What Ever Happened To Isaiah Thomas?

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What Happened To Isaiah Thomas? By: Chris Watford for NoLuckNeeded.com

Two years ago, 5’9 point guard Isaiah Thomas took the league by storm in a wave of green: averaging 29 points, playing nearly 82 games and leading the Celtics to an Eastern Conference Finals appearance. Thomas poured his heart and soul into Boston and practically bled green, but he learned a harsh lesson in the 2017 offseason: loyalty doesn’t matter in the NBA.

Isaiah Thomas To the Celtics

Minutes before the trade-deadline on February 19th 2015, 39 players were traded to over a dozen teams across the league, Isaiah Thomas being one of those players. Celtics general manager, Danny Ainge, finalized a trade to the Phoenix Suns sending Marcus Thorton and the Cleveland 2016 first round pick (Skal Labissiere, 28th pick) for Isaiah Thomas. In only his fourth game in a Celtics uniform, Thomas scored 28 points and 7 assists coming off the bench. The second that Thomas stepped on the court in a green jersey, he transcended into a completely different player.

The Rise

It wasn’t until Thomas’s second season in Boston that he truly showed what type of player he could be. Averaging 29 points and six assists throughout 79 games of the 2016-2017 season, Thomas led the Celtics to a great playoff run, all while playing through a hip injury. Unfortunately, in the first round of the playoffs, Thomas was informed that his younger sister, Chyna Thomas, had died in a car accident. Thomas played days after his sister’s death, writing messages to her on his shoes and scoring 53 points against the Wizards on what would have been her 23rd birthday. Thomas continued to play through this series, battling a hip injury, the death of his sister, and eventually losing a tooth mid-game.

The Fall

After the ups and downs that Thomas dealt with in Boston there was still one thing that was nagging him: his hip injury. It proved to be worse than he had originally thought and playing through the injury for months didn’t help. In the 2017 offseason Danny Ainge made a trade with the Cavs, sending Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas, Ante Zizic and Brooklyn’s 2018 first round pick (Collin Sexton, 6th pick) in exchange for disgruntled all-star, Kyrie Irving. Thomas didn’t play for a majority of the 2017-2018 season, and when he did, it wasn’t pretty. He averaged 14.7 points with abysmal shooting splits of .361/.253/.863. Things would have been pretty decent for Thomas if he was able to defend, but Thomas’s size was a huge disadvantage for him, with most guards having at least a four inch height advantage on Thomas.

Isaiah Thomas To the Lakers

Isaiah Thomas didn’t get along well with LeBron James and other teammates: causing drama in the locker room and openly spreading rumors to the media. He didn’t last very long in Cleveland, playing only half a season before he was traded to the Lakers. Thomas played 17 games for Los Angeles, primarily serving as a backup point guard for then-rookie, Lonzo Ball. Thomas’s shooting splits increased slightly, and he averaged 15 points in the 17 games he played, but his defense still hindered him significantly.

Isaiah Thomas To the Nuggets

Thomas eventually had to have hip surgery in March 2018, and was not re-signed to the Lakers. Within a span of two years, Thomas played for four teams: the Celtics, Cavs, Lakers and now the Nuggets. Thomas recently signed a 1yr/$2M contract to the Denver Nuggets after the hellish year that he’s been put through. If things don’t go well for him this year, it might be the last year that he plays in the NBA.

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