This season hasn’t gone exactly how Isaiah Thomas drew it up.
And for FOX Sports 1 hot take artist Jason Whitlock, it’s the Boston Celtics’ fault.
The then-Celtics guard played through an injured hip during the end of the 2016-17 campaign, and the ailment ended up sidelining him into January after he had been traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Now since being sent to the Los Angeles Lakers at the trade deadline, it requires more attention, with an arthroscopic surgery set to take place Thursday. As such, teams likely are reticent to give him the max contract he thought he would get this offseason after becoming a star in Boston.
Thomas claimed the Celtics medical staff didn’t provide him with enough information —Â something Danny Ainge disagreed with —Â which he said would have resulted in him sitting out the 2017 playoffs.
For those reasons, Whitlock went on a rant Tuesday, before news of Thomas undergoing the surgery broke, about the C’s ruining him (the audio begins at 33:00).
“Thomas spent most of last year playing through the (hip) injury on the advice on the Celtics medical staff,” Whitlock said. “But after the season, Danny Ainge cited the injury as one of the reasons Boston traded him to Cleveland, where he spent the better part of this season rehabbing before being traded to Los Angeles. Clearly, I.T. is yet to recover.
“The Boston Celtics ruined Isaiah Thomas’ career. He’s never going to get that money that he thought he was going to get as a potential max player. He played in Boston with an injured hip instead of sitting out and taking care his body and his career will never been the same. He’s been kicked out of Cleveland, soon he’ll be kicked out of L.A. and he’ll be looking for some sort of deal that ain’t gonna look nowhere close to 20 million per. The Celtics ruined this guy’s career.”
It’s worth noting that Ainge specifically said that Thomas received a second opinion on his hip, and that it ultimately was his choice to play in the postseason.
Indeed, his future is pretty uncertain. But to place that blame solely on the Celtics might be — like most things that come out of Whitlock’s mouth — a bit of a reach.
