{"id":15312,"date":"2018-07-14T11:05:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-14T15:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=15312"},"modified":"2018-07-14T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-14T15:07:06","slug":"isaiah-thomas-agrees-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2018\/07\/14\/isaiah-thomas-agrees-nuggets\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Isaiah Thomas Agrees to Contract With Denver Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">According to reports, unrestricted free agent point guard\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/t\/thomais02.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Isaiah Thomas<\/a><\/strong> has agreed to sign a one-year contract with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nba-teams\/denver-nuggets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Denver Nuggets<\/a>. Thomas&#8217;s deal will be worth the veteran minimum salary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">ESPN&#8217;s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news Thursday night:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Free agent guard Isaiah Thomas has agreed to a one-year deal with the Denver Nuggets, league sources tell ESPN. Thomas will reunite with Michael Malone, who coached him with the Kings.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wojespn\/status\/1017615703602487296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 13, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Isaiah Thomas Agrees to One-Year Contract<\/b><\/span><\/h1>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Thomas\u2019s contract will run through the end of next season,\u00a0making him a free agent once again next summer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Thomas\u2019 fairytale run in the 2016-17 NBA season came to a painful halt last year, when injuries prevented him from making an\u00a0early impact. Once he got healthy, Thomas <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2018\/07\/13\/the-nba-is-a-cruel-business-just-ask-isaiah-thomas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">was never the same player<\/a> as he&#8217;d been in Boston. Playing for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nba-teams\/cleveland-cavaliers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> and then the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nba-teams\/los-angeles-lakers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>, Thomas only suited up for 32 games, in which he averaged 15.2 points, 2.1 rebounds,\u00a0and 4.8 assists. But Thomas shot just 37.3 percent from the field and 29.3 percent on three-pointers, both poor efficiency. His player efficiency rating of 12.6 was also down from his career average PER, 20.5, by a sizable amount. Thomas struggled throughout the whole season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Looking ahead, Thomas seems suitable enough to either start at point guard or be the sixth man for the Nuggets. He will potentially add a potent scoring punch to Denver&#8217;s offense. Thomas still possesses the ability to take over a game, even though his best days are almost certainly behind him. For the Nuggets, Thomas could be an important piece moving forward. And as Wojnarowski reported, Thomas is reunited with his old coach\u00a0<strong>Mike Malone<\/strong>, with whom he had success in Sacramento. However, Thomas is arguably the worst defender in the NBA, and Denver&#8217;s defense was already poor prior to acquiring\u00a0him. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is a low-risk, high-reward move for the Nuggets. With the veteran minimum for a single season, Denver can always cut all ties to Thomas next summer if this works out badly. But if Thomas has success with the Nuggets and returns even close to his old form, he&#8217;ll be a huge weapon for Denver&#8217;s already excellent offense. Thomas may be inclined to re-sign with the Nuggets for a larger salary next summer if the pairing works out well for both sides.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The 29-year-old Thomas is going into his eighth season as an NBA pro.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"JKPeJ5dyTeZf-PzyktTrKw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/509760444\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'JKPeJ5dyTeZf-PzyktTrKw',sig:'Poe0JiHAqTH1uyiJf3EH_Pz-1BhBCfSMJjRtvVicjuk=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'509760444',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unrestricted free agent point guard Isaiah Thomas agrees to a one-year contract with the Denver Nuggets for the veteran minimum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1823,"featured_media":16241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1608,2,26,62,3],"tags":[65,108,171,152,96,297,202],"class_list":["post-15312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nuggets","category-basketball","category-featured","category-lakers","category-nba","category-news","tag-basketball","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-isaiah-thomas","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-nba-free-agency","tag-nba-news"],"modified_by":"Lior Kozai (Managing Editor)","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}