Pitarresi: Honesty not always the best policy

 

We all were told, when we were little kids, that honesty is the best policy.

 

Well, that isn’t true. Not all the time.

 

We all know the proof of that. It’s starts with the question, “Do I look fat in this dress?”

 

I don’t know if Magic Johnson is being honest in the new book he wrote with Larry Bird and Jackie McMullan, especially the parts where he derides Isaiah Thomas. Supposedly peeved because Thomas raised questions about Johnson’s sexual orientation after he revealed he had HIV in 1991, Johnson says in “When the Game Was Ours,” that nobody on the 1992 Olympic team – Michael Jordan, Bird, Karl Malone, Scotty Pippen – wanted to play with Thomas.

 

Thomas was left off that team, which was perhaps the greatest collection of basketball talent ever. That had to hurt, and now Johnson has made it worse.

 

These guys were among the greatest ever to play the game, but their day is long since past, which probably is one reason for the book. Some fans might regard it as a honest look at an exciting era of basketball, but it might just be a grab for cash and publicity. I guess it is morbidly interesting that all the big stars hated Thomas, but that isn’t exactly news.

 

I don’t think you have to lay everything on the line, especially if it hurts someone else, even if you don’t like the other guy. There are such things as decorum and compassion, which sometimes are as important as honesty.

 

I’d feel a lot better about it if Johnson had said what he had to say to Thomas’ face before it came out in a book. That would have been honest.