The Los Angeles Times once called them “bosom basketball buddies.” Mark Aguirre and Isiah Thomas have been best friends since childhood. Months after Patrick Dumont personally told Aguirre that the Mavs would retire his jersey, he reunited with Thomas once again at the American Airlines Center on Thursday and shared an emotional moment before the jersey retirement.

Before the retirement ceremony, Aguirre spoke to the media as Thomas watched his old buddy go back in time. But when a reporter asked the Mavs legend about having his best friend present at his jersey retirement, Aguirre broke down in tears. Thomas quickly rushed to the podium to comfort his oldest friend and even asked Rolando Blackman, Aguirre’s teammate in Dallas.

Thomas, Aguirre and Blackman were all drafted in 1981. Hailing from Chicago, Thomas and Aguirre also tried to play a trick at the 1981 NBA Draft to get drafted by the Chicago Bulls. Last year, during his appearance on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast, Thomas revealed that they tried to get people to dislike them so that they could drop lower in the draft.

“Chicago had the fourth pick and the sixth pick,” Thomas told Sharpe during the interview. “And we were trying to drop all the way down to four and six. So, every interview we did with the teams that were above us, we just blew the interview.”

However, the high school teammates were once again separated. Aguirre was selected at No. 1 by the Dallas Mavericks, and Thomas at No. 2 by the Detroit Pistons.

As time passed, despite being one of the league’s top offensive players, the gap between Aguirre and the team, including the coaching staff and players, increased. The Mavericks eventually traded him for Adrian Dantley.

“I left (Blackman) and I went for (Thomas). I had to go tell him, look, I’m going to get traded. Because I knew Isaiah was after me,” Aguirre told reporters, but added it was crucial for his growth.

“It was ugly, but it’s the end of what I needed in order to be me. It had to happen.”

“He has more moves than a centipede around the basket,” a commentator once said about Mark Aguirre. In his third NBA season, Aguirre averaged almost 30 points. He was that good.

He entered the league as the best player in his class and showed signs of maturity since his rookie season, and Isiah Thomas had no jealousy in ranking Aguirre ahead of himself.

Isiah Thomas revealed the reason behind Mavericks’ choosing Mark Aguirre ahead of him

Thomas had seen Aguirre play since they were high school teammates. Both high school teammates were top players in the country, and that reputation didn’t change even when they entered the 1981 NBA Draft as two future superstars.

After Aguirre became the fifth player in the Mavs’ history to have his jersey retired, Thomas revealed the real reason why the Mavericks drafted Aguirre ahead of him.

I could have been [the No. 1 pick], but Dick Motta asked me a question, and I told him the truth,” Thomas told reporters. “He asked me and said, ‘Who do you think is the best player in this draft?’ And there was no question, it was Mark Aguirre. …Mark could have went to the NBA out of high school.”

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In his over seven years of career in Dallas, Aguirre averaged 24.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.8 assists. He led the Mavs to the Western Conference Finals in 1988. A year later, he was traded to the Pistons.

“I wanna thank the Mavericks organization and the city of Dallas because if Mark Aguirre doesn’t come to the Detroit Pistons, we never win a championship. He is the reason why the way it happened. It all worked out,” Thomas added.

Aguirre’s impact was immediate. The Pistons won the championship in the same year he joined them, and their second consecutive championship the following year. During the draft night party in Dallas in 2025, Aguirre called Dallas his “home.”

It only seemed right to honor the legend for his contribution.