Luke Walton Says Isaiah Thomas Will Not Play Again This Season After Hip Surgery

MIAMI (AP) — Isaiah Thomas withal feels like there's fourth dimension.

He's four months away from costless agency, the wheeling-and-dealing period where — the way things were looking a twelvemonth agone — he would exist signing a contract worth well over $100 million ensuring himself a level of wealth that would exist well across what the player picked last in the 2011 NBA draft should have reasonably expected.

Goose egg is sure now.

He's gone from a star in Boston to being cast aside in Cleveland and now finds himself every bit a backup with the Los Angeles Lakers, still trying to get salubrious after hip surgery. If that wasn't enough, at that place'due south the added strain that what he does over these next few high-stakes weeks will go a long way in determining what he'll earn and where he'll play over the next few years.

"All yous need is one team to dear you," Thomas said Thursday. "It'due south like the typhoon all over once more. You just need one team."

He averaged only under 29 points per game terminal flavor. He hasn't scored more than 24 in whatever game this season, couldn't get on the floor until January while recovering from the hip surgery and lasted just 15 games with the Cavaliers before getting traded to the Lakers in early Feb. Thomas was the main slice that Cleveland got from Boston in the deal that sent Kyrie Irving to the Celtics, and his on-court Cavs tenure lasted roughly one calendar month.

The Lakers want Thomas to mentor their young players, and they're giving him rest and recovery time when he needs — mindful that he wants to go into this summer as healthy as possible.

"I recollect he's been judged pretty harshly with the fact that he missed that much fourth dimension," Lakers coach Luke Walton said. "He's playing good for us. I recall with the more than time he has simply playing basketball game, the improve he'll get as far every bit getting back to doing the things he was doing in Boston last flavour."

Walton speaks highly of Thomas, which suggests that the Lakers could be that ane squad Thomas is looking for.

In 21 games inbound Thursday, Thomas is averaged fourteen.iii points in 26 minutes. He'southward shooting 37 percentage, almost x percent downward from where he was a year ago.

"If they give me a bigger opportunity, I'm capable of bringing more than to the table," Thomas said. "Until then I'm doing what I can. I'one thousand getting equally healthy every bit I perchance can. Every solar day I'm feeling a lot better. I'm only grinding it out and simply trying to exist fix for any opportunities that come my way."

Thomas went through pain of the emotional and physical kind with the Celtics a year ago, later his sis died in a car crash but earlier the starting time of Boston's postseason run. Near three weeks later, on the mean solar day Chyna Thomas would have turned 23, her brother — a mean solar day removed from oral surgery — scored 53 points to lead the Celtics past Washington.

Non long after that, the Celtics shut the v-foot-9 guard down because of the right hip problem.

"Him being a competitor and a warrior, he made his injury even worse instead of putting his stock upward at that place and saying 'I'm done, let me become ready for the next flavour so I can get a max bargain,'" said Miami baby-sit Dwyane Wade, a Thomas teammate in Cleveland this season. "He kept trying to fight and fight and fight for the urban center that he was playing for. So it'south a tough situation.

"One thing I know about him, you don't become a household name at five-pes-whatever-he-is without having grit, without having toughness and without knowing you lot can overcome anything."

That's the belief Thomas still has these days.

He doesn't call up he can merely return to the level he was at last year. He thinks he tin get even better. The challenge will exist making someone else believe that this summertime.

"It's 'what have you done for me lately.' That's the league we're in and I sympathize that," Thomas said. "But if I'1000 given the aforementioned opportunity I was given in Boston, I would practise the same thing. And that'southward just what it is. My resume speaks for itself. What I can do on the basketball floor speaks for itself. I tin can't do nothing but control what I tin command, and that's taking advantage of whatever opportunity I'm given and playing my heart out."

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2018/03/01/lakers-isaiah-thomas-all-you-need-is-1-team-to-love-you/110981458/

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