Isiah Thomas isn’t buying the idea that modern basketball just appeared out of nowhere. In his view, the Detroit Pistons were helping shape it decades ago, and Bill Laimbeer was one of the clearest examples.
Appearing on the Crossover podcast, Thomas argued that a lot of the ideas now tied to today’s NBA were already part of the Bad Boys’ identity. He pointed to Laimbeer as an early version of the stretch big, saying, “Everyone has copied the Detroit Pistons’ model style of play.
When you talk about the evolution of the game, and this is what I always say about Detroit, we did more to change the game, but we get no credit for it. And y’all give credit to everyone else.
But the facts are standing right there in the face, right? You talk about a stretch big.
Bill Laimbeer. I think he still has an NBA Finals record.
Six, six or seven threes.”
Laimbeer was never a high-volume perimeter threat in the way big men are now, but his willingness to launch from deep stood out in his era. Over his career, he hit 202 three-pointers on 619 attempts and shot 32.6% from beyond the arc. For a 6-foot-11 center playing in the 1980s and early 1990s, that was a real outlier.
Thomas zeroed in on Laimbeer’s performance in Game 2 of the 1990 NBA Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers. Laimbeer knocked down six threes on nine attempts, with five of them coming in the fourth quarter and overtime. He finished with 26 points in Detroit’s 106-105 overtime loss.
At the time, those six makes tied Michael Cooper for the most three-pointers in a Finals game. That mark has since been broken several times, and Stephen Curry now holds the standard after hitting nine threes against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 2 of the 2018 NBA Finals.
Still, Laimbeer doing it in 1990 is what makes Thomas’ argument hit differently. The three-point shot was nowhere close to the force it is now.
During the 1988-89 regular season, Laimbeer took 2.0 threes per game and made 36.1% of them. Numbers like that wouldn’t turn heads today, but for a starting center in that era, it was unusual. Big men were not expected to stretch the floor the way they are now.
That expectation has changed completely. Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Joel Embiid have all helped make it normal for centers to work across the floor, and even paint-first bigs are now asked to show some kind of outside touch if they want to stay on the court.
Thomas wasn’t claiming Laimbeer invented the stretch five on his own. Basketball’s evolution came from plenty of teams, coaches, and players trying different things with spacing and perimeter skills.
But the broader point is easy to see. The Pistons are usually remembered for the bruising defense, the playoff wars, and back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990. Their offensive ideas have never gotten nearly the same shine.
For Thomas, Laimbeer’s shooting is one more example of that overlooked side of Detroit. Long before stretch bigs became a leaguewide norm, the Pistons already had a championship center willing to step beyond the arc.
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