Remember When: Isaiah Thomas Made His Celtics Debut

For this edition of ‘Remember When’ we are throwing it back to Isaiah Thomas‘ first game with the Boston Celtics. This is one that is bittersweet, for sure. Knowing what we know now, and seeing how it all turned out, I will admit it is a little tough to flashback to the beginning of his time in green and not think about the drastic end it came to. But nonetheless, Isaiah’s time here should be cherished and remembered with extremely high regard, as he truly turned a rebuilding franchise into a contender. Think about how crazy it is to sit back and realize that he was just a random move at the deadline. Nobody knew what he was going to become and what he was going to accomplish.

Isaiah was traded in February of 2015 for Marcus Thornton and a 2016 first-round pick. I remember being so excited to watch him make his Celtics debut just a few days later. He came off the bench and right away had a breakaway bucket. It was right then, I said to myself, “there is something different about this.” You could almost tell. Isaiah went on to finish with 21 points that night and was ejected before the game eventually ended in an overtime loss for the Celtics. Now, I am not condoning getting ejected and/or losing your cool, but in that moment Isaiah showed a fire. He showed passion in those few seconds. Maybe it was just me, but that was a time period in which I felt the Celtics lacked passion altogether and seeing one guy get mad just got me on my feet and in a weird way got me caring about this team again. Again, maybe it was just me, but that ejection meant something to me (as weird as that is to say).

Check out the highlights from that debut:

Let me say this, just personally speaking, Isaiah Thomas has been instrumental in my sports media journey. I loved him in college, loved him coming into the NBA, and then BOOM he is traded to my absolute favorite sports franchise of all time. It fired me up to start taking this seriously. Maybe it was a bit of if he could achieve his dreams, why can’t I type of thing. I don’t know the true reason why he inspired me, but I sure as hell know that he did.

I know I have posted my “Thank You, Isaiah” piece in the past, so I won’t do it again here…but I do just want to say how important this guy was to my fandom and I am sure many others’.

Photo: Chris Carlson | Credit: AP