Isiah Thomas: People Dislike LeBron James Because of His Success

The LeBron/Wade/Bosh charity hoops game will be played at the school where Isiah Thomas coaches next Saturday, and Zeke theorizes as to why the public sometimes gets mad at James. From the Sun-Sentinel: “With the lockout,’ [Thomas] said, ‘there’s basically no rules, but that doesn’t mean that guys still don’t want to play. The guys want to play basketball, they love the game and they really play for the love of the game. I just hope during this period that the players and owners remember what has made this league great, and what has made it great has been the partnership between the owners and the players.’ Even with FIU’s arena under renovation, Thomas has made sure there has been a lockout home on the west side of town for the likes of Amare Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Juwan Howard, Jannero Pargo and Damien Wilkins. And now he is about to host the biggest current name of them all, LeBron James. And that could just as easily have Isiah reverting back to the black hat, because for all the derision James experienced with the Heat last season, Thomas experienced something starkly similar during his championship days in the Pistons’ ‘Bad Boys’ era. ‘It kind of comes with the territory when you’re really good,’ Thomas said. ‘Nobody cares about the loser. Everybody likes the loser. Some people are not going to like you because you are successful and I think LeBron has been extremely successful since high school and Wade has been successful and I think those guys will continue to be successful. And with their success, there are going to be some people who are upset with that.’ At the moment, though, Thomas has nothing to be upset with, just a high-profile NBA game on his low-profile campus, with proceeds to honor his late mother. ‘When they said that they wanted to do the game for my mom,’ he said, ‘I cried, really.'”