It seems like whenever your hear a report from Woj that so-and-so “is off the table in trade talks”, it’s some totally average player who there’s no reason to get too attached to. Someone like Jayson Tatum or Josh Richardson. Good players, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t absolutely be traded if the right package comes along. Or, relevant to this video, Jonathan Isaac. The Magic are NOT in a position to say “nope, sorry, you could offer us a million first-round picks and a couple All-Stars and we still wouldn’t trade you Jonathan Isaac”. But they did say that, and I guess it’s paying off? Sorta?
There is something to be said for showing your players that you value them and won’t just ship them off for random crap. And it’s clear that Isaac has a significant amount of value for the Magic that he probably wouldn’t have elsewhere, making it hard to get good value for him in a trade. So I don’t want to diss the Magic too much here. I just thought their confidence during the offseason in his development was mostly unwarranted.
Jokes on me, though, because he’s kind of blossoming right before our eyes. He’s having games regularly where he scores a bunch of points (not an earth-shattering amount, but a bunch) and he’s also having games regularly where he stuffs the statsheet to the breaking point. He almost got a five-by-five earlier this year, and it’s just a matter of time before he really gets one.
In this game, he did some of both those things (scoring and stat-stuffing). 25 points, a career-high, along with 9 rebounds, 4 steals, and 2 blocks. And a stepback three. The unfortunate reality of our base-10 counting system is that that specific configuration of stats doesn’t earn him a five-by-five, a triple-double, or even a double-double. All those categories confer a sense of significance to a performance, but he’ll have to settle for a mere “career-high”.