Isaiah Thomas is pretty plain about how much he wants to play in the fourth quarter.
Asked last night if he'd prefer to play the entire fourth quarter of games, the Celtics guard said, "Yeah, I'd rather play that than any other quarter, so . . ."
So it would seem the Celtics guard is particularly possessive of how much he plays down the stretch of games. He appeared to be upset about being put in with five minutes left in Wednesday's loss to Detroit, and spoke out about a similar situation on Nov. 11 against Golden State.
Thomas intimated during an interview with the Herald's Steve Bulpett on Thursday that there were issues bothering him that he declined to openly talk about. But Thomas spoke positively after last night's 97-92 win over Sacramento about his open line of communication with coach Brad Stevens .
And there was indeed a difference last night. This time Thomas was sent in with 8:31 left in the fourth, and scored seven of his 20 points the rest of the way. Perhaps the communication is working.
"We've had player-coach talks, how he feels and how I feel and that's the relationship we have," said Thomas. "We can talk to each other at any point in time and he changed up today a little bit and I was just happy we got the win."
Buddies battle
The ever-emotional DeMarcus Cousins briefly raised his arm in anger after absorbing a hit from Jae Crowder . But then the Kings center recognized the player who had just irritated him, and relaxed. Crowder appears to be on Cousins' good side.
"That's my guy," said Crowder. "He plays a lot of tactics against a lot of other players, but I've earned that respect with him because he knows I'm going to fight him just as hard as anyone else.
"We leave it on the court. He's a good friend of mine, we've become friends inside the lines, just playing ball, playing basketball the right way and playing hard."
Bombs away
Going into last night, the C's were fifth in the NBA in attempted 3-pointers at 31.1 per game, and made that many bombs pay off with a ninth-ranked 36.3 3-point percentage.
The attempts number is only going to climb with many more nights like Wednesday's loss to Detroit, when the C's attempted 42 3-pointers as the result of the Pistons' concentration on taking away the paint. Including last night's 28 attempts (against 11 makes), over the last four games they were ahead of their own pace with an average of 32.7 attempted treys.
And if the situation warrants it, Stevens won't mind calling for more.
"At the end of the day, we want layups," said the C's coach. "If we don't get layups, we want the floor to be shrunk. The defense shrinks in and you're able to touch the paint and kick it out. In two of our last three games, maybe three of our last four games, two-thirds of our possessions we've touched the paint or shrunk the defense with a roll.
"That's kind of our objective. Hey, we're not a team that gets to the foul line a lot, we're not a team that rebounds at a high rate, and we haven't scored it in transition, so to be able to be sitting where we are, offensively, I think a big reason is because we space the floor." To that end, the Celtics went into last night's game ninth in offensive rating with 107 points per 100 possessions. . . . Dave Joerger wasn't in Sacramento when Thomas was still attempting to establish himself as the best little man in the current NBA. But the new Kings coach certainly appreciates what the C's guard has become.
"He plays in a lot of space because their bigs kind of invert the floor being able to step out and shoot," said Joerger. "So they have an open court. They don't post up a lot. They play their post-up game and scoring in the paint off of drives and playing in space."
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