Iverson dropped off a cliff between age 32 and 33 and age 34 was his last year in the league.
sure, but Iverson also admitted he didnt lift weights leading me to believe he didnt take too much care of his body. Combine that with the practice rant and its not too much of a stretch to suggest AI could have played a lot longer if hed been smarter with his preparation.
Thomas is a brick and he is already trying to follow a Tom-Brady type regimen, maximizing sleep etc etc in the interest of longevity.
Nate Robinson, barely played after 30 despite being a career 36% shooter from three. Calvin Murphy managed to play till 34, but was a role player his last few seasons.
Smaller players tend to have a shorter prime and larger fall than bigger players because when they lose the speed and athleticism they have no other real way to get a shot off and because they are so short they can't defend well, can't rebound well, etc. so they can't make up for the loss of athleticism and speed in other ways.
You know Nate Robinson couldn't hold a candle to IT, right? Players get worse as they get older. Nate was starting from a threshold of sometimes useful bench player. His peak year by advanced stats were either at age 24 (18.9 PER, 5.9 win shares, 2.6 BPM, 2.6 VORP) or 28 (18.0, 5.9, 1.7, 1.9). In between those two years he had a major dip in production, such that his age 28 year looks like a bit of an aberration, and then he reverted to prior form and fell out of the league.
IT, meanwhile, has seen a steady growth through his career (PERs of 17.6, 17.5, 20.5, 20.6, 21.5, and 27.5) from age 22-27. Furthermore, his worst years were near that of Robinson's best years. Early on his career it looked like they might be similar players, but at about age 25 their careee arcs took very different paths. Robinson entered his decline phase at 25. Thomas is in his age 27 season (having just turned 28), and is still ascending. Even if this is the best it gets for IT (and it may be), there is nothing in his career path that says he's likely to quickly decline. He's not Nate Robinson. He stoped being Nate about 4 years ago.
Calvin Murphy, meanwhile, had a much steadier career. His production was relatively constant until about age 30, tailed off for a couple of years, and then had a year of productivity spike at 32. If IT were to follow this career arc, you'd absolutely sign up for a max deal. Mirroring Murphy, but at his higher performance baseline, he'd have 2-3 more all-star campaigns in him, a dip to being still a productive starter, and then one last hurrah of stardom probably in the final year of his deal. Again, the point is that IT is starting from a significantly higher performance threshold than either Murphy or Robinson (or 99% of NBA players). Whereas Murphy's dip took him to decent starter or good bench player, he started from a level of very good starter. IT is at MVP-level. A commensurate drop mirroring Murphy brings him to very good starter in a couple of years.
Barring an ACL tear (which takes out players of all sizes, and contributed to Robinson's departure from the league, but was far from the sole cause) or Achilles (again, it can get anyone), there's no reason to believe Thomas will not have a typical career arc of most players who reach his current elite level of performance around age 26-28. He'll get a bit worse over the life of the contract, but odds are he'll still be well worth it.
Topic: If Isaiah Thomas Isn't Worth The Max Or Near Max ($25-30M/Year)... (Read 7576 times)