Looking back through an old pre-draft thread, I found a long post where I analyzed some articles written about Tyrus before the draft: <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>This article is really in-depth on Thomas and gives both some positive and negative insights into what type of guy he is. After reading it, I think I'm slightly more concerned about whether he'd be a good fit, though I'm not totally freaked out or anything. I think he'll probably be fine, perhaps great as far as his head goes, but it is a bit of a question. Thomas has a great mother but a crummy father who's in jail. Tyrus has often been negatively affected and felt alone and got down because of it. Another article compares Thomas to his friend and roommate Glen Davis: <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Whereas Davis wants his story to be told so that other youths struggling with the same situation might find hope, Thomas is skeptical, private and untrusting.</div> <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>"When Tyrus came to LSU, he was a little suspicious of a lot of things," LSU coach John Brady said Friday. "You've got to prove to Tyrus a little bit that you're for real. He doesn't just walk up and embrace you."</div> While this isn't necessarily a negative, it's a personality trait I can see causing conflict on the Bulls. My impression is that Skiles is not a guy who feels he has to win anyone over to get them to do anything. And my impression from reading these articles is that the above quote on Tyrus is accurate. He's a guy who's been helped tremendously by an extensive, understanding, and very close nit support network (his mom, uncles, close friends like Davis who've experienced similar circumstances) but has not often operated outside that network and has trouble opening up outside it. Most importantly from the Bulls perspective, they'll need to consider whether they can and will deal with Thomas coming to terms in ways like this. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>...human nature demands that a son wants to know his father. And when Tyrus Thomas couldn’t find the answers he sought, he rebelled. During his freshman and sophomore years at McKinley, he quit the basketball team several times but always found his way back.</div> <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>“There was a while when he was trying to find himself as a young person,” Shedrick Franklin said. “Tyrus always knew his father and there was a relationship, even if it wasn’t a good one. There were a lot of complications in his father’s life and the void was always filled by family, but there was still things Tyrus needed to find out.” In fact, that process is still ongoing. During a redshirt year last season, Thomas showed up at an early-morning workout with assistant coach John Treloar and wasn’t ready to work. Treloar reminded Thomas he was welcome to leave, and Thomas took him up on the offer. Over the course of last season, Thomas let the frustration of not playing get to him. He was slowed by a neck injury early in the year, but was given medical clearance by the time January arrived. In practice every day, he went head-to-head with Brandon Bass (2005 SEC Player of the Year) and Glen Davis (2006 Player of the Year) and held his own from time to time. But Brady remained steadfast in his decision to redshirt Thomas. Thoughts of transferring surfaced. “Tyrus saw who he was playing against and knew he’d be behind them if everybody came back,” LSU freshman Garrett Temple said. He and Davis are Thomas’ closest friends. “He wasn’t nearly as strong physically or mentally when he first got here. He’d get bumped around a lot in practice by Glen and Brandon and that wore him down and got him discouraged.”</div> By the way things have turned out, we know he worked through all this to a positive outcome, but my main point of concern is that he worked through it with a somewhat different type of coach, in a different environment with different rules, and within his tight nit support network to help keep him on the right track. The fact that he may not have those things with the Bulls should be something they study hard. ------------- On the other hand, there are some things to really like about Thomas that come through in these articles. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>LSU coach John Brady said it takes a while for Thomas to establish trust in people until he’s comfortable. Yet on the floor, Thomas is as intense, emotional and demonstrative as anyone. “He’s got a single-mindedness where nobody is going to get the best of him — a tremendous level of pride,” Brady said. “It’s not a chip on his shoulder, but more like a personal challenge. He believes he’s as good or better than anybody and he’s going to make sure you know it, too.”</div> and <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Whatever internal doubts Thomas might’ve had after his redshirt year evaporated during the summer when he spent countless hours at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center going one-on-one with Bass, a longtime friend. Bass left LSU after last season for the NBA draft and was a second-round pick of the New Orleans Hornets. “Brandon won a lot of them,” Thomas said of the battles with Bass. “He won about 80 percent of them. I won the last one. Before we went home, I won the last one — every time. “If you get the best of me, I’m not going to stop fighting. I’m going to fight you every time I see you until I win. And if I win, I’m going to fight you again to make sure you understand that I’m going to win every time from now on. Even this summer when me and Brandon played pick-up in the PMAC, we’d be in the gym for hours until I’d win or until he said he quit. I’m not going to lose. That’s just my mentality. If you get the best of me, you’d better be ready for round two.” That tenacity can be easily traced to Thomas’ family. His grandmother is 57 and still works. His mother has given up working two jobs to spend time with her 7-year-old son Travis, but she sill won’t pass up an occasional double shift to make sure ends meet. His two uncles have climbed out of a tough early life to become high school coaches. The blueprint for Thomas’ success has been there all along. “He’s a mirror image of his mother,” Brady said. “She’s a very special woman who is more concerned with his daily progress in school than anything he does on the basketball court.” Johnson agreed, and spread the recognition among her family members who have provided the cocoon of safety and comfort for so long. But she also pointed out that Thomas deserves the most credit. “He’s more unique than any of us,” she said. “I’m just very proud of the man he’s growing into.”</div> So those are some good things, no? Put this guy on a court, or in practice, and winning at basketball becomes the only thing. I think the Bulls would like that. So what does everyone think? I think there's something to find out more about. A guy who can be moody and rebellious when taken out of his comfort zone could be a problem. Especially for this team, which, I think, expects guys to be self-starters. On the other hand, once he does get started, he appears fiery and determined, and that's something any team is lucky to get these days. </div> Nearly two years in, I think we've see a fair amount of teen angst from Tyrus. When he finally talked about his recent suspension, it was really reminiscent of what I thought a couple of years back. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Sources said Thomas laughingly told two teammates "see you Thursday" when he left the locker room after Tuesday's victory over Memphis, during which Thomas played just nine foul-plagued minutes. Bulls officials spent until Wednesday afternoon trying to locate Thomas, who, according to sources, also told management he was frustrated and needed to clear his mind. Thomas chose to focus on the positive, praising a long phone conversation he had with interim coach Jim Boylan late Wednesday. "I'd say we broke some barriers," Thomas said. "We talked about a lot of different things, personal, basketball. I need to at least call and talk to somebody and not be so secluded like I normally am."</div> So ok, it's pretty late in the game to be establishing a great rapport with Coach Saliva-Smell, but I do wonder if in the grand scheme of things it might be an opportunity to get things pointed in the right direction. Given Tyrus' sheltered, skeptical, immature and un-trusting nature, we should have known things like this were coming. Perhaps this will all be a mirage and he'll continue to be ineffective on the court and a clown off it, but perhaps some trust was established and we might get him pointed in the right direction.
Wow . . . some pretty prescient stuff in those old posts about Thomas, Mike. The more I've mulled over Clearheadgate, the more it's irritating me and making me wonder if Thomas will ever get it. I know that a trained circus monkey could do a better job coaching than Boylan. I know it's been frustrating to see guys like PJ Brown and Joe Smith and Drew Gooden and Ben Wallace get playing time while he languishes. All of it sucks. But deciding a day in advance to skip a practice without telling a soul? So that the organization sends the cops to your house to see if you're dead or if you've been abducted or tied up? That's just so wrong on so many levels, I gotta wonder. I don't think Thomas is going to turn the corner until the Bulls hire a coach who "gets him" and he connects and works harder on the little things. He pretty clearly is harboring grudges against the current staff right now.
I dunno Scott but my guess is that Tyrus is feeling a bit less charitable about his heart-to-heart with Boylan after only playing 3:48 tonight. Ouch. In the grand scheme of things though, I can't say I give much of a shit what he thinks. Two years in and maybe no one "gets him", but who's going to get someone that's this much of a drama queen?
To add a bit, there's this blurb from the Trib: <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Here's how excited Thomas was for his punishment to end: Rather than taking one of two team buses to the arena, Thomas hailed a cab. He shot jumpers with assistant coach Mike Brown more than two hours before tipoff. "He's played well against the Pistons," Boylan said. "His athleticism around the basket is always helpful for us against them. We welcome him back with open arms." Thomas entered with 43.7 seconds left in the first quarter. He finished with one point and one rebound in four minutes. "It's in the past," Thomas said of his absence. "Nothing I can do about it now."</div> This coach is such a turd.
