They would be in the mix for the number 8 seed. You can not overlook what IT's fourth quarter meant to this team.
And for the other team. They scored on him at will many times. People here underrate defense so much...
TP @Jambr380 for that view that many fail to see.
Yeah, IT was a liability in the fourth, like when he outscored John Wall 29-5 a couple weeks back.
I think this is not a sample size to be taken into account. In PO, Wall has averaged 4 points more than IT, with better % in FG, 3 pt and FT. That's something if you can compare.
Also, I'd like to ask all the people who suggest I'm saying we'd be better without IT to read the OP. Carefully. Please. That's not the idea at all.
Wall has a teammate who is also an elite offensive scoring threat (Beal) that helps draws defensive attention away from Wall and who also can go off for 30 points in a game as well. Thus Wall doesn't draw the same constant double & triple team attention in the playoffs that Isaiah has drawn in every single playoff game he has played in.
Isaiah's personal scoring definitely dropped overall in the playoffs as teams have doubled-down on this strategy, daring the rest of the Celtics lineup to make shots. This isn't complex.
Two other elite scorers in these playoffs also suffered similar excess defensive attention. Westbrook's WS/48 dropped from .224 in the regular season to .108 in the playoffs. Harden's dropped from .245 down to .161.
All this establishes is the need to have more than one elite scoring weapon in order to avoid being shut down in the playoffs by better defenses.
Wall doesn't have this excuse, though. He has that sidekick.
And let's be clear when comparing Thomas and Wall:
1) Thomas now has a career 16-6 record against Wall. He has consistently out-played him over the course of their careers in head-to-head match ups. This goes back even to when Thomas was playing on truly horrible SAC teams.
2) In this playoff series between them, Thomas scored more points (27.4 vs 25.1) per game on fewer minutes (36.6 vs 39.1). Thomas posted an elite scoring efficiency (TS) of 60.3% while Wall had a very below-average 48.9% TS. BB-ref rated Thomas with a higher overall 'Game Score' rating of 19.5 compared to 18.9 for Wall.
3) Wall ended up going home.