Let’s get this out up front:
I’m very much enjoying this Celtics team. We saw last night how well these guys can work together. We saw Kyrie Irving be our new takeover master. We’ve seen Al Horford play maybe the best basketball of his career.
I love it. All of it.
But I’ll always have a soft spot for Isaiah Thomas. For the first time in a long time, Isaiah tapped into a side of me that I thought I’d pushed aside as I’d grown older. I’m obviously a Celtics fan but my job here has been to look deeper into the things and try to be unswayed by fandom to see what’s truly happening on the floor.
Isaiah, though, he’s something special. The things he’s overcome personally and professionally to not only succeed, but help push this franchise’s rebuild years ahead of schedule, is amazing.
So this whole video in the latest chapter of the “Book of Isaiah” series brings the emotions back.
It sucks that he can’t be a part of what’s being built in Boston. I understand the business side of the move and, frankly, it’s working out a lot better than I could have imagined.
But let’s be clear, the Celtics aren’t here, at the top of the standings in 2017, without Isaiah Thomas.
His arrival took a team destined for the lottery and pushed it to the playoffs. Then he literally broke his body to push the Celtics to the Conference Finals. THEN, at the height of his popularity and in the middle of his rehab, he was traded.
The business side of this sucks.
Isaiah will be just fine. He’s already rich and he’ll make millions more. He’ll retire someday and live a very good life, probably in a second life as a pretty good analyst.
But that doesn’t take the sting out of losing one of the few, pure, genuine connections between player and city we have left in sports.
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