Isiah Thomas: The NBA great using hoops to help end gang culture

(CNN)These are tumultuous times in the US.

For two-time NBA champion Isiah Thomas, who is a native son of Chicago -- a city plagued by violence and gun crime -- part of the solution is sport.

"I believe that through playing, you can bring people together," Thomas told CNN Tuesday. "The power of play and the power of sport. What's missing from a lot of our communities is play."

Thomas retired in 1994, after leading the Detroit Pistons to NBA titles in 1989 and 1990 on top of making 12 All-Star appearances and being voted Finals MVP in 1990.

Different kind of game

The former point guard is now trying to make a difference in his hometown Chicago. The city where President Obama Barack got his start in politics recorded 762 murders last year, the highest number in two decades, and 266 more than in 2015.

In 2011, Thomas helped organize the Peace Game, which a year later grew into the Chicago Peace Basketball Tournament, a competition that brings the city's rival gangs together under the roof of the St. Sabina Gym.

What the last 48 hours told us about Trump's next 4 years

(CNN)President-elect Donald Trump went nose-to-nose Wednesday with a press corps itching to cross-examine him after more than five months at arm's length, while his top nominees faced off with senators during a strategic crush of confirmation hearings.

The raucous 48 hours, beginning on Capitol Hill early Tuesday, represented an unofficial inauguration of the 45th president -- a whirlwind welcome to Trump's Washington, a chaotic and contentious place where graying norms seem destined to clash relentlessly with an idiosyncratic administration.

By Thursday morning, after a Senate vote-a-rama effectively paved the way for GOP efforts to dismember Obamacare, new information had emerged and old suspicions were affirmed, as the final countdown to the historic transition neared its end.

Here are seven lessons -- and the moments that defined them -- from the past two days:

1. The lesson: Trump escalates his conflicts with the media and other perceived enemies

The moment: At his news conference Wednesday, the President-elect refused to hear a question from CNN's Jim Acosta. Incoming press secretary Sean Spicer then threatened to throw Acosta out of the room if he persisted in asking.

"I have great respect for the news, great respect for freedom of the press and all that," Trump said during his long-delayed press conference Wednesday.

But the lovefest had its limits, as the President-elect ripped CNN and BuzzFeed over a pair of stories published the day before -- CNN's a carefully sourced report; BuzzFeed's a less scrupulous document dump -- and purposefully conflated the two in order to avoid answering serious questions about his and his staff and advisers' alleged ties to Russia.