59/82 L Los Angeles Lakers 111-124
60/82 W Houston Rockets 116-101
61/82 W Minnesota Timberwolves 109-104
62/82 W Portland Trail Blazers 123-105
63/82 W Los Angeles Clippers 115-91
64/82 W New Orleans Pelicans 108-99
65/82 L Los Angeles Lakers 105-113
66/82 L Oklahoma City Thunder 128-137
This stretch of games makes things shockingly clear. The Warriors lost every away game and won every home game. I’m not here to talk about the losses because I do this for fun, and that’s no fun. It’s all about defense on the road. We don’t seem to bring it with us. Enough said. But that string of wins was lovely. Without Steph, without Wiggins, some of them without Draymond. In all the the wins, the Warriors dug a hole they had to climb out of, and in the last several games, the Warriors put on a display in the 3rd quarter that was bringing back memories of last year. We aren’t there yet, because we can’t do it on the road. We have to stop digging holes. At Chase Center, the team looks like a team. Donte, Kuminga, Ty Jerome - they all look comfortable on the floor, knowing each other’s strengths and playing to them.
And the bench looks like a bench. Earlier in the year, the bench looked like a string of people who had failed their math test, or lost their puppy or learned they were having oatmeal for dinner again. It was grim. The bench now–celebratory, engaged, realizing that they are also a part of the game. This is because of Steph Curry. Steph is great on the bench. Whenever he is out injured, he plays his bench role with great enthusiasm, cheering, dancing, talking up players. It’s also due in part to Gary Payton II, who has always been a good vibes guy. While I prefer Steph and GPII to be on the court, I would watch a buddy movie of the two of them. Or a reality show of “Steph and GPII Watch Sports.”
Here’s them imitating Jordan Poole protesting a foul
For reference, here’s Poole protesting the foul (you can see GPII start to imitate him at the end of the clip).
Finally, here’s the dynamic duo watching the halftime entertainment
But let’s focus on Klay Thompson. Since his 2019 injury, Klay has had to hear about how he is washed up, should be traded, should be benched, best days behind him. How does Klay respond?
With a string of career bests. January was the best month of his career. February was the 3rd best month of his career. He just had a game with a career high 11 rebounds. He stepped into the gap left with no Wiggins, Steph, Andre, Draymond and delivered. Games with over 40 points, games with more assists, rock solid career games.
If Steph is the heart and soul of the Warriors and Draymond is the fire, Klay is… the secret ingredient, the flavor you can’t quite identify in your meal. He is one of a kind. Klay is different than the other Warriors.
On the court, Klay shakes his head through the game, win or lose. It’s the closest he gets to a smile. He’s on a team of smilers. Curry, Wiggins, Poole and Looney are playful, celebrating big shots with glee, smiling on the bench. Not Klay. He sneers, he paces, he shakes his head, sometimes in approval, but more often because he’s thinking of the shots he didn’t make that felt good, the defensive stops he thought he should have had. He is relentless about his own performance. Like any athlete, he can replay every game in his head and in Klay’s mind, every shot was one he should have taken and should have made.
Off the court, Klay is the least curated of all the current Warriors. Many are more talkative and available off the court - Draymond, Curry, Iguodala. Many are less - Poole, Looney, Wiggins. But they all have a distance and an awareness of what they are saying. Klay, in his interviews and media appearances, is occasionally willing to show something that is a little less scripted. He is beloved for this.
Like this, after they won last year
Or the day of the championship parade, where all the Warriors seemed at least a little drunk, but Klay loses his hat, dances like MJ and drops his ring in the street.
Klay is a perfect fit on the Warriors but also doesn’t quite fit in. He’s not trying to. There are a lot of ways he doesn’t quite fit. He is both private and solitary in a public profession on the most watched team in the NBA. He reads books, he plays chess. He’s not the only introvert (so is Jordan Poole, among others), but it’s hard to be a star and an introvert.
Most of the older players on the Warriors team-Steph, Draymond, Iguodala, Wiggins-have kids. Most of the Warriors live in San Francisco or on the Peninsula. Klay lives in Marin. Marin is not close to Chase Center, unless you take a boat, which Klay does if the weather is right. If the weather is even more right, he bikes from the dock to Chase Center. If you follow his IG account, you’ll see occasional posts of him on the boat, out with bulldog Rocco, listening to Michael Jackson, talking about how good it is to be in the water, swimming in the Bay. Klay knows the younger team members better than Steph or Draymond do. He’s spent more time with them, playing with them in the G League or in practice and scrimmaging while he was rehabbing for two years.
Klay is also an unintentional goofball. He’s not trying to be funny but he often is. Like this clip from last week about who would be the worst babysitter.
Or this recent post-game interview, which shows all of Klay’s traits. Klay is always a reluctant interview and whenever he starts to feel done with the questions, he takes the stat sheet and begins to fold it into a paper airplane. After this game, (when the Warriors beat Memphis by 2), Klay manages to throw shade at Memphis, bring up a grudge with Memphis from 2016 about Iguodala, reflect on his ability to hold grudges, complements his teammates, makes a paper airplane and accidentally hits a reporter with it. Just another day being Klay.
There is something about Klay, in being unapologetically himself, that makes him somehow more like all of us. For the past few years, Klay has been tied to the story of his injuries and his comeback. In case you don’t know the story, here you go:
As Klay recovered from injury, he let us in to small pieces of how hard it was and sometimes still is. How the hardest challenge was the mental part of recovery, even after he was back on the court. Sometimes he let us see how much doubt, how many dark nights of the soul, how impossible it can seem to not know if you will ever get to do the thing you love again, the thing that is intertwined with your sense of your own identity.
Fall of 2021, you could see it in his face. Sitting sideline at games and looking briefly happy but more often lost in his head. And then there was this moment (or rather this half hour) after the Cavaliers game in November last year. He was at the point in his recovery where his return was in sight. He had started to scrimmage a little but he did not yet have a return date. After the game, which the Warriors won, Klay sat there by himself. Sometimes staring at the court, more often staring at the floor in front of his feet, sometimes covering his head with a towel, occasionally wiping his eyes. Few fans, no players. In time, a coach came out and sat with him. Then Kerr and Draymond, no one really saying much at all, just sitting with him. Klay stayed. I kept thinking, Klay is so private, I can’t believe he is showing this in front of cameras. Then I thought - he can’t do anything else right now. If he could get off that bench, he would. But right now, it’s all he can do to sit there and get through this moment.
If you are a human being, you understand that feeling. That feeling of being so close to the thing you want, or the thing you want back, but not knowing if you’re gonna get there. What no one ever tells you is that it’s hardest when you get close to it. Whatever the it is. That’s when the mind can get a little active, or a little overactive and throw all the doubt it can at you. It was a fragment of what had to have been day after day of those moments that only his nearest and dearest maybe saw. But just as he remembers every missed shot, I’m guessing he remembers all those moments.
Somewhere along the journey, he made this commercial with Kaiser Permanente.
I think about this commercial all the time, and not only because it was played so much last year. In my life, I rarely get a day that goes according to my plan - I think this is true for most people. Anything can get derailed at any time but when that happens now, I hear Klay saying “It’s a win”. Thank you Klay Thompson.
We know where this leads. In this particular moment with Klay sitting on the sidelines, the few remaining fans yelled “We Love You Klay” and then chanted his name until he broke a smile, waved his fist and eventually walked off.
Which led to this on his first game back two months later
And then the championship, playing more minutes than any other Warrior, and this year where he is playing heavy minutes in back to back games, reaching new career highs. But even if none of that had happened, thank you Klay Thompson.
Every happiness, every joy, whatever Klay wants, I want that for him.
And he wants another Championship. So I want that for him. Go Warriors!
Timeout Books (i.e. the books I read during the Timeout/Halftimes of the games for this post. Note: these are not recommendations and these are not the only books I read. Some books are not good for timeout reading. But lots of books are GREAT for it).
Do you want more Klay Thompson content? How about this
Klay Thompson Finally Found Love. With His Boat
All The Smoke Podcast with Klay Thompson (this is 90 minutes long)