In the space of 35 days last winter, Isaiah Thomas was traded by a team that didn’t need him, released by a team that didn’t want him and then, like the rest of the NBA and the world, nudged into involuntary hibernation.
Suddenly, there were no games to prepare for, no practices to attend, not even the hope of a phone call from some GM desperate for a savvy veteran to bolster his bench. The calendar was a bleak, empty canvas, leaving Thomas to confront two nagging sensations: the uncertainty of his career, and the constant, debilitating pain in his right hip.