Summer time is the perfect moment to ride my bike across the Alps and give my imagination all the space it needs. While cruising on the road, my mind was trying to make sense of something: what if Isaiah Thomas had the best scoring season in Celtics history? Common sense was screaming that it wasn’t possible for a 5’9” guard to be the best scorer over a season for the most decorated franchise.
And yet, the numbers show that it might be the case.
To evaluate Isaiah Thomas’s 2017 scoring season, let’s first look at the volume. How much offensive load was put on his shoulders? Was his level of scoring responsibility heavier than that of all the other Celtics offensive stars across history?
Looking at the chart above, the numbers confirm that Isaiah Thomas was carrying a LOT of offensive weight. His 34% usage rate is the highest in Celtics history. Same goes for his 30.8 points per 36 minutes – he’s actually the only player in Celtics history to score above 30 points per 36 minutes. So where are Larry Bird, John Havlicek, Paul Pierce, or Jayson Tatum in these rankings? How far was Isaiah Thomas compared to them in volume? And how efficient was the Little Guy despite the biggest volume?
This is where Thomas’s 2017 season becomes even more unique. Not only did he have the biggest scoring load in franchise history, he did it while being more efficient than any other high-volume scorer to play for the Celtics. Only Larry Bird in 1988 was as efficient as Thomas relative to league average. In the chart below, we used Basketball Reference’s “True Shooting +,” which gives us True Shooting relative to league average (100 means the player’s efficiency is equal to league average).
What the numbers tell us is that the 5’9 Isaiah Thomas was able to carry the biggest scoring load in the franchise’s long history while being more efficient than any of the other Celtics superstars… just breathtaking! But how was this possible? Well, mostly thanks to the man who was able to turn Jordan Crawford into a Player of the Week.
Brad Stevens, the architect of a historic season
After looking at the overwhelming numbers from Isaiah Thomas’s 2017 season, let’s dive into Brad Stevens’ playbook. How did the current President of Basketball Operations manage to optimize the Little Guy so well?
Thanks to centers who could space the floor like Al Horford, Kelly Olynyk, and Amir Johnson (yes, Johnson was taking close to 20% of his shots beyond the 3-point line), the Celtics could play with spacing that resembled the modern five-out we see now. The space was important because Isaiah Thomas’s size made it tougher for him in a crowded paint. But most importantly, the five-out offense was the best way to turn Thomas’s nuclear speed into a lethal weapon.
In this spaced-out offense, one of the main go-to actions for the Celtics was the Zoom Action. This basic play call is still used today in the modern era. The goal is to give many options to an off-ball player with multiple screens and various routes to choose from. Often, the off-ball offensive player the action is run for starts on the side and runs toward two screeners. The second screener has the ball in his hands, so the guard can grab it at full speed.
The reason it’s so difficult for the defense against a player like Thomas is all the different ways he can punish them. If his matchup goes under the screen, he can pull up from beyond the line – and that’s cash money for IT.
If the matchup cheats and tries to get above him to block his way to the ball, Thomas can cut beyond the play, and his speed makes it impossible to send help (also thanks to the Celtics’ spacing).
Often, the defender would try to chase over the screen to take away the pull-up three while staying connected. But once IT got the ball from the second screener, if the opposing center was in a drop position, he could take the mid-range shot – and he was deadly from this zone. The threat of his mid-range shooting was also opening driving opportunities.
Sometimes opponents reacted by having their big man go higher or switch onto IT… and this is where the speed and spacing really became unstoppable. Watch how hard it is for Marcin Gortat to keep up with Thomas in the play below.
IT’s scoring gravity created opportunities for others too
The offense Brad Stevens built around Isaiah Thomas also created space for others. The guard wasn’t known for his passing but, thanks to his gravity, he created a ton of space for his teammates. In the compilation below, Isaiah Thomas sometimes drags four or five players with him into the paint, opening shooting spots and driving lanes for others.
The offensive rating with Isaiah Thomas on the court was 116.76 – an elite mark. When he sat, the offensive rating dropped to 102.51 points per 100 possessions… a 14-point difference! Back in 2017, only Stephen Curry had such a big impact on his team’s offensive efficiency.
Destiny and injuries didn’t give us more seasons of his peak, but it’s safe to say Isaiah Thomas was a shooting star – a unique comet with a historic on-court impact. Not many players can sit at the table with Larry Bird, John Havlicek, Paul Pierce, and Jayson Tatum and be the man with the best scoring season in Celtics history.
