Former Boston Celtics star point guard Isaiah Thomas revealed that the Celtics franchise didn’t make him aware of the fact that he could exacerbate the hip injury he was dealing with in the 2017 NBA Playoffs. He also admitted that he was injected with shots three times per round of the playoffs.
“The thing that hurt the most was that nothing was explained to me,” Thomas said of his injury. “If you tell me, ‘This can possibly get worse, this is what you have,’ then it’s on me to make the choice. But it was none of that stated. I was just going in like, ‘Okay, I got a bone bruise, I can figure this out like I’ve done my whole life.’ They shot me up to go into the [Washington] Wizards series. I got shot up three times, every round. The last one was right before Game 7 of the Wizards series. Then in Game 2 of the Cleveland series, I get hit by a screen, and it just shoots to the back of my hip, and I’m like, ‘What the [heck]?’”
Thomas carried the 2016-17 iteration of the Celtics on his back all the way up until he reaggravated a hip injury in Game 2 of the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals and had to remain sidelined for the rest of the series.
During the regular season, Thomas scored the ball as well almost any player who has ever played for the storied franchise. Across 76 games played, he averaged 28.9 points per game, which marks the third-highest scoring average in a single season in Celtics history.
Only Jayson Tatum — who averaged 30.1 points in the 2022-23 regular season — and Larry Bird — who averaged 29.9 in the 1987-88 regular season — have averaged more points per game in a Celtics jersey.
With Thomas as the head of the snake for the Celtics, the team finished the regular season with a 53-29 record and earned the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Thomas was far and away Boston’s best scorer during the regular season, and that status quo carried over into the 2017 NBA Playoffs.
Thomas averaged a team-high 23.3 points per contest across 15 playoff games. For comparison, Avery Bradley averaged the second-most on the team with 16.7 points per game.
The diminutive 5-foot-9 guard helped the Celtics reach the Eastern Conference Finals for the first since 2012, when Boston boasted a star quartet of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo.
But the Celtics didn’t give fans of the team much to cheer about in their matchup against LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the conference finals. Boston lost the best-of-seven series in a gentleman’s sweep, and the team lost two of its three home games by more than 30 points.
Thomas was dealt to the Cavaliers in the 2017 offseason, and he has never been able to replicate his production with the 2016-17 iteration of the Celtics with another NBA team.
