Thought you guys would wanna read this insider article from micah adams
No player has been a more consistent and impressive offensive force than Boston Celtics All-Star Isaiah Thomas over the past month.
How has he done it? Let's take a look in our latest round of weekly and season-long NBA player rankings.
How Thomas slices up defenses
When it comes to pound-for-pound scorers, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone better than Isaiah Thomas. Though he's dazzled all season, the diminutive dynamo has taken it to new heights in January, leading the NBA in scoring while never having an off night. He's averaging more points in January than any player in Celtics history, quite impressive considering 34 different Hall of Famers have suited up in white and green.
Nobody has displayed consistent scoring excellence like Thomas lately. Not James Harden. Not Russell Westbrook. Not LeBron James. Not Kevin Durant. It's Thomas, not the top-tier MVP candidates, who has been the NBA's most consistent offensive star since the calendar flipped to 2017.
Thomas has been a mainstay in our weekly player rankings, as he's now graded out in the top 10 by average game score for all four weeks in January, the only player who can make that claim. In four games last week, Thomas averaged more than 30 points per game and nine assists per game while making more than half his shots and hitting 23 of 24 free throws. He finished second in our rankings behind Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic while playing twice as many games.
An easy trivia question: Who is the only player 6-foot or shorter in NBA history to average more points per game than Thomas?
The answer is Allen Iverson, whose daring forays into the lane earned him a reputation as one of the league's toughest players. Like The Answer, Thomas is relentless when venturing into the forest, as he leads the NBA in points off drives despite standing just 5-foot-9. Unlike Iverson, Thomas has managed to do it without sacrificing efficiency. His overall true shooting percentage (.622) is a full 10 points higher than Iverson's four highest-scoring seasons, and it's also where he also stands tall among his contemporaries, especially in January.
In 14 games this month, Thomas has fallen just three-tenths of a point shy of the vaunted 50-40-90 threshold (49.7 field goal percentage, 43.2 3-point percentage and 94.1 free throw percentage). Of the 50-plus players with a usage rate of at least 25 in January, Thomas ranks fourth in true shooting percentage behind only Durant, Jokic and Kawhi Leonard. He also does it without the benefit of easy buckets in transition, as more than 85 percent of his possession-ending plays have come in the half court, a number far higher than Westbrook, Harden, Curry and Durant. Thomas's 1.08 points per play in the half court trails only Durant and Leonard, both of whom tower over Thomas.
Unlike some of the game's other biggest stars, nobody has been able to stop Thomas lately; he has finished with a game score less than 19 just once the entire month, way back on Jan. 6. By comparison, Harden -- the only player with a greater overall game score in January -- has five games less than that level, including his ugly performance Sunday in which he shot 3-of-17 and finished with eight turnovers. Looking at the other big names, all have had far more off nights than Thomas.
Westbrook posted a pair of 10-turnover games and has missed more than twice as many shots as he's made on several occasions. James had poor outings against Golden State and Portland, and Jimmy Butler went a combined 1-of-19 in losses to Oklahoma City and Miami. About the only star who can come close to matching Thomas's consistency is Durant, who has the benefit of playing alongside three other All-Stars and whose team is 26-1 when he doesn't lead them in scoring. Thomas doesn't have that benefit.
Simply put, Thomas has brought the goods under nearly every circumstance. He leads the NBA in fourth-quarter scoring. He leads the NBA in scoring on the second night of back-to-backs. In the final five minutes and the score within five in January, he's scored or assisted on two-thirds of Boston's points, with his 58 points being four times more than any other Celtic.
The Celtics now have a 1-game lead on the Toronto Raptors for the No. 2 seed in the East with Thomas leading the way. He may be small in stature, but his consistency has him standing tall among the top five in our season-long player rankings.
Cumulative Rankings*
PLAYER------------AVG. GAME SCORE
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James Harden-------24.3
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Russell Westbrook---23.7
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Kevin Durant--------23.0
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Anthony Davis------22.7
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Isaiah Thomas------21.7
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LeBron James-------21.2
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Greek Freak---------20.9
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Kawhi Leonard------20.5
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Jimmy Butler-------20.5
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Boogie Cousins----20.5
*Through 14 weeks
Submitted January 31, 2017 at 11:31AM by jallain