It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Isaiah Thomas getting all sorts of dunked on — well, almost anyway — in a game that was high on heroics and short on drama. Welcome to the Eastern Conference Finals between the Cavaliers and Celtics.
The play that almost became a poster involved LeBron James wrecking a brick and mortar defense. With his teammate Tristan Thomas setting a pick on Jae Crowder, James dribbles to his right, halfway between the midcourt logo and the top of the key. At this juncture, his eyes are up, still reading the defense, waiting to flip the switch. Kobe Bryant might possibly insert a 17-year cicada comparison here about great players needing patience. Then, in that moment of gestation, Gerald Green lunges at James as if attempting to close out a shooter. But James is not attempting a shot. He spins back towards Thompson and Crowder with all the controlled grace of an Olympic ice skater. And as he splits the difference between Green’s awkward lunge and Crowder’s collision with Thompson, Thomas turns away from Kyle Korver, who is somehow involved with Thompson’s pick on Crowder.
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And as James makes his move to the basket, Thomas abandons his hiding spot in the White House hedges and gives pursuit. James dribbles down the right side of the lane, and Thomas moves on a diagonal from the opposite elbow. The split second is a metonym for every player of the last seven years who has tried measuring up to James. When the King rises, holding the ball like a goblet above his head, Thomas rises with him in a fit of madness. I have seen caricature drawings of Isaiah Thomas as Mighty Mouse, but, until this moment, I have never believed them to be so literal.
Meanwhile, Thomas’ teammate Jaylen Brown stands just off James’ right side. Brown thinks about taking the charge, but a spike in wisdom causes him to wilt from the scene. Somewhere, off in the distance, Avery Bradley looks on as James’ left arm removes Thomas’ headband. In the end, what looked like sudden death for Thomas ends up being a missed layup. The final staging places James on the floor by the stanchion and Thomas standing at the baseline.
This play — and I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic — had absolutely no bearing on the game’s outcome. Thomas was never truly going to impede James. The Celtics were never going to win Game 1. The Celtics were never going to win this series. These conclusions fit inside each other like Russian dolls, and they are already packaged in the past tense. Fatalism is the word in these playoffs, and those not playing for either Cleveland or Golden State can only decide what kind of sacrifice to be.
Neil Young once touched on this, when he sang, “It’s better to Tony Parker than to Raptor away.” Or, if that lyric is too esoteric, then from the mouth of an actual Raptor: “If we had LeBron on our team, too, we woulda won.” What I love about this quotation from DeMar DeRozan is how the qualifier doesn’t so much as remove James from Cleveland and place him in Toronto as it clones the game’s best player. In DeRozan’s science fiction plot, James plays against James, which, in a strange turn of events, would still mean that his reign would not end. He would still make a seventh straight trip to the NBA Finals. Under his grip, athletic competition at the highest level is now, in the words of his challengers, a farce.
In this context, Thomas racing after a flaming asteroid is a hopeful harbinger. Such a statement, however, is bitter sweet. While it compliments Thomas, the statement throws shade all over the Central and Eastern Time Zones.
The Raptors sound broken. The Wizards are a quarter short. The Hawks are not quite right. The Pacers appear dazed and confused. The Bulls are doubling down on Rajon Rondo. The Knicks are in midst of a purge. The 76ers are forever in process. The Hornets have stalled. But the Celtics are in the Eastern Conference Finals and have the No. 1 pick.
Maybe they can’t pull off the miracle this year, but, even if Brad Stevens and Danny Ainge say otherwise, their plan was never about this year.
The understated brilliance of Boston’s patience was how it recognized the stagnation in the rest of the conference. They could field a competitive team because essentially this was a gap year. They could appease the fan base by fielding a competitive team without acquiring Jimmy Butler or Paul George, and they didn’t need Butler or George because Thomas became the King in the Fourth and increased his scoring average from 22.2 points per game last year to 28.9 this year, losing teeth and playing through despair.
Any conversation about Thomas ultimately involves a literal measuring of his talents. He is 5-foot-9. He is also a defensive liability. Most of his opponents, if not all of them, are much taller. His height is a disadvantage on the basketball court, which is why he also able to mesmerize. His fourth quarter performances are always an eff you to the game’s biological tenants.
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Therefore, the aura surrounding Thomas is less about Game of Thrones references and more akin to Steph Curry. He is a Mighty Mouse, an underdog, a missing tooth. How many teams have missed him after he’s gone? His job, aside from pulling off a miracle against Cleveland, is to make James think twice about him and his Celtics, if not for what happens this year, then for what might happen in the future.
In short: To come at the King and be more than a nuisance.