Ask any family with a member employed in the NBA about the toughest part of the job, and the answer is almost always the constant moving. Players, coaches, trainers, and even support staff live with the reality that their lives can be uprooted overnight by a single front-office decision. The demands go far beyond the relentless travel between home and road games—it’s the instability of never knowing when the next relocation might come. Even a franchise icon like Isiah Thomas, who spent his entire playing career with the Detroit Pistons, couldn’t escape that reality once he transitioned into post-playing roles.

Isiah Thomas was not only navigating fatherhood but also carrying the weight of expanding the NBA into the Great White North, all while laying the foundations of a business empire. To his children, he was just as often “Coach Zeke” or a tireless entrepreneur as he was a two-time NBA champion, and not all of those memories were easy. His son, Joshua Zeke Thomas, was born in 1988 during his first title run, joining Marc, a son from a previous relationship born in 1986. By the time his daughter, Lauren, arrived in 1991, Thomas was already transitioning into new roles within the league, making it even harder.

Zeke stopped by the Born to the Game podcast to talk about what it’s like growing up as an NBA legend’s kid. When he was born, Isiah did everything to keep the family close, but major moves happened during the 6th grade and 10th grade, which are generally hard grades because one is the middle school and then high school. “Those are two really, and then we had some false starts, like being in the NBA, you might get traded, and you might contract or whatever. And we had some false starts.“

While they would’ve lived in Detroit during the Bad Boys Pistons era, after Thomas retired in 1994, he immediately took over the NBA expansion team, the Toronto Raptors. In 2000, he succeeded his once-rival Larry Bird as the head coach of the Indiana Pacers. That didn’t go as great as anyone had imagined, and when Bird returned as president of basketball operations, he fired Thomas in 2003. Zeke then narrated certain situations that he found hard to handle:

“Almost ended up in Atlanta that didn’t happen. But I remember like we had a house, and like you get the picture, and you’re like preparing yourself to move, but that didn’t happen. We almost moved to Toronto again. Had a house and stuff. The picture even like shadowed at a school. Okay. That didn’t happen. So, the moving around was not good for me.”

The family would relocate to New York within months when the Knicks hired Thomas as the president of basketball operations. He also later coached the team. But this situation had more lows than highs, too. During that time, his kids had a hard time struggling, but Zeke, being a social person, made a lot of friends. But going from Indiana to New York was a different kind of adjustment.

“Now I made close friends in New York, but it was more so after the fact; a lot of my close friends in New York were older than me,” Zeke told the hosts. This move would also set the foundation for his future career. “When I moved to New York, I started working for Hot 97. I started DJing. We’re going to get into that. So, I was definitely adulting earlier than expected in New York, where in Indiana, I could be a kid.”

It wasn’t just Zeke and the siblings; life for Senior Zeke was just as different in Detroit, Indiana, and New York. The new cities weren’t as kind to the Pistons legend either. Unseen during that time were his family’s own ways of coping with the struggles.

Isiah Thomas’ turbulent legacy and Zeke’s journey beyond basketball

Isiah Thomas’ NBA career was legendary. He earned $16.7 million as a player across 13 seasons, the longest and highest-paying contract in Pistons history at the time, underscoring the Bad Boys culture he spearheaded. His post-NBA career, though, was a trainwreck. He had a falling out with the Raptors management, was fired from the Pacers, and compounded the Knicks’ salary problems. His coaching career was dogged by criticism of him wasting the potential of Reggie Miller and Zach Randolph. James Dolan let him coach the Knicks with a demand for progress, but more controversies ensued.

After signing Thomas to an unspecified extension, the Knicks quietly ‘reassigned’ him in 2008. Thomas accepted an offer to coach FIU in 2009, while the Knicks reportedly owed him $12 million. He forgoed his first year’s salary but earned $1.29 million at FIU.

So, when Isiah was dealing with heat from the teams, Zeke found comfort in his own little community. “I felt that I took on my ‘Zeke’ persona in New York to kind of hide some of Joshua’s pain from moving twice.” The persona would be DJ Zeke. He launched his music career in New York and built a legacy independent of his father as an LGBTQ+ activist, a voice for survivors, and a sustainability advocate. As much as he loves his father for his support, he’s grateful for friends who helped him reach this point.

While Zeke never opted for a basketball career, he has his own NBA social circle. “I got great friends, and those great friends who I have from Michigan and Indiana, some of them work in the NBA now. Shout out to them. It’s all circled around, you guys.”

Like Shaquille O’Neal’s kids have spoken about missing their father when the NBA took him away, Zeke doesn’t hold this against his dad. He spent the majority of the podcast showing gratitude in return. It shows that no matter how crazy it got on the court, Isiah Thomas kept it together for his family.