Isaiah Thomas is one of the most beloved players in Boston Celtics history. The two-time All-Star captured the hearts of Celtics fans during his short, two-and-a-half-year tenure with the team from 2015-17.
Thomas was back in town on Tuesday to be honored with “The Sports Museum’s” Basketball Lifetime Achievement Award at TD Garden. Each year, legendary local athletes across all four major sports are honored at "The Tradition," which has now been running for 24 years at North Station.
“Boston, I’m home!! If you see me in the streets, make sure you show some love,” Thomas wrote in a post to X on Monday.
The recognition and love from the city is deserved to say the very least. Thomas helped return the Celtics to championship contention quicker than anyone could’ve expected.
“It feels like I was here for 10 years,” Thomas shared Tuesday night. “It feels like I won multiple championships and I was only here for two-and-a-half, three years. And the genuine love that the city, the organization, just the regular fans, each and every day … since the first day I got traded here — I’m forever thankful. I’m forever grateful. And that feeling is mutual.”
He joined the team at the 2015 NBA Trade Deadline and immediately made an impact. A lottery-bound Celtics team found their way into the playoffs thanks to an impressive back end of the season.
Two years later, IT finished top five in MVP voting after putting together one of the most impressive campaigns in franchise history. At the time, Thomas’s 28.9 points per game was the second-highest average by a Celtic ever, only trailing Larry Bird’s 1987-88 season. Since then, Jayson Tatum jumped to the top spot, averaging 30.1 points per game in the 2022-23 campaign.
Isaiah Thomas still has plenty of love for Boston even after his surprise exit from the Celtics
Back to Thomas’s 2017 run in Boston. He and the Cs made an unlikely run to the Eastern Conference Finals as the star guard battled through an injured hip while mourning the death of his sister, who passed away in a car crash right before the playoffs. The warrior mentality that he carried himself with made that summer’s shocking trade sting all the more.
“It was obviously a tough situation,” Thomas shared on his Point Game podcast. “I felt like I gave my heart to this city, to this organization. To be a franchise player and then get traded out of nowhere — especially while I was hurt — that hit hard. But out of all people, I understood the business.”
This wasn’t the first time that Thomas opened up about the 2017 trade that sent him, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and draft capital to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for Kyrie Irving.
In fairness to him, everyone who talks to him seems to want to know about it.
“People would always say, ‘Ah, you keep bringing it up,’ but it was the media bringing it up. I wasn’t talking about it — I just had to answer the questions. At the end of the day, I’m human. I had real feelings. I had real love for this city and the organization. I wanted to keep it going. But like I said, I understand the business 100%. Sometimes things happen that neither side really wants, but for business reasons, it makes sense. So, you find ways to grow, to move on, and to keep competing — with a smile on your face.”
Thomas handled the gutwrenching trade and the impact it had on his pro career incredibly well. He never quite returned to the same level of play after leaving the Celtics, but he never burned the bridge when he easily could’ve.
Instead, he’s consistently embraced the love he’s gotten from the city and remains a legend to many, including myself, to this day.
It was a really awesome moment seeing the NBC Sports Boston broadcast quickly shout out Thomas for being honored on Tuesday night. It gave me the chance to enlighten my girlfriend, a newer Celtics fan, about how great he was and what he meant to the organization in such a brief time.