He taught his son to win battles on the ground, to dictate the game's speed, to push inside to show he wasn't afraid. Thomas often practiced at the center with his father, Keith Thomas, the two staying for hours there, Keith pulling his son to a hoop in the back where they could shoot free throws alone. Michael Bradley was the supervisor at the People's Center, on MLK Way, five blocks from the Wright Park court. Under gray, Pacific Northwest skies, Thomas would hoist shots, his crowd the enormous coliseum maples and giant sequoias rising around him. On the northern edge of the Hilltop neighborhood sits a splash of land called Wright Park, where Little Isaiah once played on the blacktop court. Seattle has Microsoft and Starbucks and Boeing.

Seattle is more cosmopolitan and polished, with its iconic skyline, world-class university and hillsides bursting with million-dollar homes. With Sacramento, Phoenix, Boston, Cleveland, the Lakers and now Denver, he has carried the soul of Tacoma, a city that, as long as anyone can remember, has been a regional punchline, the 'dirty little backyard' to Seattle, 40 miles to the north. His private email address has a reference to his hometown. Way, where a magazine from his days as a star at the University of Washington is framed and displayed on a wall. The city's 253 area code is tattooed on his back, above the words 'Born & Raised.' His right forearm bears the name of the Fish House Café, on Martin Luther King Jr. He hosted his annual summer basketball tournament and brought in pro players and regional hoops legends, though he physically could not play. Three years ago, he gave $80,000 to the local Boys and Girls Club to help build a basketball court that now bears his name. He identifies mostly with his old Hilltop neighborhood downtown, where his roots remain deep, and that relationship not only informs the way he sees himself but how he aims to impact the community that shaped him.

'Tacoma represents the good parts of his life, the people and the places who made him who he is.' 'Isaiah puts us on the map,' said the city's mayor, Victoria Woodards, from her high-rise office overlooking the downtown docks.

His fandom is spread equally among the people in his city, across races and socioeconomic classes, from the blue-collar neighborhoods downtown to the bucolic boroughs along Puget Sound. Regardless of how the basketball world might view him these days - as a man disbelieving of his own basketball mortality, as the undersized malcontent who fractured the locker room in Cleveland, as a backup with a questionable future - Isaiah Thomas is adored in Tacoma, Washington. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser

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