The NBA fell by the wayside for me a little bit after the Pierce/Garnett/Doc Rivers exodus in 2013, mainly because I was fearful the Celtics would be baaaaaaaaaaad for a loooooooooong time.
When Danny Ainge traded for Isaiah at the deadline in 2015, it still didn't really register much for me. Yes, the Brooklyn picks hadn't materialized yet, but the Celtics were going to base their turnaround on a guy three inches shorter than me? (Humble brag, I barely cracked six feet).
Well that 5-foot-9 point guard did the improbable: he made me start checking Celtics scores again. But that was nothing compared to when he did the impossible: he made me start actually watching the Celtics again.
And this is the thanks he gets? I like the trade all things considered but Isaiah Thomas balled out like few others on the parquet floor in his brief two-and-a-half year stint in Boston. Does the acquisition of Kyrie Irving bring the Celtics closer to a championship? Perhaps.
Still, it got me thinking...
Is Isaiah Thomas the best player to pass through Boston since the turn of the century and somehow not find his way on to a Duck Boat Parade?
The oddity is, that while the Celtics and Bruins have won just one title apiece, the list is dominated by former Patriots -- the team that's won five.
My pal Jerry Thornton wrote a great book, From Darkness to Dynasty, on the first 40 years of the Patriots' existence. If he or anyone else is looking to write a follow up, might I suggest: 2005-2013: The Patriots Abyss, years in which the team still had a first-round bye pretty much every year but couldn't quite grab another Lombardi Trophy.
So while the debate is essentially Isaiah Thomas vs. several Patriots players, there's a few ground rules: players considered had to have been here for at least two years, and must have been reasonably prominent contributors on the teams that came up short. In no particular order, this disqualifies Jaromir Jagr, Adrian Beltre, Adrian Gonzalez, John Smoltz (you forgot he was here), Stephon Marbury (him too) and most certainly, Chad Ochocinco.
Ray Bourque was technically traded in March 2000, but his coming up short was a late-'80s/early-'90s thing.
Two very interesting cases: Marc Savard and Jerod Mayo. Both were on their respective teams' rosters for titles, but neither took a shift/played a snap for the entirety of the playoff runs. But Savard's name is on the Stanley Cup, and Mayo did come back in 2015. I'm counting them both as champions. To a much lesser extent, Tuukka Rask meets this metric since he was Tim Thomas' backup in '11. There's another player on this list who was here at the beginning of a championship season but didn't find his way on to the postseason roster; we'll get to him in a minute, and why he does not count as a champion.
Before I give you the top five, some honorable mentions:
- Junior Seau (Patriots, 2006-2009). If there's one player you can really look back and feel for during the aftermath of Super Bowl XLII, it's Seau. He's forever a San Diego Charger and was certainly over the hill by the time he got to Foxboro, but definitely wasn't riding coattails in his pursuit of a ring, either. He had a career-high three interceptions in '07. RIP.
- Antoine Walker (Celtics, 1996-2003; 2005). People forget that Danny Ainge once traded Gary Payton for Antoine Walker. People further forget that 'Toine got his ring just a year after his second Celtics stint came to an end, with the Miami Heat. And lest we forget one other thing, it's that Dwyane Wade won a championship on his own before LeBron did.
- Mookie Betts (Red Sox, 2014-present). It was surprisingly hard to find Red Sox players who qualified, since their titles were relatively spread out ('04, '07, '13). I'm only including Betts because unlike Bogaerts and JBJ, he was still in the minors when the Red Sox won their most recent title. And he should've won MVP last year, despite what the nerds may tell you.
Without further ado, the Top Five Boston athletes who have not won a ring here this century:
5. Logan Mankins (Patriots, 2005-2013)
Mankins was the Pats' first draft pick after beating the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX...and lasted on the roster all the way until deep into training camp, 2014. In other words, that "Patriots Abyss" could be re-titled The Curse of Logan Mankins. Poor guy. Mankins was a badass on the interior line for the Patriots for nearly a decade, earning one AP All-Pro nod (in 2010, despite missing seven games due to a holdout) and seven Pro Bowl berths. There's an old saying, that Tim Wright (whom the Patriots got for Mankins, along with a future fourth round pick) caught six more touchdowns in 2014 than Mankins. While this is true, the season was almost over before it began with Jordan Devey starting at left guard in the place of Mankins.
It was a cold, cold trade of Mankins to football purgatory in Tampa Bay, but in classic Belichick fashion, you know who that future fourth round pick turned in to? Trey Flowers.
4. Nomar Garciaparra (Red Sox, 1996-2004)
On talent alone, Nomar belongs on this list. Probably higher than this, even. I'll go to my deathbed saying the Red Sox don't breakthrough in '04 without the Nomar trade though. There was a time when Nomar could roll out of bed at hit .350 like it was nothing, even hitting for respectable power and playing electric defense along the way. He was not that guy on July 31, 2004, when Orlando Cabrera came to town and shaped history in his own right.
Unlike Mayo and Savard, Nomar was with a different organization when the Red Sox won their title. Big difference.
There's a number of ways to look at Nomar's exit. As we learned years later (see: Lester, Jon) this ownership group wasn't exactly the smoothest in offering extensions to pending free agents. If I remember correctly, Nomar was offered a four-year, $60 million extension in the spring of 2003 -- which was a lot of money at the time. Nomar was never the same player after leaving Boston. He had a decent year with the Dodgers in 2006, but was done by 2009.
3. Isaiah Thomas (Celtics, 2015-2017)
Here you go. Fifth in MVP voting last season, scored a million points in the fourth quarter, played in playoff game the night after his sister's death...and was unequivocally the best player on a team that went from below .500 to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference in a manner of two years. There aren't enough good things I can say about Isaiah Thomas.
If the Celtics were the Memphis Grizzlies, they'd probably be retiring his number upon his return next season. Alas, they're the greatest franchise in NBA history instead.
However brief his stay was, Thomas made the Celtics rebuild even briefer. He's now a casualty of it, but his legacy will remain.
2. Wes Welker (Patriots, 2007-2012)
WW. Woodrow Wilson? Walter White? Wes Welker.
The average season for Welker in New England consisted of 112 catches for 1,243 yards and six touchdowns. His "worst" season featured only 86 catches...but of course he was coming off of a torn ACL in Week 17 of the previous regular season.
Welker didn't just refine the slot wide receiver position, he re-invented it. Without The Simpsons, there's no Futurama. Without Nirvana, there's no Foo Fighters. And without Wes Welker, there's no Julian Edelman -- or Danny Amendola.
1. Randy Moss (Patriots, 2007-2010)
Did it end poorly for Moss in New England? Of course it did. Did he put together the single-greatest regular season by a wide receiver ever in 2007? You betcha. Is he MAYBE the greatest wide receiver to ever live? I'll default to Jerry Rice, who had the consistency. But what Moss did in 2007 (and 1998, his rookie year in Minnesota, for that matter) just might trump anything Rice did in San Francisco (or Oakland...or Seattle) over the course of a full season.
When Brady hit Moss in the corner of the end zone with 2:42 to go in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII, it should have been the game winner. Even after the Tyree debacle, Brady came *this close* to hitting Moss on a streak up the sidelines well inside half a minute to go that could have at least put the Patriots in a position to tie the game. Then you remember that Adam Vinatieri was no longer kicking for New England at this point...
Nevertheless, if you want to talk pound for pound, freak of nature, playmakers that crossed through the Greater Boston Area this century and somehow didn't win a ring, there's really only one answer: Randy Moss, Rand University. Which does absolutely nothing to discredit the accomplishments of Isaiah Thomas, who I really hope does win a ring some day. Just not with Bronny.
No comments:
Post a Comment