March 2, 2015
'The franchise kept bringing guys in to beat him out, but they couldn't.'
-- EX-KINGS COACH/GM JERRY REYNOLDS on Isaiah Thomas' time in Sacramento
Though he is no longer bound to Isaiah Thomas by their ties to the Sacramento Kings, Jerry Reynolds will always be keenly aware of the point guard's travels. The former Kings coach and general manager effortlessly runs through what the Celtics traded to Phoenix for Thomas, and he's amused.
Leaving Marcus Thornton out of the conversation, Reynolds said, "That future Cleveland pick ain't going to be Isaiah Thomas. I can tell you that." Reynolds, now a TV color analyst for the Kings, is as much a fan of the story as what that story became.
"I saw Isaiah come in here as the 60th pick (in 2011) and nobody expected him to make the team. But from the first day you could see it. This is no 60th pick. "There were cases where he consistently had to out-play guys to get minutes. The franchise kept bringing guys in to beat him out, but they couldn't."
Jimmer Fredette was once thought to be the new flavor, after Greivis Vasquez. Thomas was still there last season after Vasquez was traded and Fredette later bought out. Vasquez was Sacramento's reward in a sign-and-trade deal that sent 2010 Rookie of the Year Tyreke Evans to New Orleans.
Though considered solely the backup option, Thomas and his knack for scoring over the trees continued to demand more. Then he signed with Phoenix as a restricted free agent last summer, and came off the bench behind Eric Bledsoe and Goran Dragic.
As three potential starting point guards thrown into the lineup, all needed the ball. Phoenix folks inferred that Thomas was unhappy coming off the bench yet again, and Dragic openly groused about sharing the kitchen with two other chefs.
So general manager Ryan McDonough reshuffled at the trade deadline, and Thomas joined the Celtics after Dragic was traded to Miami. Celtics coach Brad Stevens said he felt no immediate need to alter his starting backcourt of Marcus Smart and Avery Bradley, Thomas' old friend from the Hilltop section of Tacoma.
Thomas, asked about the familiar third guard role, looked down and smiled quietly last week. It was a new city, new team, but the same old proving ground. "Whatever coach wants me to do."
Swinging into action
It all began in James Thomas' Tacoma garage. This longtime inspector in Boeing's commercial jet division had a chin-up bar, and often found his young but-not-growing son hanging and swinging by the strength in his curled fingers. He imagined that by grabbing the bar, he could squeeze out extra inches.
Thomas was a little dismayed by his son's goal. He didn't know where the growth spurt was going to come from. "Nobody in my family is tall, and his mother's family was only a little bigger," said James Thomas, who at 5-foot-6 now looks up at his son. But Isaiah's source of hunger had been identified.
"Being short," James said. "That whole thing about being short is what drove him. The doctor kept telling him: You're going to be 5-foot-9." Isaiah doesn't remember his father's chin-up bar story - "that's his story, he probably has a lot of them," he said - but does recall asking the doctor when he was going to grow.
James Thomas exhorted his son to play big anyway. Isaiah played football through junior high school, and his father thought he saw a future in the way Isaiah could run around and through bigger players. But Isaiah didn't want to be a football player. On the basketball court, he broke the 40-point barrier a few times and eventually led the state in scoring, and that's where fulfillment came from - knocking down shots over the big guys.
James was partly responsible. He played in pick-up games at a community center and at nearby McChord Air Force Base. Once Isaiah was in sixth grade, James brought him along, and had a quick answer when some of the other adults complained. James walked in carrying Isaiah's most important possession, an NBA grade Spaulding ball. Isaiah slept with it, and carried it everywhere. "Like some kids with a blanket," James said. "Isaiah's son now carries a blanket the way his dad used to hold onto that ball."
And if these men didn't want James Thomas' son in the game, then fine. "Find another ball to play with," he said. That seemed to work. Isaiah started scoring on older, bigger people. By high school he was the most dangerous guard in the state of Washington. His older friend from Seattle, Nate Robinson, played with a similar little man swagger. Thomas even followed Robinson to the University of Washington. Like Nate, he could score. But he had true point guard skills, too.
But Isaiah Thomas had to take a detour to get there. His grades were horrible. His life had become all basketball, even at the wrong times. James Thomas had to make a tough call. Isaiah was sent to repeat 11th grade at South Kent School in Kent, Conn.
"My son hated me for that," James Thomas said. "But he needed to grow up. He thought I had kicked in his world. But he was playing on those national teams with Kevin Love and O.J. Mayo, and he wondered why they were getting scouted and he wasn't."
Thomas loathed those winter nights in Kent.
"I hated every second of it," he said. "It was the most depressing time of my life. I got there it was dark, 10 degrees, something I had never experienced before - new, and an all-boys school at that. And without that I would not be there today. It helped me so much. But it was something I needed to do. It made me grow up and become a young man, and take care of my responsibilities."
Still hanging in there
Many of the snow drifts are taller than Thomas in his new city. People joke about him buying a snow shovel and he laughs along. Though some Bostonians now think they invented snow as the result of this brutal winter, Thomas is typically unimpressed. It's not his first storm.
He's back coming off the bench, and the challenge remains the same. Thomas has a habit of looking at the players ahead of him and telling himself that he's better. "Isaiah was playing better than both of those other point guards in Phoenix," his clearly biased father said.
Offensively, that assertion could prove true with the Celtics. Smart, a rookie, is much more natural on the defensive side of the ball. Bradley's an improved scorer, but has a streaky history. Thomas has averaged 22.2 points through his first four games as a Celtic. As usual, he thinks he can put that shot up over anyone. He's not going to let go of the bar for any of them.
It's like Thomas' first official dunk, the first game of his junior season at Curtis Senior High, a year before that dark trip to Connecticut. Accustomed to the thrill from mid-air suspension, Thomas hung on the rim. "I got a technical," he said with a laugh. "I didn't know I couldn't hang."
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