It appears Isaiah Thomas already has one eye on the off-season and he’s not opposed to a reunion with the Boston Celtics in the summer.
When asked by a fan on Twitter if he’d consider a return to the team he had the most success with, Thomas said anything is possible (Insert KevinGarnett.gif).
Thomas held a Q&A session with fans Sunday night and was honest and upfront about a variety of topics, but most noticeably a potential move back to Boston.
The Los Angeles Lakers point guard was traded before the start of the 2017-18 season by the Celtics to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a blockbuster deal involving Kyrie Irving, and it appeared that the relationship between him and GM Danny Ainge had become strained at the very least.
Thomas revealed to The Players’ Tribune that he was “hurt a lot” by the trade, especially after coming off an MVP-calibre season in which he averaged 28.9 points and 5.9 assists and had several big moments which ostensibly inscribed his name in Celtics lore.
His most memorable moments in a Boston uniform came during the 2017 post-season, when he played despite losing his sister, Chyna, in a car accident just a day before the Celtics opened their first-round series against the Chicago Bulls. He scored 53 points against the Washington Wizards in the conference semifinals, before a hip injury he suffered in mid-March finally became too much to overcome as Boston bowed out to Cleveland in the conference finals.
Diagnosed with a right femoral-acetabular impingement with a labral tear, the injury is a significant reason why Thomas has been a shadow of his former self this season. He is averaging just 15.3 points and 4.9 assists on 37.2 per cent shooting from the field after making a return to action in January.
His size makes him a defensive liability on the floor, so he will need to find some of the magic he had last season over the final 13 games of 2017-18 to make a contender believe he can have a net-positive effect. Both the injury and the fact that he will be entering his age 30 season will be key factors in determining what type of contract he will receive.
Ultimately, while his value has significantly dropped from a season ago, it’s hard to imagine there won’t be a number of teams that will be interested in adding his scoring punch and three-point shooting in a league now predicated on those two skills.
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