NBC-TV
movie starring Alfre Woodard in the title role. The movie showed how the
single mother worked to free her children from poverty as they came of age
on the crime-riddled streets of Chicago’s West Side. For the most part,
Mary Thomas kept her children on the straight and narrow, making up with
love what she lacked in money.
The movie depicts many telling events from Isiah Thomas’ life, including
the time Mary Thomas went to Mayor Richard Daley to complain
that case workers wanted to move her family into a violence-plagued housing
project-and she wasn’t going to go. The movie also told about the time
a gang showed up on the family’s doorstep eager to recruit the Thomas
boys. Mary Thomas, however, pointed her shotgun at them and threatened
to blow them across the expressway. She explained that there was only one
gang in that house, the Thomas gang.
The movie, and Mary Thomas’ life, served as an inspiration to other
mothers facing the same prospects she did. Originally broadcast as a
“Magical World of Disney” Sunday night feature, the movie won an Emmy
for Outstanding Children’s Prime Time Program.
Throughout his life, Isiah Thomas always gave his mother credit for
his success, and the movie shows why.
counting for twenty-three of his team’s points. Over the
course of the tournament, Thomas scored ninety-one
points and had forty-three assists in five games. He was
named the tournament’s outstanding player.
Thomas’s terrific tournament play generated a lot of
attention, and he landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
He wondered if it was time to join the NBA. Thomas
wanted to finish school, but he also wanted to get his
mother out of the ghetto.
Thomas decided to turn pro. During the June 1981
NBA draft, the Detroit Pistons had the second pick, and
they selected Thomas. Thomas signed a contract for
$400,000 a year, which, coupled with his bonus, brought
the total to more than $1 million. He immediately
bought his mother a house in the suburbs. When Thomas
quit college, his mother made him promise to finish his
degree. Thomas took classes the next several off-seasons,
graduating from Indiana with a degree in criminal
justice in 1987.
Helped Pistons Rebound into Winning Team
When Thomas joined the Pistons, they were at the
bottom of the league, lurching their way to a 21-61
record during the 1980-81 season. But with Thomas in
the lineup playing guard during the start of the 1981-
1982 season, the Pistons got off to an 8-5 record. During
his first month in the big leagues, the
twenty-year-old Thomas averaged twenty-one points
per game. He added pizzazz to the Pistons’ game, and
attendance rose. The Detroit News proclaimed Thomas
“Isiah the Savior.”
Thomas finished the season averaging seventeen
points per game for a total of 1,225 points. He handily
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