GO FISH!
From parquet court to open seas, Knicks forward Thomas going pro in another sport
This is not to suggest Lance Thomas wouldn’t fully commit to any undertaking, but he really sold his devotion to fishing by telling a story about eating a tuna’s heart. “It’s bitter, it’s disgusting, it’s still pumping,” he said.
As the ancient tradition dictates, a fisherman — in this case, also a small forward on the Knicks — produces a spiritual connection to his first tuna by taking a bite of its raw heart. So after Thomas reeled in that yellow fin, he ripped the organ from underneath the gill plate and… a tuna master was born.
“That’s how you mark your first one,” Thomas said of his ‘Temple of Doom’ experience.
This was years ago already for Thomas, who graduated from bloody rituals to captaining a boat for offshore competitive fishing.
It was never really a hobby for Thomas — more like a passion — but now it’s a competition, with tournaments scheduled through the spring and summer across the Gulf Coast. Thomas’ team, Slang Magic (more on the origins of the name later), is a newbie to the circuit, and its boat was recently built with the goal of earning big prize money and “bragging rights across the whole Gulf Coast, from Texas to Florida.
“We’re at the point now where we want to compete against other people, we want to compete,” Thomas added. “And naturally my competitive side is I want to win, I want to go against the best. I do it in my profession in the NBA, I want to do it in a different realm.”
To be clear, Thomas and his crew of seven aren’t entering those comfortable bass fishing tournaments featured on ESPN. They will instead be miles out at sea, battling the elements and reeling in big-game fish (and sometimes, as a video on Thomas’ Instagram page documents, sharks attached to eels).
In the offseason, Thomas transitions from captain of the Knicks to captain of Slang Magic.
“I’m always direct, very vocal, and everyone who has ever been a teammate of mine — it could be whatever — with the Knicks, with my fishing team, a game of tag when I was a kid. I am always that guy who is not going to ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t myself. That’s what made the transition to my fishing team very smooth because it was just natural for me to put a group of guys together that have a common passion,” Thomas said. “You have to be able to make difficult decisions whether people agree with it or not. You have to be able to be direct. You have to know everybody’s strengths and weaknesses. You have to be able to tell the truth even when they don’t want to hear it. And a lot of people cower away from that. I’ve never been that guy.
“I can tell when somebody is off,” Thomas added. “I can tell when somebody is not into it. I know my team like the back of my hand and we really are just excited to compete against other people.”
The 30-year-old acknowledged many scary moments on the waters through the years, including once when the lightning was so strong and close “you could smell it.” Thomas was out with friends and family on this particular fishing trip, and he was responsible for the inexperienced crew onboard when a storm redirected them into the Gulf.
“When we got to less than two miles away from land, it went from 85 degrees to about 65 degrees. You could just feel like you just went into a freezer,” Thomas said. “And the rain felt like pellets being hit at you. Waves grew. We were getting tossed around like a rag doll.”
Thomas tried to distract his passengers with louder music. But then a wave shut down the sound system. Thomas said he spent 2½ hours trying to navigate the final mile to shore, using lightning bolts to light his path.
“I never panic out there,” Thomas said. “I have to know what I’m doing.”
To hear Thomas speak of his affinity for fishing and the tiny community of Venice, La.— “my special place,” he calls it — you’d assume Thomas was country-bred. Quite the opposite. The forward was born in Brooklyn and attended high school at St. Benedict’s in Newark, arriving there the year after JR Smith’s graduation. During the Knicks season he lives in Tribeca.
It wasn’t until Thomas got to Duke University that he began fishing at lakes near the Durham campus, learning how to hook a worm in between winning a national championship under Mike Krzyzewski.
After he signed with his first NBA team in New Orleans in 2012, the fishing haven of the Gulf Coast became just a short commute away. The friend who introduced Thomas to fishing in Durham — Kenjuan Nichols — actually moved with the NBA player to New Orleans and they went to the water whenever basketball didn’t interfere.
That first tuna had Thomas hooked. His biggest one, to date, is 183 pounds.
“It became a way of life,” Thomas said. “We went fishing every chance I got. After practice I’d go fishing, days off I’m on the water.”
Thomas learned the big fishing game on charter trips, soaking in information from the boat’s captain until he felt comfortable enough to buy his own. Thomas’ latest was built just about three weeks ago, and it’s stationed in Venice, which became Thomas’ second home even after he left the Pelicans to play in China, OKC and, finally, New York.
Thomas said he flies to Louisiana almost immediately after his exit interview with the Knicks (which has been in mid-April, unfortunately). He tries to blend in but there aren’t too many 6-foot-8 chiseled athletes on $27 million NBA contracts in the fishing circuit. The extra attention just drives Thomas to prepare. In the NBA, he was the underdog
who earned his spot as a tenacious defender after going undrafted and surviving 10-day contracts. In the fishing world, he has other reasons to prove himself as the high-profile guppy in the pond.
Which is why Thomas says he doesn’t take shortcuts.
“(People don’t express their au-
dacity) vocally. But you just read body language like, ‘Who does he think he is?’” Thomas said. “That’s why I want to go about it the right way. I’m not going to come into the sport thinking I know everything.” Slang Magic was named after a song by The Outsidaz, an underground rap group from Newark. It developed into Thomas’ tag name over the years, transferring from his email to his AOL instant messenger to “everything that you can make a handle for,” Thomas said. Now it’s his boat and fishing team, with its first big tournament starting May 16th in Alabama. From there, Slang Magic travels to Louisiana and Mississippi and Florida. As the longest tenured Knick, Thomas hasn’t had much winning to celebrate in the NBA. He’s hoping the summer is more successful. And in the fishing game, he’s shown a willingness to prepare and complete the rituals.