Isaiah Thomas admits Stephen Curry busted his a** when he got to the NBA.
Stephen Curry has given defenders nightmares over the course of his career and Isaiah Thomas is one of his many victims. During an appearance on the Knuckleheads podcast, Thomas was asked to name the first person to bust his a** in the NBA, and went with Curry.
“It was Curry, for sure,” Thomas said. “… And they had that Bay Area little rivalry. When I first got to the league, the Warriors wasn’t really good. They was kind of on the fence of being good. So like, Curry was one… That was one, that was a tough one.
“We had our battles, but yeah, he got me, he got me a few times,” Thomas continued. “Until I tried to slowly start figuring it out. Then my opportunity came more. So that was the thing, he was getting me and I couldn’t get back at him… So, once my opportunities started coming, I started to get my get back. But yeah, Curry was… Steph was definitely one of the guys that got me early.”
“Curry. That was one — that was a tough one.”
@IsaiahThomas and @StephenCurry30 battled it out. 👏Watch #Knuckleheads with @QRich and @21Blackking on YouTube! https://t.co/AEMuodorIH pic.twitter.com/engxskom6U
— The Players’ Tribune (@PlayersTribune) August 30, 2024
There’s no shame in being bested by Curry, even if he hadn’t quite hit his prime when Thomas entered the NBA as the 60th pick of the 2011 Draft by the Sacramento Kings. Back then, you did see flashes of the player he was going to be one day, and in the fourth meeting between these two in December 2012, he scored 32 points on 7-12 shooting from three.
As time went by those exceptional outings started coming with greater regularity for Curry and eventually became the norm. In 2014, he became an All-Star for the first time and the following year, he won the first of his two MVPs. Curry was busting everyone’s a**es by that point.
As for Thomas, he had to wait a while to get his opportunity to shine, but it finally came when he was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2015. The 5’9″ guard became an All-Star for the first time in 2016 and followed that up by having the best season of his career in 2016-17.
Thomas finished fifth in MVP voting in 2017 after averaging 28.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.2 blocks per game for the Celtics. It looked like we might see many epic battles between him and Curry in the years to come, but the injury bug then struck.
Thomas injured his hip in the 2017 playoffs and was never the same after that. He has bounced around the league since then and the 35-year-old is now a free agent. Curry, meanwhile, is still going strong and just won his first gold medal at the Olympics with Team USA.
Isaiah Thomas Called Stephen Curry The Greatest Point Guard Of All Time
Thomas clearly has a lot of respect for Curry, going as far as to call him the greatest point guard of all time, back in 2021.
“I’m gonna go with Steph Curry,” Thomas said. “Changed the game of basketball on every level. On every level in the whole world.”
“I’m gonna go with @StephenCurry30… changed the game of basketball on every level.”
–@isaiahthomas ranks Steph as the best point guard of all time on #NBATwitterLive pic.twitter.com/k8FfPVtRom
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) June 14, 2021
Keep in mind, that Thomas made these comments before Curry won his fourth championship in 2022. It was only after that triumph, that some started to believe he had a case to be regarded as the GOAT point guard, but in Thomas’ mind, he was already the best ever at the position in 2021