Summers in Washington were supposed to be a celebration of basketball: Jamal Crawford’s Crawsover tournament and the Drew League. Plus everyday runs and Thomas’ own event, the Zeke-End, in the town of Tacoma where he moved as a boy. Even there, however, he was forced to watch from the sidelines. He longed to play again. “Not touching a basketball—that was depressing, for real,” he says. His father, James, saw the devastation in his eyes. “It just felt like everything was turning upside down,” he says. “We had the bottom knocked out from us as a family; not just with my daughter’s death but with Isaiah being injured at the same time.”