By the time it happens, it’s too late.
That moment Isaiah Thomas jogs up the court, pointing and yelling at his wrist, is the moment the opponent’s soul is already gone.
A defender stares at an empty spot on the floor trying to recount how Thomas’ point B was so different from the point B he’d anticipated.
Others gesture at each other, or the coach, or an official, or at no one at all.
It’s too late, though. The gesturing is more reflex than anything; the final throes of defeat even if those being defeated are too proud to recognize it in the moment.
By this time, Isaiah has already entered what we’ll call a zone because that’s what we, as basketball mortals, have come to call it.
Isaiah, though, isn’t in some magical time warp where baskets grow larger, defenders get slower, and space and time bend at his will. That’s too dismissive of where Isaiah is as he taps forefinger to wrist. He doesn’t enter zones.
He creates them.
John Wall, and I say this in no manner of disrespect, was in a zone last night to start the game. For a sensational player like Wall, the zone is a place where weaknesses and statistical probability are paused. He suddenly becomes an unstoppable three point shooter. His already poetic basketball skills emerge into full on-court concertos where the ball obeys his every command.
Great players, like Wall, find these zones from time to time. They sometimes will themselves into this place on demand.
Yet, Isaiah’s stretches are a little different.
Sure, they sometimes involves crazy, zone-ish shots from way too far away. But Isaiah needs to be more puppet-master than most to create these heroics.
He isn’t playing five-on-five basketball. He’s playing a one-with-everyone kind of game; almost as if he’s positioning magnets on the floor too repel or attract one another in order to open up a lane for him to exploit. Every trip down, he has to find a way to get all nine guys on the floor to move in just the right way; be it with picks, passes, or fancy dribbles, to create an environment in which he can thrive.
He is basketball hydroponics, creating life where you might not expect it to exist, through careful crafting and intense knowledge of the inner workings of not just the sport, but the human tendencies he’s faced his whole life.
If you haven’t heard or noticed, Thomas is smaller than most guys out there. And while we like to highlight it as a quirk or source of amazement, he has twisted that into a great asset.
He has worked to become incredibly strong. He has trained to become unfathomably quick. But he’s also mastered the art of dips, dives, and jukes to take the simple physics of momentum and centers of gravity and twist them into a thing that works for him. He has evolved his game into something that is often unstoppable.
It’s unstoppable because he makes it so. He choreographs his fourth quarters, making defenders unwitting partners in his dance to greatness. They spin at his behest; slide in synchronicity with his movements; jump when he commands.
They are graceful accomplices, only realizing as much after the nylon has thwicked leather, the crowd has lifted its collective voice, and Isaiah’s finger taps his wrist.
By then, though, it’s too late.
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