Welcome to the Ringer NBA show. I'm Chris Vernon. Join me. He does every Tuesday from theRinger.com is Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O'Bomer, aka Kevin O'Connor, aka...

Which one do you want? Do you want the last one?

I don't know. What's up Chris? How are you doing? Happy New Year.

Kevin! It is 2018. Our first episode. It's been good. It's been an odd couple of weeks. I'm sure for everybody that is listening to us also because it's hard to get back in the flow of everything when there's like these extremely long weekends, like four days, four days, five days, weekends. A lot of people take off the entire end of the year.

And so just getting back into the flow today on a Tuesday is a little bit different than honestly every other normal week of the year, but there has been a ton of NBA stuff that has taken place since we last spoke. So let's hit it.

First of all, Isaiah Thomas, one of the great players in the NBA last season and then a guy that was traded in the off season and the Kyrie Irving deal.

We have not seen him yet playing in the Cleveland Cavaliers uniform and that is going to change tonight. We were recording this on a Tuesday. He is going to make his debut tonight. Obviously going to be on a minute restriction.

But he will be back on the court and I think we will immediately kind of start evaluating how he fits with the calves. What do you think?

Well, it's like Isaiah said the other day or yesterday, rather to reporters. I've been out for so long. It feels like I lost my powers. So for Isaiah, it's going to take time for him to get back to either the level he was at last season or close to that level.

So I think for fans of the Cavaliers, fans of Isaiah, fans just watching casually. I mean, it's going to take time for a guy like Isaiah, whose game is so dependent on speed and changing direction suddenly.

And by shifting his body inside the lane and his athleticism, it's going to take time for him to get back to get the feel and the rhythm.

And just for his body, just to adjust the just to adjust the NBA game after such a long break, it's going to take time. So hopefully for Cleveland, he doesn't get back to the level that we that we didn't see in the past.

We talked to them about this with a lot of stars moving and then we say, how is it all going to work? Whether it was Jimmy Butler going to the timber wolves or it was Chris Paul going to the rockets or it was Paul George and Carmelo Anthony going to Oklahoma City on and on and on.

How is it going to work in Cleveland? Clearly he is not going to be the guy that's taking 19 shots of game is what he took last year and he averaged 29 points of game.

How does he fit in with what they do in Cleveland in your mind?

It's funny because a lot of the conversation is, can he replace what Kyrie Irving did for Cleveland?

If he gets healthy, yes, he can do isolation, yes, he can hit spot up three and whatnot.

But what I'm curious about is how much is Ty Lugan a steal from what Brad Stevens did with Isaiah in Boston, using Isaiah off screens?

I was really one of the big, big things that Brad did to really unlock Isaiah Thomas.

I mean, I've been to make him as efficient as he was running him off screens and dribble handoffs at the top of the key with Al Hoerford.

You can do that with Kevin Love too. You can play five out, spread the floor with love at the five LeBron at the four and really give Isaiah space to really move around off screens.

I think I'd love to see Tyron Liu take some of what made Isaiah successful in Boston and install it in Cleveland.

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