So much has happened in the NBA over the last few months that Isaiah Thomas‘ shambolic tenure with the Cleveland Cavaliers seems like it happened a million years ago. On the court, Thomas’ return from a hip injury and his general fit with the Cavaliers never seemed to work, and he was eventually shipped to the Los Angeles Lakers.
But the biggest issues always seemed to be off the court, where Thomas and the rest of the Cavalier locker room never quite seemed to get along. There are a whole bunch of examples of the fit just being weird between the two sides, and there’s no concrete reason as to exactly what the hell happened that led to such a weird relationship.
As it turns out, there might have been a clear-cut sign that this wasn’t going to work out. In a piece for The Score written by Alex Wong, we learned about the Cavaliers’ elaborate handshakes and how they’re part of the culture in Cleveland.
Apparently, while he was getting worked into the Cavaliers’ rotation, Thomas had no desire to be part of this locker room tradition.
When the Cavaliers arrived in Toronto for an early-January matchup, they were starting the process of integrating Isaiah Thomas, who’d missed the first 36 games of the season with a hip injury, into the lineup. At practice the day before, Love was excited about the possibility of coming up with a personalized handshake with Thomas, who was less enthusiastic about the endeavor.
“That’s not what I do,” Thomas said. “I just score the basketball.” He was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers a month later.
The irony, of course, is that Thomas said at the start of the Cavaliers’ season that one of his big concerns was messing up the handshakes that were so popular among the team. Every time a new piece of information about Thomas’ time in Cleveland comes out, it becomes a little more obvious that a break up really was in the best interest of everyone.
(Via The Score)
