It’s been quite the whirlwind for Isaiah Thomas the past few years in his NBA career. He’s bounced around from team to team, trying to find his spot in the league and he finally found it in Boston with the Celtics. Then Danny Ainge traded him.
In a letter with The Player’s Tribune, he speaks on when he heard the news, what he was feeling at the time he heard it and how heartbreaking it was to tell the news to his family, especially his two young sons.
As he put it, he’s still sad about it.
But yeah, I’ll just say it: That shit hurt. It hurt a lot.
And I won’t lie — it still hurts.
It’s not that I don’t understand it. Of course I get it: This is a business. Danny is a businessman, and he made a business move. I don’t agree with it, just personally, and I don’t think the Boston Celtics got better by making this trade. But that’s not my job. That’s Danny’s. And it’s a tough job, and he’s been really good at it. But at the end of the day, these deals just come down to one thing: business. So it’s no hard feelings on that end. I’m a grown man, and I know what I got into when I joined this league — and so far it’s been more blessings than curses. I’m not sitting here, writing this, because I feel I was wronged. I wasn’t wronged. It was Boston’s right to trade me.
But that’s what I think my trade can show people. I want them to see how my getting traded — just like that, without any warning — by the franchise that I scratched and clawed for, and bled for, and put my everything on the line for? That’s why people need to fix their perspective. It’s like, man — with a few exceptions, unless we’re free agents, 99 times out of 100, it’s the owners with the power. So when players are getting moved left and right, and having their lives changed without any say-so, and it’s no big deal … but then the handful of times it flips, and the player has control … then it’s some scandal? Just being honest, but — to me, that says a lot about where we are as a league, and even as a society. And it says a lot about how far we still have to go.
At the same time, though, people gotta understand. Like, even with all of this being said … man … it still hurt. It still hurt bad. And I hope people can understand that when I say it hurt, it isn’t directed at anyone. I’m not saying I was hurt by anyone, or wronged by anyone, or betrayed. I’m just saying, man, I’m only human. I may act like a tough guy on the court. And I may seem like I have ice in my veins when I’m competing. But at the same time — it ain’t ice, really. I got blood and I got a heart like everyone else.
As much as it hurts for him to go, he’s grateful for his experience in Boston and thanks the fans for how they received him during his tenure there. Including when his sister Chyna passed away.
He also sends a warning shot to the rest of the league, including the Celtics because he’s now playing with the best basketball player on the planet in Lebron James. He even foreshadows when they meet in the playoffs and how much he’s going to want to destroy his old team, even though he’s sad he left. He called the Cavs ‘stacked’ this year.
You can read the full letter to Boston at The Player’s Tribune.
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