On Monday, Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas won the NBA’s Eastern Conference Player of the Week award for his 22.7-point, 5.7-assist performance over three games – all Boston wins. His work helped keep the C’s alive in the Eastern playoff hunt, as Boston will enter Monday night with the seventh seed in the East, with Isaiah offering stuff like this along the way:
Every aspect of this – Isaiah Thomas working as the East’s best player for a week (for the second, award-winning time this season), him doing it for Boston, the Celtics actually potentially making the postseason – are a bit charming and surprising.
Just as charming was Thomas’s quote following the team’s win over the Cavaliers on Sunday, as reported by Jackie MacMullan of ESPN Boston:
Asked how much it would mean to him to make the playoffs Thomas answered, "For me personally? It's everything. In my NBA career, I haven't been to the playoffs. It's something I want to experience. I heard it's fun, it's exciting.''
It is exciting! The playoffs start this weekend, and Thomas is the unlikely go-to guy for his third team in 12 months. Thomas, the last man selected in the 2011 NBA draft, missed the playoffs during his first three seasons with Sacramento and was well on his way toward missing it in his first season with the Phoenix Suns when he was dealt to Boston in February. The Celtics have won eight of 19 games since he moved to Boston, hardly a knockout record but enough to possibly make Thomas a postseason attendee.
There are a few other playoff rookies rolling around as spring sets in. Let’s take a look at a few.
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, Cleveland Cavaliers
Irving, just as charmingly as Thomas, offered this nationally televised question all the way back on Halloween:
Irving’s numbers in his first season as the lead guard on a championship (much less “playoff”) contender are remarkably similar to the stats he was putting up on the three previous terrible Cavalier teams he had to work with. At 22 points and five assists a game, Irving remains a remarkably no-muss/no-fuss scoring point guard. His assists have dropped slightly this season with LeBron James often manning the offense, but his three-point shooting has sparked up to 41 percent. His defense has improved to the ranks of the passable.
The same can’t be said, sadly, for Kevin Love.
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The former Timberwolves All-Star has seen his scoring average decline by nearly ten points per game to 16.5 a contest, and if his 9.9 rebounds per game average sustains he will finish with (just barely) single digit caroms per contest for the first time since his rookie year. That year saw Love badly underutilized by coach Randy Wittman for the first chunk of the season, and while Cavs coach David Blatt has been working Love 34 minutes a night, he’s often the afterthought in Cleveland’s top five offense.
That’s a shame, but as it often was for Chris Bosh in Miami it may not get in the way of a Cavaliers championship. It hasn’t been the easiest regular season for Love, but after missing the postseason for the first six years of his career, he’ll take it.
Nikola Mirotic, Chicago Bulls
To call the Bulls forward a “rookie” is almost disingenuous, he’s an NBA rookie by the letter of the law, but the 23-year old has been playing professionally for six years now. To refer to Mirotic as a “postseason rookie” is pushing it just as much, as he’s won three Spanish League titles with Real Madrid, earning the King’s Cup MVP for his work in 2014.
Mirotic will probably not be the rookie of the year this season, for good reason, but he is an important cog in a Chicago machine that is hurriedly scurrying to make sense of its suddenly-healthy rotation as it attempts to stand up as a clear threat in the East. Mirotic, averaging ten points and five rebounds in only 20 minutes a game (offering significant crunch time contributions along the way), needs to be the straw that stirs Chicago’s drink.
Isaiah Thomas, Boston Celtics
Thomas is up to 19.5 points per game with his new team, he’s yet to start a game with Boston but acts as their go-to force down the stretch. The Celtics weren’t supposed to make the playoffs this year, but the team is currently a game up and working with the seventh seed as the eighth-place Brooklyn Nets gear up for a contest against the Bulls on Monday evening.
Ironically, Thomas’ Celtics are in the same position as his former club in Phoenix – trying to sneak into the lower reaches of the playoff bracket. The disappointing Suns, who dealt Thomas in February, will miss the postseason for the fourth straight season.
Michael Carter-Williams, Milwaukee Bucks
Carter-Williams could not have seen this coming. Nobody should have seen this coming.
The second year guard was supposed to ride out yet another losing season with the lowly Philadelphia 76ers, a franchise that tanked both this year and last on its way toward acquiring a cadre of high end draft picks. Dealing the 2013-14 Rookie of the Year to Milwaukee less than a year after he earned that award was shocking enough, what made the upturn even more remarkable is the idea that Carter-Williams would somehow improve his playoff potential by joining the Bucks – the only team to turn in a worse record than last year’s Sixers.
The Bucks have surprised, though Carter-Williams has struggled to lead the team at times. Averaging 13.7 points, 5.7 assists and 3.9 boards in under 31 minutes a contest, MCW has watched as the Bucks have turned in a 10-17 record since the deal (9-14 with him in the lineup). Carter-Williams has looked fantastic over his last three games, however, hitting for 20.3 points on 61 percent shooting with 6.7 assists a contest as Milwaukee secured its playoff status with a 2-1 stretch and near-win over the LeBron-led Cavaliers.
Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
This one isn’t a given, but it’s certainly something we’d like to see.
Entering Monday’s contest with the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Pelicans are tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the final spot in the West. NOLA, however, owns the tiebreaker over OKC thanks in no small part to the brilliance of Davis. The Pelicans aren’t on national television as much as the Thunder, which means that a giant chunk of basketball fandom hasn’t seen much of Davis thus far. They may not know that the third-year forward/center is on the verge of turning in one of the highest Player Efficiency Ratings in NBA history, or that his 24 points per game (on 53.7-percent shooting) has as much to do with his lights-out perimeter shooting as it does his throwdown dunks.
Davis also contributes a league-leading 2.9 blocks and 1.5 steals along with 10.2 rebounds. Had he played more games this season (he could finish the year at just 68), those who looked the other way with their MVP votes would have a hard time explaining themselves.
And we might, for the first time, get to see him under the klieg lights in late April. Such a deal.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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