FanPost

I'm still glad we traded Isaiah

The lament must stop. We fogies who remain skeptical of statistical measurements must make it so.

Isiaiah Thomas is only good for your basketball team if you don't want to win a championship. What we're all seeing now on the Boston Celtics is about as substantial as his height. Okay, that's an exaggeration. He's a fine player. If you slapped him on a team with LeBron, Klay, Kawhi, and DeMarcus, I'm sure they'd be able to figure something about.

But Isaiah Thomas is a vacuum for your team's potential, sucking up your future into his cavernous maw to feed his power. He is the basketball equivalent of binge drinking. You are borrowing your future happiness to make tonight seem special.

He's playing in the best possible situation for him (barring that kind of aforementioned Super Team). A team that defends, plays hard, and is coached extremely well will be welcoming to almost any kind of player. A team that defends, plays hard, and is coached well that can't score the basketball is an absolute dream for a player like Isaiah Thomas. "Please, Isiaiah, score all our points for us!!!". His level of giddy is so strong I can feel the residue of it's power staring into my soul like a hobbit wielding the One Ring.

On any other team, especially one with the nascent abilities of our Suns, his talents would be served to suck up usage, delay progress, hamper chemistry, and water down draft picks.

In the time of Westbrooks and Hardens, this me-and-everybody-else style of play is great for dramatic headlines. It's bad if you ever want to plant your smackers on a piece of Larry O'Brien. Players with such sky high usage rates must lead with their play. Leaders can be prickly like Chris Paul or Michael Jordan or Kobe. Or they can be worldly and paternal like Nash, or reserved like Kawhi. But these players lead with their play. PJ Tucker does this more than Isiah Thomas does, and for a player to be the engine of your team and not play like a leader is a death sentence to championship aspirations. Leaders of champions inspire and engage with their play, and I don't think Isaiah does anything but put points on the board. He creates a commander-shaped hole where your floor general should be.

Trust me, Planet Orange. We are better off without him.