BOSTON – Size matters in the NBA.

Well, depending on who you talk to.

Any general manager around the league would tell you that size ranks at or near the top of his list of important attributes for an NBA player.

Ask 5-foot-9 Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas if size matters and you’ll get a much different response.

“It doesn’t,” he says emphatically, shortly after completing a post-practice workout with teammate and fellow shorty Phil Pressey, who is only an inch taller than Thomas. “Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve always been the smallest guy on the court.”

And that sure hasn’t been a detriment to his career.

Thomas recently completed his fourth NBA season and he had never played better basketball than he did over the past two months. In fact, there aren’t many players in the entire NBA who played better basketball than Thomas since his arrival in Boston in mid-February.

The Celtics acquired Thomas from the Phoenix Suns on Feb. 19 and he was nothing short of magnificent from that point on. One season after averaging 20.4 points per game for the Sacramento Kings, he quickly became Boston’s premier scorer.

Thomas picked apart defenses to the tune of 19.0 points per game during his 21 regular-season games with the Celtics. During that timespan, his average of 26.4 points per 36 minutes ranked fifth in the NBA, trailing only Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, DeMarcus Cousins and James Harden.

These weren't ‘empty’ points, either. They were meaningful and packed a knockout punch.

Thomas led the league in fourth-quarter scoring during his initial 10-game stretch with Boston, dropping in an average of 9.6 points during the money quarter. He almost single-handedly propelled the Celtics to a handful of victories, and he averaged 6.3 points per fourth quarter during his final 21 games.

At this point, there is no questioning Thomas’ abilities; he is a proven commodity in the NBA. But living the basketball life hasn’t always been easy for a guy who has looked up to his teammates – quite literally – since he first picked up a basketball.

Thomas took his first dribble around age five, says his mother, Tina Baldtrip. It was the first step toward a love affair that has now lasted 21 years, and which blossomed in Thomas’ hometown of Tacoma, Wash.

“When he was about six or seven he wouldn’t come in the house. He just kept playing that basketball,” Baldtrip remembers of Thomas’ early days in the sport. “He would go outside and play in the yard – anybody’s yard – and when he’d see a hoop, he had to play.”

Not much has changed over the past two decades. Thomas continues to savor his time on the court, relentlessly firing up shots before, during and after Celtics practices. The point guard does this out of his love for the game, but also out of necessity.

It didn’t take long for Thomas and his family to identify a kink in his basketball armor. Thomas was saddled with a disadvantage that would accompany him onto each and every basketball court he’d ever touch.

“You know how kids, when they get into their teens, they get a growth spurt?” Baldtrip asks. “All of his friends would grow over the summertime and they would come back and you’d be like, ‘Dang,’ and they’d be really tall. That didn’t happen to him.”

Thomas did not hide from his lack of height. He recognized it at an early age, and it bothered him. He hoped that his doctor, Dr. Tanbara, could help him grow, so he consistently asked his mother to bring him in for examinations.

“I used to ask the doctor to tell him how tall he was going to be,” his mother recalls, “and every time [the doctor would] say, ‘Well you’re only going to be about 5-9. You may not be 6-foot.’ And then Isaiah would just get so, so mad.”

Mad, but not broken.

Regardless of any anger that surfaced, or of any obstacles that stood in front of him, Thomas refused to doubt himself just because of his height.

“I just worked on my game,” he says. “I know being small you’ve got to outwork everybody. You’ve got to be the hardest-working guy out there and nothing is given to you.”

Rarely does a young man develop such a strong mindset on his own. Thomas was aided by the presence of an outstanding support group that pushed him in the right direction, beginning during his youth and continuing through today.

Without hesitation, Thomas points to his mother, Baldtrip, and his father, James Thomas, as his most influential supporters. Each parent knew that their son faced an uphill battle with his size, but they always encouraged him to keep on fighting.

“Me and his dad,” Baldtrip says, “we would always tell him, ‘Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do something. You can always do something. The right thing is that you’re always trying to be better. Find a way to get past it.’”

Doing so became more difficult as Thomas moved into his adolescence. Baldtrip vividly remembers her son’s lowest moment.

“There was a game when he was playing AAU and he came home and he was kind of like, ‘I can’t do this. I wish everybody wouldn’t say I can’t play,’” she says. She then recalls her immediate response, another nudge that pushed Thomas in the right direction: “I said, ‘Well, you just keep showing them that you can play. You know how to play.’”

And play he did. Slowly but surely, Thomas began to overcome his lack of size. He began to show everyone around him that he belonged on the court.

Similar to Thomas’ lowest moment, Baldtrip also remembers a seminal day at the other end of the spectrum. After years of being overwhelmed by his taller cousins, Tavaris Baldtrip and Donte Taylor, Thomas one day left them in the dust.

“He kept on and kept on and kept on until one time they all came in the house and these kids were mad, because he beat them,” Baldtrip remembers, her voice painting the picture of a proud mother. “It was about time.”

From that moment on, Thomas soared to new heights as a basketball player. He became one of the top young prospects in the entire country and took the greater Seattle basketball scene by storm.

Athletes from the Pacific Northwest, and in particular basketball players from the Seattle area, tend to bond together like brothers. They look after one another and want to help each other succeed.

Many players from the area began to pay close attention to Thomas during his sophomore year at Curtis Senior High School, when the point guard averaged 26.2 points per game. Chief among that group was Seattle native and Los Angeles clippers guard Jamal Crawford.

“The stories he already had were buzzing around Seattle and that area, especially what he did in the (state) tournament, scoring 50 in I think back-to-back games, and that was already going around town,” Crawford says. “I had wanted to meet him because I like to take the younger generation under my wing. I wanted to meet him probably just as much as he wanted to meet me, and he didn’t even know it.”

Soon enough, fate would have its way.

Crawford remembers running into Thomas by chance at the University of Washington gymnasium, where Thomas would later go on to star for the Huskies. The two just so happened to be working out at the gym at the same time and struck up a brief conversation. That conversation planted the seed of a brotherhood that will last a lifetime.

“He’s one of my best friends,” Crawford says after noting that Thomas was one of the groomsmen in his wedding. “He’s like a little brother, but he’s one of my best friends.”

Crawford relished the opportunity to be a mentor and sibiling to Thomas. He saw the potential in the young point guard, and he wanted to help him find his way.

“When you hear a young guy who’s focused like that and loves the game and wants to work hard and wants to compete and wants to get better,” says Crawford, “I think it’s something that you want to have your hands on as far as helping out.”

Crawford, who is now in his 15th NBA season, did his part to teach Thomas how to become a great player and a great person. Lesson No. 1, as Crawford says, was to teach Thomas to take care of business in the classroom.

Thomas struggled in that department during his junior year at Curtis. His academic struggles were a key factor in his parents’ decision to send him nearly 3,000 miles away, to the South Kent School in Kent, Conn.

Fate would have it that Crawford, then playing for the New York Knicks, was nearby. The stars aligned perfectly for Crawford to make a major imprint on Thomas’ development.

“He was across the country,” says Crawford. “He was a 17-year-old kid and his parents were sending him to the East Coast and he didn’t know anybody at the time. It worked out perfectly.

“Every weekend he would come stay with me in New York and I would go watch him at his game and I would be one of the only people in the crowd, actually. It was like an hour and a half drive away and I’d go watch him play.”

Crawford’s mentorship worked wonders. Thomas quickly turned the corner in the classroom and continued to excel on the court. After averaging 28.2 points and 6.4 assists per game during his senior year at South Kent, Thomas returned home to become a scholarship student-athlete at the University of Washington.

Thanks in large part to the support of his parents and Crawford, Thomas had now made it to a high-level basketball program near his hometown. But his dreams stretched farther than collegiate basketball.

“I used to tell Isaiah, ‘Always have a Plan B, because you never know about Plan A,’” his mother states. “And he would say, ‘Plan A is the NBA. I’m playing in the NBA, mom.’”

Thomas knew as well as anyone that he would need to continue to evolve as a basketball player if he was going to make that dream come true. After all, he hadn’t added any inches to his frame during his time at South Kent.

Thomas continued to put in extra work behind the scenes during his time at Washington, and when he wasn’t hitting the books for class, he was hitting the film room for the court. Over the years, he has gone out of his way to study film of other short players who made an impact in the NBA.

“Those guys paved the way for me: Muggsy Bogues, Spudd Webb, Nate Robinson, Tiny Archibald,” Thomas says of his most regular film subjects. “I watch a lot of film of Damon Stoudamire. That’s one of my favorite players – a left-handed small guard that had a great NBA career. I watch all of the guys that were small in the NBA that paved the way for me.”

The lessons Thomas learned by way of film study helped him to excel at the collegiate level and make a name for himself across the country. He starred for three seasons at Washington despite being drastically outsized by opposing Division I frontcourts.

Thomas averaged 16.4 points and 4.0 assists per game during his three seasons with the Huskies. He twice earned First-Team All-Pac 10 honors and as a junior was chosen as an Associated Press Honorable Mention All-American.

Alongside backcourt teammate Terrence Ross, who now plays for the Toronto Raptors, Thomas helped push Washington to a 20-10 record during the regular season of his junior year. But they saved the real fun for the postseason.

The Huskies made it to the Pac-10 championship game, where they would meet the No. 16-ranked Arizona Wildcats. Thomas played every second of that overtime game – 45 total minutes – while notching game highs of 28 points and seven assists. No points were bigger than the two he dropped through the net as time expired during overtime, following a step-back, fadeaway jumper. The bucket, which Thomas now calls the greatest play he ever made, gave Washington the conference tournament title.

Washington rode the momentum into the NCAA tournament. It defeated Georgia during its first game before falling to powerhouse North Carolina during the third round. Thomas averaged 18.0 points and 9.0 assists per game during Washington’s five postseason contests.

Thomas’ postseason performance gave him even more confidence that he was ready to make the leap. Eleven days after his junior season came to an end, on March 31, 2011, he officially declared for the NBA Draft.

The decision was a massive risk. Draft experts were not high on Thomas, due in large part to his size. After measuring out at 5-foot-8 and change without sneakers at the 2011 NBA Draft Combine, his name was rarely even mentioned as a second-round pick leading up to the Draft. Even if he was drafted, he would need to fight to make a roster.

On the inside, Thomas remained confident that a team would select him. On the outside, however, his nerves were quite evident.

June 23, 2011 was the big day: Draft Day. Thomas, who lived in the Solara apartments just a few miles north of the University of Washington campus, opened his doors to his family to host a party at his apartment. However, he was not present for the majority of the night.

“Isaiah was gone to the gym, to play at U-Dub (University of Washington) gym,” his mother remembers. “He didn’t want to – he couldn’t sit, so he was at the U-Dub gym.”

Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Baldtrip and the family eyed the ESPN broadcast of the Draft. Pick after pick was announced, yet none were attached to Thomas’ name. More than four hours had passed since the Draft began, and more than 50 of the 60 picks had already been announced before Baldtrip began to worry.

“I asked where we were at and they said we were in the 50s,” she says. “Isaiah was still at the gym and I said, ‘Hopefully he has Plan B.’”

Deep down inside, she knew that Plan A – playing in the NBA – was her son’s one and only plan. At 8:59 p.m. PST, nearly four and a half hours after the Draft tipped off, Thomas’ plan came to fruition.

“Isaiah’s name got called and it was like the loudest and I said, ‘Thank you Jesus!’” Baldtrip exclaims. “Isaiah was just coming down the stairs into the foyer where his apartment was and I remember turning around and saying, ‘Thank you, Jesus!’”

Thomas embraced his family after learning that he was chosen with the 60th and final pick of the Draft by the Sacramento Kings.

He had defied all odds. He was an NBA basketball player. No one was more proud of that fact than Crawford, who had been anxiously awaiting that moment from afar.

“That was the first draft I’ve ever watched top to bottom, was his draft, just to see him get drafted,” Crawford admits before giving his take on Thomas being the last pick in the Draft. “I was like, well at least he has a chance. Now he can go to camp and go to summer league and all of that stuff, and learn from the veterans.”

Crawford was confident that his best friend and little brother would do just that.

“Isaiah is a sponge,” states Crawford. “He soaks up everything that’s around him. He asks questions. He wants to get better. He lives in the gym.”

It’s no wonder why he has written such an incredible success story over the past 20 years. Every odd was stacked against Thomas and his 5-foot-9 frame, but he always believed.

“A lot of people give up after a while, and especially when people keep telling you over and over and over again, ‘Well, you’re only 5-9,’” Baldtrip says with a taste of satisfaction. “I am just so proud.”

Crawford, having watched his brother overcome every obstacle that stood in front of him, expresses similar emotions.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him,” Crawford says, “because it literally started when he was a sophomore or junior in high school.

“It’s not just now in the last couple of years. I’ve been there with him from that point on. It never wavers and it never changes.”

Knowing Thomas, it never will, because to him, there’s a whole lot more to basketball than height.

“I don’t feel like size matters,” he says. “It’s how big your heart is.”

. . .