In the early hours of Saturday morning, Boston Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas posted a picture of himself alongside Michael Jordan while wishing the NBA legend happy birthday. Just hours earlier, after arriving at All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, Thomas had expressed a desire to sidle up to the NBA’s greatest players in another way when asked about his ultimate career goal.
“[My goal] was, last year, to be the greatest little guy to ever play the game,” Thomas told reporters during his All-Star availability on Friday. “Now things moving like they are, I want to be the greatest player to ever play. I know I’ve got a long way to go. I’m not even close, but you’ve got to shoot high.”
In a season in which Thomas is challenging for the NBA’s scoring title, injecting himself into the MVP conversation with his fourth-quarter heroics and making a charge at Larry Bird’s franchise scoring record, the notion of Thomas mingling with the game’s greatest players isn’t as outlandish as it might have seemed even a year ago.
Before Thomas earned his first All-Star nod last season, we detailed his quest to become the best little guy in league history. Utilizing Basketball Reference’s win share metric to rank all NBA players under 6 feet, Thomas slotted 15th at the time of our story. His comments Friday left us curious as to just how much he had climbed in the 13 months since we first crunched the numbers.
It turns out Thomas has already cracked the top 10, rocketing up six spots in little more than a year.
Thomas ranks fifth in the NBA this season in win share (9.5) and is right on the heels of both Utah’s Rudy Gobert (9.7) and San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard (9.8). Playing at his current level, Thomas projects to rise to No. 3 on the best little guy list as early as the end of next season. Catching Murphy, the only Hall of Famer on the list, is absolutely a possibility with good health and sustained impact.
But Thomas clearly has bigger goals now and more immediate challenges. Thomas is averaging 29.9 points per game this season and sits just a fraction of a point behind Bird’s team single-season record of the same scoring average during the 1987-88 season. Thomas said last week that he wants to make a run at leading the NBA in scoring this season — he’s chasing Russell Westbrook and his 31.1 points per game average — so Bird’s mark could fall as part of that pursuit.
Thomas absolutely has a long way to go to be regarded as one of the game’s all-time greats, though what he’s doing at his size will certainly enhance his overall legacy. A second All-Star appearance makes him only the fourth player under 6 feet to earn multiple All-Star invitations. Only seven-time All-Star Slater Martin (1953-59) has earned more than two nods among sub-6-footers.
Told of Thomas’ declaration, Celtics coach Brad Stevens, the coach of the East All-Stars this year, refused to put a ceiling on Thomas’ potential.
“I’ve learned that he responds to adversity and success the same way, in that he just gets hungrier,” Stevens told reporters at All-Star availability on Friday. “He’s a competitive person. He’s a hard-working person. He’s ambitious. He wants to be great. Everybody, I think, says that; he puts his work behind it. He works hard at it.”
Two-time reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry has clearly taken notice of what Thomas is doing this season.
“[Thomas’] story is unbelievable. You can talk about his height, you can talk about him being the last pick in the draft, whatever. He’s a guy that’s taken the opportunity and ran with it,” Curry told reporters at All-Star availability on Friday. “He’s been on, what, three different teams? He’s persevered through all that. You gotta have the ultimate confidence in yourself and your ability to do what he’s doing.
“It’s fun to watch, except when you’re trying to guard him. I guess anytime you can do things that haven’t been done in Celtics history, how rich that history is, that speaks for itself.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
