No doubting Thomas has the will to succeed in NBA, Schenectady native finds a home in Philadelphia

By PETE IORIZZO, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, December 4, 2005 TimesUnion.com

Philadelphia -- He runs his finger along his left biceps, a bulging muscle tattooed with words that give him strength. His finger traces the ink as he speaks the words aloud.

Only the strong survive.

The warrior's soul never dies.

A warrior's strength comes from within.

"I consider myself a warrior," he says. "The path I took in my life to get where I am, it was trouble. High school, it was trouble. Prep school, it was trouble. College, it was trouble. You have your tough times; you have your good times. You've got to roll with the punches."

That's not so easy when you're James Thomas and life seems to treat you like a punching bag. The blows came fast and furious. He was teased. Harassed. Beat up. Arrested. Cut.

And still he sits here, in the Philadelphia 76ers locker room, with Allen Iverson to his left and Chris Webber across the way. The minutes and rebounds pile up. The newspaper stories keep appearing. Teammates and fans love rooting for the kid who never quit on his dream, who believed in himself when nobody else did.

For the first time in his young NBA career, Thomas feels like he found a home.

Part of him wants to enjoy it. The other part braces for the next punch.

A tale of two halves

To know Thomas is to know the two halves of his life.

There is Thomas, the 6-foot-8, 245-pound power forward, the former Schenectady High School star, the all-time leading rebounder at Texas, the former National Basketball Developmental League Rookie of the Year, the guy with a chiseled body who -- even now in the NBA -- attacks the boards with the fury of a desperate welterweight.

Then there is Thomas, the scrawny kid who made weight for Pop Warner football by running around until his clothes were sweat-soaked; who, because of asthma, sent Amateur Athletic Union basketball coaches fumbling for his inhaler after games; who fell victim to bullies; whose mother worries, "He's so soft, sometimes I think he can be easily taken."

He always walked a line between the two.

Thomas grew up liking the usual little boy things, like superheroes (especially Batman and the Incredible Hulk), BMX bikes, Evel Knievel stunts and skateboarding. His favorite sports were football, basketball and street hockey. Eventually he gave up football, because, he says, "The hits kept getting harder." After being cut from a seventh-grade basketball team, he ran home crying to his mother.

His three sisters -- two older and one younger -- were his closest friends. They played games with him, taking particular delight in dressing him in funny clothes, wigs and big glasses. They also read him stories and looked after him while their mother, Rachael, worked.

Thomas wondered why he struggled to make friends, asking his mother, "Why don't people like me? What did I do wrong?"

"Like yourself and others will like you," Rachael told her son. "Never be fake."

So Thomas basked in his individualism.

Basketball gave Thomas direction. He finally made the Schenectady High freshman team and, after a growth spurt sent him skyrocketing 6 inches in two years, he looked less awkward and stronger. The bullies backed off. As a Schenectady team loaded with players like Jason McKrieth (now at Rice) and Willie Deane (who played at Purdue) garnered more and more wins, Thomas set his goals higher and higher. By his junior year, he started talking about the NBA.

"He got better and better," former Schenectady coach Gary DiNola says. "All of a sudden, he was on the national scene."

Then came more punches.

One day while he was playing pickup basketball on a Schenectady playground, Thomas and a police officer exchanged words. Rachael Thomas says her son "stood up to" an officer who was harassing the boys. Somewhere between the playground and Thomas' home, the officer arrested Thomas. He never was booked and no formal punishment ever came of it, but Thomas believes the incident changed the way the community viewed him.

Then, before his senior year at Schenectady, Thomas learned he would fall short of fulfilling his core requirements for NCAA eligibility. At the encouragement of his AAU coach, Jim Hart, he attended prep school, eventually at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia. While there, he was accused of using a stolen phone card to call his girlfriend back in Schenectady. Thomas told friends that several players on the team used the card, and he was unaware it was stolen.

Worried about his reputation, Thomas wrote a letter to Hart, whom he calls his "mentor."

"I should have known," Thomas said in the hand-written note. "But coach, I've been a good kid all year. ... Now people start to look at me as a bad person. But everyone doesn't know that I didn't know the card was stolen."

Thomas' punishment was to walk circles around a tree for several hours.

Chairman of the boards

One thing fueled Thomas' resolve -- the relentless pursuit of a basketball as it caromed off the rim.

Coaches prodded Thomas to develop a baseline move or jump shot. Thomas indulged them but knew his basketball future depended on his defense and rebounding. That's what former Texas assistant coach Rob Lanier noticed when he first spotted Thomas.

"The way he went after the ball, you don't see that a lot," says Lanier, who later coached at Siena before being fired after last season. "We knew he could be a great rebounder."

Lanier asked Thomas what he wanted out of college.

"To be the best rebounder in Texas history," Thomas replied.

But Thomas soon learned resolve alone would take him only so far. In his first collegiate game, an exhibition, Thomas scored 29 points and grabbed 22 rebounds. Afterward, Texas coach Rick Barnes told Thomas, "If you ever play like that again, you won't play another minute here." Texas coaches hounded Thomas to box out better. They started tracking the percentage of times he boxed out an opposing player. By Thomas' junior year, the number approached 100 percent

That season Thomas averaged a double-double (11 points, 11 rebounds). He and guard T.J. Ford formed an inside-outside combination that helped the Longhorns reach the Final Four. Scouts began projecting Thomas as a second-round NBA draft pick.

Then life took another swing at Thomas. This time, he almost hit back.

Frustrated as he recovered from a back injury early in his senior season, Thomas and Barnes got into an argument that Thomas says left him, "getting ready to start doing some manly things." The altercation never turned physical, but his relationship with Barnes never was the same. Thomas was replaced in the starting lineup and finished his senior season averaging just 5.5 points and 5.8 rebounds.

"My whole thing was, as bad as it was going, I didn't want him to quit on himself," Barnes says. "I sensed his frustration. I told him, 'You're going to be a better man for it.' "

In his last collegiate game, a third-round 2004 NCAA Tournament loss to Xavier, Thomas failed to score or record a rebound. He played just two minutes.

"I worried," Thomas says. "People were wondering, 'What happened to this kid? Why wasn't he playing?' "

Thomas found solace in a Bible passage suggested to him by his aunt, Naomi Jones, who since died of cancer. She referred him to Isaiah 54:17: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn."

Thomas went undrafted but earned a look from the San Antonio Spurs. He appeared in a few preseason games wearing No. 2, a symbol of the two minutes he played in his final game at Texas. He spent most of the 2004-05 regular season with the NBDL's Roanoke Dazzle, where while averaging 13 boards he impressed so much that Dazzle coach Kent Davison called him the league's most dominant rebounder.

"He was just relentless," Davison says. "We'd run a fast-break drill where it would just be the offense with no defense. I'd throw the ball off the backboard so it started with a rebound. Even then, he'd go after the ball like it was live. He didn't want anyone else getting those rebounds."

Thomas earned three NBA call-ups during the 2004-05 season, playing nine games with the Portland Trail Blazers and two with the Atlanta Hawks. This stint with the 76ers marks his longest with an NBA team. He went through the entire preseason with Philadelphia.

"I've been cut, waived, sent away, however you want to say it," Thomas says. "Hey, only the strong survive.

"I can turn back and laugh now. I can turn back and smile. I've had to work 100 times harder than the next person for what I've gotten. No one handed me anything."

His work is never done

"I didn't take nothing from nobody," Thomas says. "I don't bite my tongue now, but it was worse back then. I didn't have any structure. I was a rambunctious little kid who didn't listen to no one but his mom and his sisters."

As he sits in the locker room, watching his teammates file out following an early-season game, Thomas talks about feeling "part of a family" and about being "comfortable." He appeared in 15 of the Sixers' first 18 games, averaging 8.3 minutes, 2.1 rebounds and 1.5 points. Earlier this year, because of injuries to other players, Thomas was the first big man off the bench.

Teammates and coaches embrace him. Forward Kyle Korver calls Thomas, "a big-shouldered beast on the boards." Coach Maurice Cheeks says, "He's a guy who can change a game with his energy."

Part of Thomas wants to use his one-year, $640,000 contract to find a home for himself and his wife, Latoya, also from Schenectady. The other part worries the Sixers will waive him. His contract comes with no guarantees.

Wearing a white sport jacket, sharp black pants and shiny dress boots, the 25-year-old Thomas sits at his locker and scribbles an autograph on a basketball. Wherever the next punch comes from, he looks ready to absorb it.

"All the trials, all the doubters, I've shown everyone," Thomas says. "I proved them wrong with these broad shoulders that I have. Now the only person I have to prove anything to is myself. I'm here now. I'm working hard. And I think I'm going to have a long career in the NBA."

Pete Iorizzo can be reached at 454-5425 or by e-mail at piorizzo@timesunion.com.

The Thomas Sports Group, Inc. would like to salute and congratulate our Advocate James D. Thomas for a wonderful 1st year in NBDL-National Basketball Development League. Everyone from the Group as well as family and friends are behind you 100 percent! As JT peruses his Professional Basketball Playing Dreams!

Thomas Named Rookie of the year!

James Thomas is among a handful of players trying to make an NBA roster. Thomas was the D-League's Rookie of the Year last season, here shown with the Philadelphia '76ers.