Isaiah Thomas is truly having a magical season for the Boston Celtics. He is the go-to player and closer for one of the better teams in the NBA. We have already broken down the historical ramifications of his performance this season when compared to other NBA players of his size (he is 5’8″) and how it is the most impressive we have seen by someone of his stature since a certain corn rows, du-rag wearing No. 3 on the 76ers was in his heyday.
An even deeper look at his late game heroics shows that his season may be on pace to be more historic than we even realized.
Halfway through the 2016-17 NBA season, Thomas is averaging more points per game in the fourth quarter than any other player in the last 20 years since the stat started being tracked on NBA.com.
He is averaging 10.1 points per game in the fourth quarter this season. Here is a chart of the highest fourth quarter scorers of the past 20 years from NBC Sports:
As you can see Russell Westbrook is No. 2 on that list, averaging 9.6 points in the fourth quarter this season, more proof of how rare of a season this is with the number of historic performances around the league.
Thomas had 17 in the fourth quarter of the Celtics win over the Hornets Monday night, and that came just two days after he hit this game winner to cap off another masterful performance in a victory over the Hawks in Atlanta:
Game-winner. Isaiah Thomas too cold. (via @nba) pic.twitter.com/BIIel4w3HV
— SLAM (@SLAMonline) January 14, 2017
He has been playing the best basketball of his career and is quickly eroding the belief that the Celtics aren’t true contender’s that have a go-to star player in crunch time in a heated playoff series.
Here are some numbers from the past few weeks:
https://twitter.com/Ballislife/status/820304871110885377
And to think, the Suns traded him and his comically low $7.5 million per season contract for what amounted to the No. 29 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft…
