Can Isaiah Thomas find redemption with the Washington Wizards?

Isaiah Thomas was once an MVP candidate but has fallen off due to injuries.  Here’s a look back at how he got to where he is now

Isaiah Thomas is now on his fourth team since being traded from the Boston Celtics to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017. Once an elite scorer, Thomas’ career has been marred by injuries. Now that he is fully healthy, he believes he wants to prove he can still be one of the best scorers in the league. With the Washington Wizards, he’ll get his shot.

So, how did we get here?

During the 2016-2017 season, Isaiah Thomas (IT) was one of the best players in the league. He averaged 28.9 points which was good for third-best in the league, behind only Russell Westbrook and James Harden. In the playoffs, IT helped lead the Celtics past the Washington Wizards in a tough seven-game conference semi-finals series.

This is where things started to go downhill for IT. Unfortunately for IT and the Celtics,  they ended up losing to Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games. During that series, Thomas injured his hip. This injury would derail his entire 2017-2018 season.

Thomas started off the 2017-2018 season with Cleveland after being traded for Kyrie Irving during the offseason. But things didn’t last long for him alongside Lebron James and he was traded midseason to the Los Angeles Lakers. There, he re-injured his hip that had been bothering him all season. Thomas needed arthroscopic surgery for his right hip. His season was over.

For the 2018-2019 season, Thomas joined the Denver Nuggets but barley played once he recovered from his surgery. He didn’t receive a single minute of playing time during Denver’s playoff run. Over the past two seasons, Thomas has played in 44 of the 164 regular-season games.

Two years removed from his herculean season, Thomas is finally healthy and looking to fill the John Wall-sized hole in the Wizards’ backcourt. He recently told reporters “The NBA is about ‘what have you done for me lately?’ I understood that at a younger age and I get it,”. “These last two years have been tough. But I always say that it can’t storm forever. So, at some point, things gotta open up. Hopefully, with this big opportunity with the Wizards, I can show people that I can still play at a high level.”

His path toward redemption has led him to Washington and now is the time for IT to prove everyone wrong. It sounds like he knows what he has to do. Now, he just has to do it.