Isaiah Thomas sees a bright future for himself and the Boston Celtics

The first time I interviewed Isaiah Thomas, he told me he wanted to become a starter in the NBA. That happened when the Sacramento Kings traded Greivis Vasquez, and Thomas suddenly became the best player on a struggling Kings team.

Next, after a brief interlude in Phoenix best summarized as “Too Many Point Guards”, Thomas headed to Boston, and told me he intended to become an All-Star. Last year, that happened, and Thomas enjoyed the best season of his career, posting a PER of 21.5, playing in all 82 games, and leading the Celtics to 48 wins.

All of this may seem shocking for a player who stands just 5-foot-9 and was the 60th and final pick in the 2011 draft, but for Thomas this is merely prognostication as prescription, the way he turns his goals into realities.

“I’m a guy who’s big on talking things into existence,” Thomas said following a preseason game against the Brooklyn Nets in October. “I think if you do that, it gets you one step closer to what you’re chasing. And my whole life, that’s what I’ve been doing.”

So it seems relevant to find out what Isaiah Thomas is speaking into existence next—and in a world with pundits and projection systems galore, his words seem as predictive as any of them.

Read More: Russell Westbrook is Starboy

Thomas broke into a big smile when asked to once again predict the future. He’s previously shared goals like “the best little guy that ever played”, and told SLAM this summer he wants to be an all-NBA performer.

On this night, after a 100-97 win that turned oddly intense before a half-interested Brooklyn crowd, he aimed even higher.

“I want to be MVP of this league,” Thomas said, laughing, then decided to walk it back a bit. “Nah, nah, nah. My focus next is really getting out of the first round. Seeing what getting deeper in the playoffs is like. Try to get to the Eastern Conference Finals, maybe one day the NBA Finals. But I think, as a team, that’s the next step in my career, is showing I can really carry a team further than the first round of the playoffs. That’s very, very important to me.”

And what’s interesting about the Celtics is that they’re essentially built to prove or disprove this idea here in 2016-17. Whatever hopes they may have had of landing Kevin Durant in free agency this past offseason, it didn’t happen. They added Al Horford instead, a vital piece for a team in need of greater rim protection and rebounding to turn last year’s plus defense into a contender for the league’s best.

But the Boston offense depends on Thomas to an enormous degree. The team as a whole does as well, according to Thomas’ coach, Brad Stevens, who sees Thomas’ constant efforts to improve as a necessary catalyst for the team-building in Boston.

“He’s very competitive, but he’s not quiet, that’s for sure,” Stevens said of Thomas. “He’s an easy guy to coach, but I’ll catch him, under his breath, saying some fun, sarcastic things at me. I enjoy that, because I get the chance to go right back at him. He’s great. He has a great way about him. Certainly when you have the ball that much, personality’s important.”

Thomas pointed out that he encourages Stevens and his teammates to challenge him right back. It’s not like doubters have ever prevented Thomas from achieving far more in his NBA career than anybody except perhaps Thomas himself expected when he entered the league.

But Stevens stressed that Thomas never lets the desire to prove himself on an individual level get in the way of what he’s hoping to achieve in Boston, an upscaling of how Stevens turned Butler University from a mid-major power into a national title contender. Oddly, given the history of the Celtics, their effort last season managed to sneak up on people. And with a gap remaining between Isaiah Thomas’ skills and the public perception of him as a true number one scorer, it is up to Stevens and Thomas to burst through the expected ceiling for their group once again.

“Isaiah’s priority is to win,” Stevens said. “And everything else comes second to that. Obviously he’s going to be asked questions about the individual stuff. But his priority is to win, and that’s been really clear since he got here.”

Even in a preseason game, Thomas bridged the gap between himself and the taller players who make up the majority of the NBA through sheer force of will and personality, especially during a late fourth quarter run to win the game. Thomas’ night was finished, guys like Gerald Green were left fighting for the final few roster spots. But late in the game, it was Thomas leading the cheers, and he was first off the bench to celebrate when rookie Jaylen Brown sank a pair of free throws to all but seal the game.

Thomas said his most significant individual goal this year is to improve his shot efficiency, both from two and three-point range. It’s remarkable how consistent he’s been, actually, even as his usage rate has jumped each season. He managed a true shooting percentage of exactly 57.4 percent in each of his first three seasons, increasing to 57.9 percent in 2014-15, before falling slightly to 56.2 percent last year, even as his usage percentage neared 30. But his mid-range accuracy, particularly from 3-9 feet, can stand to improve from the 28.9 percent mark he put up last season.

Unfortunately for both Thomas and those around him, the ability to see the future doesn’t seem to extend beyond the remarkable career he’s crafted for himself to date. Thomas said he didn’t remember any notable predictions outside of his own life, a statement corroborated by his teammates.

“I really don’t, I’m sorry to tell you,” Tyler Zeller said of Thomas’ prognostications. “To be honest, I don’t hear him make many predictions. On himself, he’s been good, but I don’t know of any others.”
And that isn’t Stevens’ way. He prefers to feel things out over the course of a year. So he’s not certain yet whether the Isaiah Thomas vision for the Celtics will come true.

“I don’t know that you know for sure until you find the best version of yourself as a team,” Stevens said. “Sometimes that happens earlier, sometimes it happens later. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all, you never find that version of yourself.”

Still, there are fewer reasons than ever to doubt Isaiah Thomas or his Celtics. Projection models have given up on doing so — Nylon Calculus has them somewhere in the low-50s for wins, pushing the Cavaliers for best record in the East. It isn’t hard to imagine Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals, and as the Cavaliers themselves can attest, unlikely things sometimes happen in a best-of-seven.

For Thomas’ sake, for the sake of the Celtics, entering that series as an underdog might be the most dangerous thing of all.

“I think the beautiful part about Isaiah is, I don’t think he’ll ever be satisfied,” Stevens said. “I think that’s how he’s wired, that chip on his shoulder has been beneficial to him throughout his career. And it’s something that’s been fed into at every turn. Whether it’s when he first came into the league, barely getting drafted, or coming here and the whole All-Star thing—can he do it multiple times—that’s the kind of thing anytime anybody says anything he may think is a little bit of a a slight, I don’t think he takes it in a negative way. He just uses it as fuel.”