Isaiah Thomas weathers busy first season with Wizards, from suspension to gift-giving

As he tries again to reboot his NBA career in another new city, Isaiah Thomas is having an eventful first season with the Washington Wizards.

He’s playing meaningful minutes because longtime friend and former rival John Wall is still rehabbing from an Achilles tear. Thomas himself missed five games this month with a calf strain. And just after returning from that injury, Thomas walked into the stands at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to speak to two 76ers fans who were shouting obscenities at him.

“Don’t ever call me out of my name, because I would never do that to anybody else,” he told reporters after the incident. “I think that crossed the line. I got kids. I got a family. That’s not OK at all, so I just went to go tell him that (in) no disrespectful way, as calm as I am right now.”

By entering the stands, Thomas earned a two-game suspension from the league, which will end after Thursday’s game at Detroit. But current and former players who know Thomas sided with him.

“The class and calmness he had in the heat of the moment is to be commended,” former NBA star Jamal Crawford wrote on Twitter. Wizards teammate C.J. Miles called out fans for “disrespecting grown men and then calling them fragile for not just taking it.”

It was telling to see Thomas’ peers come to his defense — not only commenting on the issue of fan conduct at NBA games, but also showing how widely respected the well-traveled Thomas is in the basketball world.

The Wizards are Thomas’ seventh team in nine seasons and his fourth team since 2017. In Washington, he’s redoubled his charitable efforts and endeared himself to fans, just as he’s done at every previous stop of his career.

The morning of Dec. 7, Thomas was still nursing his calf strain and had just returned from Miami the previous night at the end of a Wizards’ back-to-back, a tiring trip even though he hadn’t played. Yet there he was in the gymnatorium of a Boys & Girls Club in Northwest D.C., holding a holiday party for local kids and handing out presents he donated to the club.

A spokesperson for World Vision, Thomas’ longtime philanthropic partner, said that not even four days after he signed with the Wizards last July, he’d already partnered with World Vision to give away 400 backpacks filled with school supplies at a school in Southeast Washington.

Thomas told The Washington Times that day why it matters to him to reach out to communities, “to show them that I’m just like them.

“I’m not a ‘professional basketball player celebrity,’” Thomas said. “I want to be able to reach the inner city, be able to reach and touch and feel regular people because I feel like that’s bigger than basketball. When you put an imprint on being in the community and showing your face and giving back, I think the people feel you more and come to have a relationship with you more other than putting the ball in the basket.”

The 30-year-old guard’s approach to civic involvement was evident early in his career — as a member of the Sacramento Kings, the team that made him the final pick of the 2011 draft, Thomas attended city council meetings while the franchise was going through a very public relocation squabble.

After three seasons in Sacramento and one in Phoenix, Thomas was traded to Boston, where he blossomed into an All-Star. He helped the Celtics defeat the Wizards in seven games in the 2017 Eastern Conference semifinals, a series remembered for what appeared to be the beginnings of a feud between two high-scoring point guards.

Wall dropped 40 points in Game 2 — only to be overshadowed by Thomas’ 53. Wall hit the game-winning shot in Game 6 — then Thomas scored 29 in Game 7 to lead Boston to victory.

Thomas noted that he and Wall had been friends going back years before that series. They attended the same basketball camps before the NBA and were both signed to Reebok at the same time.

“So we’ve always been close, and (now) to be able to be on the same team throughout all the years of battling, it just shows you how things come together,” Thomas said. “He’s a good friend of mine.”

Thomas hasn’t been the same player since that Boston-Washington series. He hurt his hip in the conference finals and later was packaged in a trade to Cleveland for Kyrie Irving. His bad hip followed him to the Cavaliers, then the Lakers and Nuggets.

Thomas can draw from his own experience with rehab to advise Wall on how to cope with the mental aspect of the process.

“Just stay even-keeled. Don’t get too high; don’t get too low,” Thomas said. “Because during rehab, you get bored with it. You do the same things every day, and a lot of times you have down days. You have dark days where you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. But to be able to be in his ear and to motivate him … that’s what I’m here for.”