Isaiah Thomas is once again struggling to find opportunities in the NBA, but he isn’t giving up hope just yet. Thomas believes he still has what it takes to perform at a high level and hopes to play for another couple of years in the NBA.
“I really want to just play two or three more years and then focus on my kids. That’s the ultimate goal and we’re just going to keep fighting until the end…I’m still at an age where I can still play at a high level. I always say that I have the same feeling going to the gym now that I did when I was a kid. I know when that goes away, it’s time to just try to find something else.”
While Thomas remains supremely confident in his abilities, it seems unlikely he’ll get to play another year in the NBA, let alone two or three. The two-time All-Star was out of the league for almost two years before the Phoenix Suns signed him last season and he didn’t make much of an impact for them.
Thomas averaged 1.3 points and 0.5 assists per game in very limited game time with the Suns. It was clear they didn’t believe the 35-year-old was good enough to play significant minutes and they were a team that really needed a point guard.
Thomas might well have to return to the G League and hope that another team gives him a shot after watching him play there. It is how he got that opportunity with the Suns, as he had averaged 32.5 points, 3.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists, and 1.3 steals per game for the Salt Lake City Stars.
Isaiah Thomas Went Off On The Celtics For Misleading Him
Thomas’ best years in the NBA came with the Boston Celtics but it was also during his time with the team, that everything went horribly wrong for him. He played through a hip injury in the 2017 playoffs for them, unaware of the fact that it could derail his career. Thomas ripped the Celtics for misleading him about his career-altering injury.
“The thing that hurt the most was that nothing was explained to me,” Thomas said of his injury. “If you tell me, ‘This can possibly get worse, this is what you have,’ then it’s on me to make the choice. But it was none of that stated. I was just going in like, ‘Okay, I got a bone bruise, I can figure this out like I’ve done my whole life.’ They shot me up to go into the [Washington] Wizards series. I got shot up three times, every round. The last one was right before Game 7 of the Wizards series. Then in Game 2 of the Cleveland series, I get hit by a screen, and it just shoots to the back of my hip, and I’m like, ‘What the [heck]?’”
You wonder how differently things would have panned out had Thomas just sat out. He had averaged 28.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.2 blocks per game in that 2016-17 season but would never come close to putting up those numbers afterward. Anyone in his shoes would still be hurt by how the team managed the whole situation.
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