When the Celtics initially elected to trade Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and the 2018 Brooklyn first round pick for Kyrie Irving back in August, the status of Thomas’s injured hip was not a main focus of the deal. The Celtics wanted a young superstar to build with over the next decade, and Irving was an ideal fit on that front.
While moving on from Thomas was a tough decision (in addition to everything else they gave up), the condition of the point guard's hip did not seem to be (publicly) a major motivating factor for Boston in trading him. Whether it was the looming free agency of Thomas next summer or his age (28), Irving was a better building block in the mind of the Celtics’ brass. Thomas wasn’t considered to be damaged goods in the deal, he was just a guy who may miss some time next season as he recovered from a hip injury.
That mindset obviously changed in the week of turmoil following the original trade agreement between the Cavs and Celtics. Cleveland’s front office publicly leaked their concerns about Thomas’s hip in an effort to gain some leverage in renegotiation attempts with the Celtics. Those tactics failed for the most part (an extra second-round pick can’t be considered a major win for them), but more importantly, the saga created all sorts of question marks about the long-term health of Thomas. The Cavs dragged the point guard’s status into focus with the whole NBA world watching, making his condition (both now and in the future) a focal point in the aftermath of the deal.
All of those tactics created an interesting backdrop for Thursday’s introductory press conference with Thomas, Crowder and Zizic. Serious uncertainty remained about the status of Thomas heading in, questions the Cavs themselves elected to made public in the past week through largely their own choosing. Some members of the national media wrote well-researched speculation pieces about the timing of the Thomas injury and questioned just how well Thomas would be able to recover in the coming months and years. However, Cavs general manager Koby Altman did little to put any of those concerns to rest with his comments in the presser, outside of admitting the team had no plans to have Thomas undergo surgery.
"I'll address that," Altman told reporters in Cleveland on Thursday after the first Thomas hip question. "Obviously it's been sort of well-documented, the hip injury, during the last week and a half. To be fair to Isaiah, we're not going to address any specifics of the hip injury. We're also not going to put a timetable on his return. We're not going to rush it at all. We're very fortunate that we have some of the best doctors in the world at the Cleveland Clinic. And we're also very fortunate that we have some of the best performance teams in the league that has a well-thought out plan, and an established plan, in place. IT's already started.
“And, again, we're not going to rush this thing. The goal is to bring him back at some point this year and be healthy and compete and get back to IT status. That's our goal and our responsibility to him. But we're just not going to address the specifics of the injury. We're not going to comment on a timetable."
"I'm just getting treatment each and every day, working out in the weight room," Thomas added to Altman's remarks. "That's mostly what I'm doing right now. Like Koby said, we have a plan set. And we're just going to attack that plan and get me back to 100 percent as soon as possible."
Those limited explanations on the actual status of Thomas's condition did little to slow down the slew of questions from reporters about the hip, even as Altman spent much of the press conference playing defense.
"I don't want this to be the Isaiah Thomas hip press conference. I'm just going to, with all due respect, shut down the hip questions,” Altman said. “If we want to talk about Isaiah, let's talk about Isaiah the All-Star. Let's talk about Isaiah the guy that averaged 29 points per game last year. Let's talk about him as a leader and what he's going to bring to this franchise in terms of his performance on the floor when we get him back. So, again guys, we appreciate the questions, but this is not going to turn into the Isaiah Thomas hip press conference.”
Comments like that from Altman are laughable in the face of what the Cavs tried to pull with Thomas during negotiations over the final week of August. What did they think people we going to ask Thomas about after casting their doubts so publicly about his health? It’s easy to understand what they were trying to do in the negotiation process, but it’s incredibly naive of them to not realize what would happen to Thomas in the wake of it going down so publicly.
Ultimately, that’s why this whole saga leaves Thomas in a brutal situation. The All-Star was already going to face plenty of scrutiny in the wake of the deal, but you can bet team doctors all around the league will be especially vigilant with the 28-year-old after Cleveland’s health concerns became so public. Instead of talking about max contracts, Thomas could find it tough to get big money on an extended deal from anyone, depending on how long his recovery process takes and how well he bounces back this season.
The Cavs may not care about that anyway. Thomas obviously isn’t the integral part of the Irving deal for them beyond this season and the team may not have much interest in bringing him back for next season as is (particularly if LeBron James leaves).
The way Cleveland handled this situation in Thursday’s presser was laughable given how damage they had done to Thomas’s reputation in the last couple weeks. They waited too long to protect the guy and can't undo the damage that has been done.
Leftover NBA Nuggets
- The NBA lottery process has been a constant topic of debate in NBA circles for large chunks of the past decade and that continued Thursday when Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com reported that the league planned on making a strong push for reform on that front this summer. The potential changes being pursued would lower incentives for teams to tank by evening out lottery odds among the worst teams and potentially limiting teams from drafting in the top three of the draft during consecutive years. None of these hypothetical changes (if approved) would go into effect until the 2019 NBA Draft, but we’ll have a more thorough breakdown of the possible impact of them on the Celtics’ future picks later this week.
- Former Celtic big man Tyler Zeller reportedly worked out for the Brooklyn Nets this week. The seven-footer is one name on a long list of big men still looking for jobs with training camp only a few weeks away.
- Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta agreed to buy the Rockets for a record price of $2.2 billion from Leslie Alexander. The final figure is a huge jump from the valuation of $1.65 billion that Forbes gave the Rockets back in February 2017 (8th highest in NBA).
- Rumors continue to swirl about a potential buyout of Bulls guard Dwyane Wade and his $23.8 million contract from a potentially tanking Chicago team. Given that his expiring deal is a potential trade chip (as salary filler), I’m guessing Wade will have to give up a significant chunk of change to be cut loose this early.