Even Elsa wouldn’t be able to thaw the coldest war in sports history. By every account, The Last Dance was a matchbox to most of Michael Jordan’s friendships. But the animosity with a rival and ‘friend’ ran deeper than the 2020 documentary. Isiah Thomas stopped by The Beat with Ari Melber, where he inevitably brought up his deep-seated grudge with His Airness once more for a well-known reason.

When Melber asked specifically when the two last spoke, he probably expected to hear ‘six years,’ referring to when The Last Dance dropped on Netflix. Zeke revealed that his feud with Jordan has now spanned over three decades. Thomas didn’t hesitate with a date that marks a definitive turning point in basketball lore and their friendship.

“It was right before the Dream Team,” Thomas admitted. The revelation left the studio split because it sounded exaggerated. He even doubled down on the significance of the timeline. “You got to give me that one, right? You got to give me that one,” he urged, referencing the infamous 1992 Olympic snub that remains the epicenter of their animosity.

The feud, according to Thomas, remains the perceived betrayal surrounding the legendary gold-medal squad. As the frontman of the Bad Boy Pistons, who won the ’89 and ’90 titles, Zeke had friction with almost the entire Olympic team, including Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen, and Michael Jordan.

But it came a year before the Dream Team hopped on a plane to Barcelona. The feud began during the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals when Thomas led the Detroit Pistons off the court without shaking hands after being swept by Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. A similar act is what sowed the animosity between Zeke and Bird years earlier. This breach of sportsmanship is widely cited as the moment Jordan drew a line in the sand.

Johnson claimed it was a team decision to pass on Zeke to ensure chemistry. But Thomas has blamed Jordan specifically for the snub and holds that grudge to this day. Although it feels like a stretch for him to say his friendship with the Bulls legend ended 34 years ago.

Isiah Thomas’ feud with Michael Jordan took some strange turns

For Isiah Thomas, the sting of being left out of the greatest basketball roster is a tough one to get over. He’s not the only one who thinks so. Even the star of the Dream Team, Charles Barkley, once claimed that Zeke deserved to be on the team,

While talking about that snub, Thomas told Ari Melber, “I take it as a compliment and an honor that so many people still think that I should have been on the team, by the way, including me.”

Thomas noted that while the exclusion was professionally “hurtful,” he now finds a strange form of validation in the never-ending discourse. “I enjoy the fact that we get to debate it, we get to talk about it,” Zeke added, though the underlying sting was evident.

The Chicago-born Detroit legend remains steadfast that his resume earned him a spot in Barcelona, even if certain powers, namely Jordan, disagreed. The timeline of their silence marks a void that transformed two of the game’s greatest competitors into virtual strangers.

However, Thomas’ claim of total silence since 1992 feels like a slight exaggeration. While the two have certainly not had a conversation, they have shared physical space and indirect interactions. Most notably, at the NBA 75th Anniversary ceremony in 2022, the two were spotted just feet apart.

Dwyane Wade was the eyewitness to the most awkward interaction ever. “Zeke, hot. Zeke got his hands like this. Zeke shaking. I think Zeke talking to himself. So, I’m a little messy. I walk up and say, ‘Zeke, what’s wrong? What’s up, bro?’ He said, ‘Back there.’ So I turn, I say, ‘Y’all still beefing?’” D-Wade recalled on his podcast in 2025.

“They did not speak. There was no conversation. And my guy Mike and Magic back there laughing, and I know it’s making Isiah even hotter because Isiah ain’t got his road dog with him. He ain’t got nobody to laugh at the jokes he’s saying, you know what I’m saying?” Wade said.

So the beef story checks out. Though despite the friction, Thomas spent years talking about Jordan’s greatness and showmanship. Including how he aided him when Zeke was an executive for the Toronto expansion team, the Raptors. That tone changed when both legends participated in The Last Dance, though their interviews were filmed separately. In that series, Jordan doubled down on his feelings, calling Thomas an “a——” for the 1991 walk-off, a comment Thomas has stated he wants a public apology for before any reconciliation can happen.

As it stands, the two most iconic guards of the 80s and 90s remain locked in a stalemate that has outlasted their actual playing careers by decades.