On March 22, the Hornets narrowly defeated the Pelicans by 3 points. Thomas Jr. played 14 minutes and scored 15 points on 5-of-9 shooting and 2-of-3 three-pointers, making him his best game since joining the Hornets.
On March 3, Thomas Jr. signed a 10-day contract with the Hornets and a second 10-day contract with the Hornets on March 13. This is already the fourth ten-day short contract that Thomas Jr. has signed this season.
After the Lakers scored 19 points on his stunning debut, the subsequent games didn't get many chances and were abandoned ten days later; in the Lone Ranger, he played a game and then entered the security agreement, and was abandoned again after ten days expired.
Thomas Jr. had been accustomed to the feeling of being abandoned for so many years, but he never gave up on himself. He returned to the development league, averaging 41.3 points per game in a week, getting the Hornets' attention again and staying.
Thomas Jr. played in seven games for the Hornets, averaging 13.4 minutes per game, 9.9 points, 1.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists, shooting 46.2 percent from the field and 48 percent from three-point range.
Everyone knew That Thomas Jr. couldn't defend, but the Hornets didn't seem to need him to defend either. They have always been a team with strong offensive and defensive weaknesses, ranking 23rd in the league in defensive efficiency and 7th in the league in offensive efficiency.
So when Thomas Jr. shows his scoring ability on the bench, he has hope of staying. After yesterday, the Hornets announced that they had signed Thomas Jr. to the end of the season.
For the first time in two seasons, Thomas Jr. has turned right. He briefly signed the Pelicans to a ten-day contract last season, but ultimately failed to stay. Before signing the Pelicans on a short ten-day contract, he didn't play in the NBA for 14 months.
The last time Thomas Jr. signed a formal contract was in July 2019, when he signed a one-year salary with the Wizards and averaged 12.2 points per game, but he was once again abandoned.
He can score 81 points in a single game in the amateur league and 40+ in the development league, but he just can't find a stable place in the league.
Thomas Jr.'s situation is actually similar to that written yesterday for Crawford, Crawford even scored 51 points in the last game of the 2019 season, and then no team was willing to sign him in the offseason, and finally the net signed him, playing only one game, symbolically playing his 20th season.
I'm sure Crawford, now 42, can still jump on the court and still hit three-pointers, but he really can't defend. The NBA has never been short of people who can score, just people who can both score and defend.
And Thomas Jr. couldn't make his defense better, he couldn't do it when he was younger, and he couldn't do it now at the age of 33. So he should have been eliminated, but his persistence again and again has brought him to the present.
So Thomas Jr. deserved to be respected, he could have given up, but he didn't; he could have found a job like a narrator, or a high school to go to as a coach, but he didn't; he had many ways to make money, faster and more than he's now, but he didn't.
A lot of people can't understand Thomas Jr.'s insistence, and I probably can't understand it, probably because we don't have Thomas Jr.'s enthusiasm for basketball in our hearts. Ask yourself in your heart, if you were Thomas Jr., could you stick with it like him?
His hip was injured in March 2017, playing the final playoffs for the Celtics. But he kept dragging his feet without surgery, thomas Jr., who said, "The NBA doesn't have a lot of 175 players, and if I don't play in the game, I feel like I'm going to be ignored." ”
So you can feel the lack of confidence in Thomas Jr., even though he's been in the league for so long, even if he's averaged 28.9 points per game, he's afraid of losing his job because of surgery. What he said before about "cash trucks" and the like is likely to cover up his lack of confidence.
In October 2020, Thomas Jr. finally had surgery and had a hip replacement. In his words, he can finally play on two legs. Later, he said in an interview: "If I could do it all over again, I would definitely have that surgery." ”
Thomas Jr., who finally turned right after two and a half years, said, "God is just!" Never give up! forever! Thomas Jr. owes more thanks to Himself than To God.