The Cleveland Cavaliers may have an Isaiah Thomas problem.
The Cavaliers traded for Thomas in the offseason, giving up Kyrie Irving to get him. Irving, remember, was drafted by the Cavaliers and won a championship with LeBron James just a couple of years ago.
Now, Irving is gone, and Thomas is in Cleveland. The team hoped that it wouldn’t lose much by giving up Irving, who is a bona fide scorer in the NBA and might have the league’s best handles.
But Thomas is no slouch either. As a member of the Boston Celtics, he was the best player on that team, and often led the Celtics to wins with his fourth-quarter heroics.
Thomas, however, had a blip in his game. He was never a good defender, and oftentimes the Celtics had to hide him on defense. Now it seems the Cavaliers have the same problem, and they’re running out places to hide Thomas.
Per StatMuse, Thomas has a defensive rating of 117.5 as a member of the Cavs. That’s not only the worst in the NBA for a player who is on the floor for at least 25 minutes, it’s also the worst of any player in 25 years.
Any player. In the last. Twenty. Five. Years.
Let that sink in for a second.
We all knew Thomas was not a good defender, but the fact that is this bad so far is a huge problem for the Cavs, who already hover around the bottom two in the league from a defensive standpoint.
Isaiah Thomas recently returned from a hip injury and hasn’t played all that many games, so maybe it’s something that will correct itself. But until it does, the Cavaliers have a big problem, and they’re running out of time to try to fix it.