Isaiah Thomas reflects on scoring 53 points at TD Garden on his late sister’s birthday
"It felt like somebody was there with me. When I got in the zone later in the game, it felt like I was in the YMCA with my sister when I was a kid."
Isaiah Thomas said it felt like he was in the gym getting up shots by himself when he dropped 53 points in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Wizards in 2017.
It was his sister’s birthday that night. She had died in a car crash weeks before. Thomas decided to press on and play through the grief.
He recalled the experience during a recent appearance on the Celtics’ “View from the Rafters” podcast.
“I couldn’t hear anything. I wasn’t hearing the crowd,” Thomas said. “I wasn’t hearing anything that was going on. I was just so locked in, not necessarily out of the moment of the game, it was like ‘This is a big day for my family’ as well.”
Thomas said it was a difficult day for him, but also one that pushed his game to new heights. The moment was bigger than basketball, he said.
“I was just in a zone. That’s a zone I’ve never been in,” Thomas said. “I tell people, my friends, like if you’ve ever seen the movie ‘The 6th Man’ with Marlon Wayans, that’s what it felt like. It felt like somebody was there with me. When I got in the zone later in the game, it felt like I was in the YMCA with my sister when I was a kid.”
Thomas called the performance, which lifted the Celtics to a 2-0 lead over the Wizards, the best moment of his career.
“I could picture my sister smiling,” Thomas said. “Like, ‘You’re just doing what you usually do.’ And then my parents, I could see my dad even though he was going through the worst time of his life, he was probably smiling at the TV like ‘Damn, my son is doing his thing on her birthday.'”
“I didn’t have no emotion in that game,” Thomas said. “If you see every basket, I didn’t even smile. My mouth was super big. I was just running back. I was just running back every time because my body was there but my mind was somewhere else. Anything that was happening, I just felt like it was supposed to happen like it was.”
Thomas had lost one of his front teeth during Game 1, and there were “other issues” in his mouth that led to Thomas getting surgery before Game 2, said Brad Stevens who was coaching the Celtics at the time.
“I remember I tried to make a steal on Otto Porter, I think it was,” Thomas said. “His elbow hits my mouth. My tooth comes out. From my peripherals, I could see something fly out. It’s no pain or nothing at that point, so I don’t know what it is. I see it drop on the ground but I think we had another possession so the tooth was still on the ground.”
Thomas said he picked the tooth up after the possession. Team doctors put the tooth back into his mouth, but it came out again during the game, Thomas recalls. He said he didn’t feel pain until after the game. He went to the dentist not long after.
“Not a lot of people know I spent six hours in the dentist after that game,” Thomas said. They were wiring my thing shut, trying to figure out what they were going to do with my teeth. So then, the next day, they give me all the meds and they numb me up. I go home. I can’t even really open my jaw. The left side of my mouth is swollen.”
“The next day I gotta go in for seven hours,” Thomas added. “So, 13 hours of dental surgery between Games 1 and 2. So they put a temporary in my mouth. They tried to figure out how my teeth looked and put a temporary in there. I played Game 2 with a temporary… From that day on, like I’m scarred from the dentist.”
Thomas said he was not put under anesthesia during the surgery.
“Even when I go, it could be the most simple thing,” Thomas said. “I’m like can I go to sleep, can you put me to sleep? Because I wasn’t put to sleep those 13 hours. It was just trying to be young and trying to fight through it. That’s the only thing you could possibly do.”
“That was probably one of the craziest moments of my life,” he continued. “Having to deal with that on top of trying to beat an actual NBA team in the playoffs in front of the world, and dealing with my sister’s passing.”
Thomas said the experience helped him bond with the city. He felt that Boston needed a player like him, and he came along at the right time, he said. Though he wasn’t with the Celtics for long, Thomas said he still feels the love when he comes back to town.
“I was only there for two-and-a-half years,” he said. “You would think I had won the championships that the Celtics are known for winning and the city of Boston is known for winning. It was just something that you can’t describe. My love is the same for the city. It feels like a second home to me.”
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