I’m sure that all of you reading this have seen Isaiah Thomas’ recent tweets saying that he’s fed up with answering, to quote him, “dumbass questions” about “the trade”, along with all of his Players Tribune articles and videos plastered all over social media about said trade.
Thomas put out a video showing him moments after receiving the news from Danny Ainge that he was headed to Cleveland, sharing an extremely private and emotional moment with the world. That’s, of course, his decision.
Also fairly recently, Thomas was asked on television during a quick interview about his hip injury that occurred when he was with the Celtics. He said that if he could do it all over again, he would not have played in last season’s playoffs. He claims that Boston misdiagnosed his hip injury and called the team’s medical staff out, AKA one of, if not the, best medical staffs in all of professional sports.
One can’t help but think: if Thomas is so pissed off about answering question after question about the trade each and every day, then why is he constantly feeding the fire with all of his various posts on social media? He’s smart enough to realize that if he continues to put out posts for everyone to see like that regarding the trade and his feelings towards Ainge and the team, the questions will literally never end. I’m sure he, like so many of us, wants to move on from this, and maybe he personally thinks that pumping out these posts will help put an end to the discussion and answer all of the media’s questions. The thing is, that ain’t happening. At all.
Thomas also doesn’t have to answer those “dumbass questions”, either. He doesn’t have to take part in interviews and he doesn’t have to say anything about the situation in any setting if he doesn’t want to. He can simply say “no comment”; not to mention, he’s injured, so he really doesn’t have to make himself available to the media quite yet. Instead, he does. Whether he likes it or not, he was a key piece in one of the biggest and wildest trades in NBA history. Questions and discussion about it will probably never end. That’s just how things work, especially in today’s day and age.
At first, I don’t believe Thomas exactly understood or wanted to understand the fact that this was a business decision. Anyone who’s employed by Danny Ainge needs to walk into work everyday and understand that they’re not safe. Nobody’s safe. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done for the city or for the team for however long; if shipping you off in exchange for another player(s) makes the Celtics better, you’re out the door. It’s as simple as that. While Thomas is still a bit bitter and hurt by the trade and may not exactly love Ainge anymore, I do think he’s starting to get a grasp on the business behind it.
Why people, Celtics and non-Celtics fans, continue to bash Thomas for expressing his feelings about the entire situation is beyond me. One of the main reasons why basketball fans loved Thomas was because he played each game with emotion and showed his feelings. Now that he’s showing emotion and his expressing his feelings off the court, people hate him. Take out the whole media and questions part of it. In the midst of easily the hardest period of his life (losing his sister, his hip injury), he was shipped out of the city in an instant. After injecting basketball back into the city and making Boston a true destination, just like that, he’s out the door. I mean, the entire region of New England rallied around him in the postseason while he gave one of the most heartfelt postseason performances the team has ever seen. Thomas felt like he finally belonged somewhere and both the team and the city made him feel secure, yet still got traded. Again, that’s simply the business, but everyone has feelings, and if that were me, or you, our feelings would be hurt for a long time (on a side note, hearing Thomas and Ainge go back and forth talking shit about each other is like being a five-year-old and watching your two loving parents fight every night and slowly begin to despise each other, breaking you down emotionally, feeling like you did something wrong to cause the hatred).
At the end of the day, since I was and will continue to be an Isaiah Thomas supporter, I don’t hate him for “not letting go” or however you want to put it. On the other hand, Thomas kind of needs to make up his mind: is he going to answer questions about the trade or not? Since he isn’t going to stop with the Players Tribune posts, the questions will continue to flow. It’s up to him whether he wants to keep pouring gasoline on to the flames or not.
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