SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Chuck Daly, the Hall of Fame coach who led the Detroit Pistons to two titles and was the coach and cruise director of Dream Team I, remembers the day he knew that Isiah Thomas was going to be something special.

	Isiah Thomas won two NBA titles as Pistons' point man.

It came in 1981, when Daly was in Philadelphia with the 76ers as an assistant coach. He watched Thomas as the sophomore guard led Indiana to the NCAA title at the Spectrum.

Daly had no way of knowing that night, of course, that his path and Thomas' would intersect two years later, would last for a decade, and that each had a lot to do with the other getting into the Hall of Fame. He just knew that night that this feisty, diminutive guard had an unshakeable spirit and an unbreakable will to win, something he would personally witness for 10 years.

"He was destined for greatness," Daly said. "I'll say this. If he had been five inches taller, he would have been the greatest player ever."

But Thomas stopped growing at 6-1, which merely makes him the greatest 73-inch player in history. That should not be up for discussion. No player of his height could dominate a game like he could. No player of his height could so quickly change the course of games. He had the face of an angel and the heart of a hungry leopard. He once wanted a rebound so badly that he bit Robert Parish in the hand to get the basketball. He discovered something that moment.

"Parish got the rebound. He wanted it more than I did," Thomas said. "That's how you learn to win. You learn, my job is not to let you win."

Thomas has a flashy, flossy resume, which includes two championship rings, an NCAA title, three appearances on the All-NBA first team and two more on the second team. He was the Most Valuable Player in the 1990 NBA Finals and twice was selected as the MVP in the All-Star Game. He was selected to participate in 12 All-Star Games, not bad for a 13-year career. He was named one of the greatest 50 players of all-time in 1996.

But tenacity and ferocity speak more to the character of Isiah Lord Thomas than do his many trophies and plaques. On most occasions, those traits were well intentioned and well directed. Hubie Brown, the former Knicks' coach, says Thomas is the single greatest competitor, for his size, that he ever saw. Brown knows what he's talking about.

		No player of his height could dominate a game like he could. No player of his height could so quickly change the course of games. He had the face of an angel and the heart of a hungry leopard. He once wanted a rebound so badly that he bit Robert Parish in the hand to get the basketball.

He saw Thomas almost personally end his season in 1984 with a 16-point, fourth-quarter explosion in 92 seconds in a winner-take-all Game 5 playoff game against New York. Four Knicks tried to stop him and failed. Five of those 16 points came on free throws, even as the Knicks were desperately trying not to foul him. "It was," said Brown, never one to hyperbolize, "one of the single, greatest exhibitions in the history of basketball."

Oddly, that performance, and another in a losing cause, perhaps most vividly epitomize the combative, competitive Thomas. The other came during Game 6 of the 1988 NBA Finals in Los Angeles.

The Pistons led the series 3-2 and had the Lakers on the ropes in Game 6. Thomas was a battered man at that point who had taken more hits than Rasputin (ankle, back, face.) He still managed to set an NBA Finals record by scoring 25 points in a quarter, almost single-handedly winning the title for Detroit. He had 43 in the game, visibly limping to the end, knowing, as we all did, that it was now or never for the team.

But the Pistons got jobbed down the stretch thanks to a ticky-tack foul called by Hue Evans on Bill Laimbeer. Thomas was on crutches the next day, hobbled nobly through Game 7, and then had to wait another 12 months before he and the Pistons would win their first NBA title.

But that same zeal and fervor also came to work against him and made him as controversial as he was competitive. How else to explain why he was inexcusably absent from Dream Team I, a snub that was so obviously personal as to be laughable? On talent alone, he merited a spot right next to Michael Jordan in the starting backcourt. But politics won out and he had to watch players such as Chris Mullin, Christian Laettner and Clyde Drexler collect gold in Barcelona. It wasn't even his only Olympic disappointment. He had been a member of the ill-fated 1980 team that boycotted the Moscow Games.

He made some enemies during his tenure as the head of the players union and he will be forever linked to the Jordan freeze-out during the 1985 All-Star Game (MJ went 2 for 9 in that game.) There also was the time he missed the opportunity to chastise Dennis Rodman when Rodman said Larry Bird would be "just another player" had Bird not been a Caucasian.

Thomas should have rebuked his callow teammate then and there. Instead, he supported him. After all, Rodman was a Piston. Bird was the enemy. It was that simple. Thomas didn't leave Detroit under the best of terms, which is why you never heard his name mentioned when the Pistons were coach-shopping this spring and summer. Detroit's loss is Indiana's gain.

The Hall of Fame, of course, portrays itself as being beyond such pettiness and spite and it should be. The case for Isiah Thomas, Hall of Famer, was, to mix a metaphor, a slam dunk. He was selected in his first year of eligibility, five years after injuries forced him to the sidelines at the too-early age of 32. He was the marquee name heading the Class of 2000.

Thomas chose Daly to be his presenter at the enshrinement ceremony. There was a time when the two did not see eye-to-eye. Daly had discipline on his mind and a raw, but richly talented player leading an otherwise clueless team. A few years later, it all came together as if by script.

It was then that Daly realized how special Isiah Thomas really was. The rest of the basketball world joined Daly in recognizing that talent this weekend with Thomas' justifiable and rightful inclusion into the Hall of Fame. He's where he belongs.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.