The NBA on NBC has been one of the season's feel-good stories, a nostalgic reboot under the league's new media-rights deal that leaned on familiar theme music and a parade of returning legends. Isiah Thomas is not buying all of it.
Appearing on Run It Back on Friday, the Hall of Fame point guard was asked by host Michelle Beadle whether he liked NBC bringing Michael Jordan and other former stars onto its coverage to celebrate the game's history. Thomas said he was fine with the platform — as long as what gets said on it is true.
"Only if they're going to be 100 percent honest and not promote this BS," Thomas said. "Tell the truth about the game, but the way our game now is being talked about in some ways is very mythical, it ain't real."
His example was one of the most replayed moments in league lore: Jordan's so-called "Flu Game" in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
"It ain't real," Thomas said. "Like, we're still calling his game 'The Flu Game,' and they know he didn't have the flu, but they promote it."
The performance itself is not in dispute. With the series tied 2-2 against John Stockton and Karl Malone's Utah Jazz, a visibly ailing Jordan scored 38 points and hit a late three to lift the Chicago Bulls to a 90-88 win, an image that became instant folklore. What has shifted over the years is the explanation. Jordan's longtime trainer Tim Grover has said the cause was not influenza but severe food poisoning — a detail Thomas argues the broadcast mythology conveniently glosses over.
For Thomas, the objection is less about Jordan than about how basketball history is packaged for a new generation. He wants context and accuracy over catchy nicknames and tidy legends.
"I'm just down for honesty and telling the truth about what we're seeing," Thomas added. "So, if NBC is going to bring back people to talk about the game, bring folks who are going to be honest and tell the truth, not this BS."
The complaint lands in familiar territory. Thomas has spent years on the outside of the Jordan canon, from his exclusion from the 1992 Dream Team to his pointed critiques following the 2020 documentary "The Last Dance," and his skepticism of Jordan's mythology is well established. Critics will note that history; supporters will counter that a detail being inconvenient does not make it untrue.
What is harder to dismiss is the underlying media question. NBC's reboot has been popular precisely because it sells nostalgia, and nostalgia tends to round the edges off complicated stories. Thomas is asking the network to resist that pull — to let the highlights breathe without the embellishment. Whether a broadcast built on celebrating the past is the right venue for that kind of cold-eyed honesty is the debate he just reopened.
