Isaiah Thomas says the Cleveland Cavaliers were in “panic mode” when they traded him earlier this month.

Thomas was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 8 after playing only 15 games for Cleveland.

“I didn’t think they would pull the trigger that fast, 15 games,” Thomas told ESPN’s E:60 in an interview that will air March 11. “But again, it’s a business. And the Cavs were, I mean, they were in panic mode. We were losing — a lot. And I think they felt like they needed to make a move, and they, they basically cleared house.”

Thomas, after two and a half seasons with the Boston Celtics, was traded to the Cavaliers on Aug. 22. He was coming back from a hip injury he suffered in the 2017 postseason that had kept him off the court for seven months.

In the 15 games he played for the Cavaliers, the team went 7-8. Thomas, who averaged nearly 29 points per game in his final season in Boston, was averaging 14.7 points per game in Cleveland. The Cavs were 31-22 when they traded Thomas and forward Channing Frye to the Lakers for guard Jordan Clarkson and forward Larry Nance Jr.

“It was a tough situation I was being put in,” Thomas said. “It was — it was different. … It’s hard to get acclimated to a team halfway through the season.

“People don’t put in there that we had eight or nine new players. So it was basically a brand new team. … I’m in a new system. New team, new coach, new players. And then I’ve been off for seven months. So I got to get — individually, I got to for the most part get my rhythm back, get my timing back.”

Thomas said he bears no ill will toward the Cavaliers.

“It just didn’t work out,” he said. “And that just happens.”

He remains optimistic about his future in Los Angeles.

“I’ve been in this situation before when I got traded to Boston,” Thomas said, “a team right outside the playoffs, a team that was young, really didn’t know how to win. And I just brought a different swagger to that organization. And we took it and ran with it.”

He added: “I’m coming to an L.A. team that’s young, that already has a system. And I just want to help. Hopefully I’m here long term, you know, with me being a free agent this summer. But if I’m not, these last 25 games I’m going to play my heart out and show the Lakers why I should be here long term.”

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IT: Lakers trade result of Cavs in 'panic mode'
IT: Lakers trade result of Cavs in 'panic mode'
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Source: ESPN SPORTS

U.S. women’s figure skater Mirai Nagasu says she is sorry for the odd interview she gave following her struggles at the Pyeongchang Olympics.

“I feel really, really awful about the things I said,” Nagasu told People Magazine on Saturday. “I feel bad that people think that I was throwing my teammates under the bus because I never wanted to come off that way.”

Nagasu helped the U.S. win a bronze medal in the team event and later said she “saved” Adam Rippon and Alex and Maia Shibutani before the Americans lost their medal spot.

She told People she didn’t mean to downplay her teammates’ performances.

“I had my dream Olympic skate [in the team event], and to me, I’ve been dreaming of that moment for such a long time, it made me feel like a superhero and superheroes save the day,” Nagasu said. “And I wish I had said that we were all superheroes during the team event.

“… We were all heroes that day, and I apologize, especially to my teammates, for how it came off.”

Nagasu also raised eyebrows for her characterization of her long performance, in which she pulled out of attempting a triple axel and finished well off the podium in 10th place.

Afterward, she said she considered her performances in the individual competition as her audition for “Dancing With the Stars.”

Nagasu told People she was following advice from her sports psychologist to find something to focus on other than her long program.

“I used that as a distraction, and I probably should have kept it to myself,” Nagasu said. “… It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”

Finally, she apologized to Canadian skater Gabrielle Daleman, whom Nagasu used as an example of another figure skater struggling besides the American women. Nagasu told People that “I just shouldn’t have brought [Daleman] into it.”

Information from ESPN’s Elaine Teng contributed to this report.

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Nagasu sorry for chatter after solo struggles
Nagasu sorry for chatter after solo struggles
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Source: ESPN SPORTS

The overtly political 2018 Winter Olympics closed Sunday night very much as they began, with humanity’s finest athletes marching exuberantly across the world stage as three nations with decades of war and suspicion among them shared a VIP box — and a potential path away from conflict.

Senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. presidential adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump sat in two rows of seats behind the Olympic rings, meant to represent a competition of peace and international unity. In close proximity — though with no apparent communication between Trump and Kim — they watched a spirited, elaborate show that concluded the Pyeongchang Games.

Even as dancers performed cultural stories to music before a huge crowd, South Korea’s presidential office released a brief statement saying that Pyongyang had expressed willingness to hold talks with Washington.

The North has “ample intentions of holding talks with the United States,” according to the office. The North’s delegation also agreed that “South-North relations and U.S.-North Korean relations should be improved together,” Moon’s office, known as the Blue House, said.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, just before declaring the Games closed, addressed the Koreas’ cooperation, saying, “The Olympic Games are an homage to the past and an act of faith for the future.”

“With your joint march, you have shared your faith in a peaceful future with all of us,” Bach said. “You have shown our sport brings people together in our very fragile world. You have shown how sport builds bridges.”

It was all an extraordinary bookend to an extraordinary Olympics that featured athletic excellence, surprises and unexpected lurches forward toward a new detente on the Korean Peninsula. Thrilled athletes marched into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium around the world’s flags, relaxed after showing their athletic best to themselves and to the world.

“We have been through a lot so that we could blaze a trail,” said Kim Eun-jung, skip of the South Korean women’s curling team that captured global renown as the “Garlic Girls” — all from a garlic-producing Korean hometown. They made a good run for gold before finishing with runner-up silver.

That these Games would be circumscribed by politics was a given from the outset because of regional rivalries. North Korea, South Korea, Japan and China are neighbors with deep, sometimes twisted histories that get along uneasily with one another in this geographic cul-de-sac.

But there was something more this time around. Hanging over the Games was the saga — or opportunity, if you prefer — of a delicate diplomatic dance between the Koreas, riven by bloodshed, discord and an armed border for the better part of a century.

The Games started with a last-minute flurry of agreements to bring North Koreans to South Korea to compete under a combined Koreas banner. By the opening ceremony, a march of North and South into the Olympic Stadium was watched by the world — and by dozens of North Korean cheerleaders applauding in calibrated synchronicity.

Also watching was an equally extraordinary, if motley, crew. Deployed in a VIP box together were Moon, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong. The latter two, at loggerheads over North Korea’s nuclear program, didn’t speak, and the world watched the awkwardness.

What followed was a strong dose of athletic diplomacy: two weeks of global exposure for the Korean team, particularly the women’s hockey squad, which trained for weeks with North and South side by side getting along, taking selfies and learning about each other.

On Sunday night, though K-pop megastars EXO claimed center stage, leaders rejoined athletes as a primary focus.

Kim, President Donald Trump’s daughter and Moon sat in close proximity as the Olympics’ end unfolded before them. Also seated nearby was Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. forces in Korea. Unlike Pence, Ivanka Trump was smiling as she turned in the North Koreans’ direction.

The developments Sunday both inside and outside the VIP box were particularly striking given that Kim Yong Chol, now vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee, is suspected of masterminding a lethal 2010 military attack on the South.

Outside the stadium, North Korea was not welcomed as much.

More than 200 anti-Pyongyang protesters, waving South Korean and U.S. flags, banging drums and holding signs like “Killer Kim Yong Chol go to hell,” rallied in streets near the park. They denounced the South Korean government’s decision to allow the visit, but there were no major clashes.

Ivanka Trump’s presence also drew a rebuke from American freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy via Twitter.

So proud of all these people! Everybody here has worked so hard to make it to the Olympics and have the opportunity to walk in the closing ceremony! Well… Everyone except Ivanka. Honestly, tf is she doing here?? pic.twitter.com/sfJKi0VTDb

— Gus Kenworthy (@guskenworthy) February 25, 2018

That wasn’t all when it came to these odd Games. Let’s not forget the Olympic Athletes from Russia, the shame-laced moniker Russia inherited after a doping brouhaha from the 2014 Sochi Games doomed the country to a non-flag-carrying Pyeongchang Games.

Two Russian athletes tested positive in Pyeongchang in the past two weeks. So on Sunday morning, the IOC refused to reinstate the team in time for the closing ceremony but left the door open for near-term redemption from what one exasperated committee member called “this entire Russia drama.”

Away from the politics, humanity’s most extraordinary feats of winter athletic prowess unfolded, revealing the expected triumphs but also unlikely stars — with favorites like Mikaela Shiffrin, Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn joining sudden surprise legends like Czech skier-snowboarder Ester Ledecka.

Other Olympic trailblazers were Chloe Kim, American snowboarder extraordinaire; the U.S. women’s hockey team and men’s curlers, both of which claimed gold; and the Russian hockey team, with its nail-biting, overtime victory over Germany.

What’s next for the Games? Tokyo in Summer 2020, then Beijing — Summer host in 2008 — staging an encore, this time for a Winter Games. With the completion of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, that Olympic trinity marks one-third of a noteworthy Olympic run by Asia.

Four of eight Olympic Games between 2008 and 2022 will have taken place on the Asian continent. Not bad for a region that hosted only four Games in the 112 years of modern Olympic history before that.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Politically charged Olympics come to an end
Politically charged Olympics come to an end
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Source: ESPN SPORTS