Sports · born 1961Isiah Thomasbasketball player, point guard, coachHall of Fame point guard who played his entire 13-season career for the Detroit Pistons, leading the brash 'Bad Boys' to back-to-back NBA championships in 1989 and 1990.DETROIT / A living lexicon / ¼
Famous Detroiters
People who were born here, moved here or built their careers in Detroit: musicians, carmakers, athletes, writers, inventors, civil-rights leaders and a few notorious names. With their dates, their Detroit story and the places where they lived, worked and played, closed ones included.
- 1,940 famous people
- 270 Detroit places
- 3 fields
Hungarian ties 22 Detroiters with Hungarian ties →
Field
Connection
Born in
A–Z (family name)
5 people
Clear filtersSports · born 1961Isiah Thomasbasketball player, point guard, coachHall of Fame point guard who played his entire 13-season career for the Detroit Pistons, leading the brash 'Bad Boys' to back-to-back NBA championships in 1989 and 1990.
Sports · born 1962Otis Thorpebasketball playerNBA champion power forward who spent two seasons anchoring the Pistons' front court after coming to Detroit in a trade from Portland.
Sports · born 1964Frank Tateboxer, Olympic champion, IBF middleweight championDetroit-born Kronk boxer who won Olympic gold in 1984 and later held the IBF middleweight title.
City history · born 1963Heather Ann Thompsonhistorian, authorPulitzer-winning historian of the Attica uprising who grew up in Detroit's North Rosedale Park, graduated from Cass Tech and wrote Whose Detroit?The lexicon keeps growing. Every entry lists its sources at the bottom. Dates were checked against Wikidata and Wikipedia. The texts are our own. Famous people's places among the sights ↗