Klay Thompson says he's ready to sacrifice shots for more Warriors titles
The acquisition of Kevin Durant is an outright coup for the Golden State Warriors, but it does come with its own set of special challenges. In addition to the basic task of bringing a new player with an established style into a team that’s already had great success, the Warriors must contend with the very good problem of integrating a superstar without sacrificing what makes their three existing All-NBA talents so effective. As Kevin Love and Chris Bosh have shown in the past, getting less of the ball can be tough for a top-level player no matter how much he wants to win. How will Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson adjust?
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Curry (a two-time MVP) and Green (a do-everything type who can excel without the ball) should have the easiest adjustments of the trio. But there is reason to think that Thompson could be in for some growing pains. The 26-year-old shooting guard has developed from an elite shooter into one of the league’s best scorers and figures to become the team’s third offensive option with Durant in tow. Can he find ways to excel with fewer plays run for him?
Thompson says he’s aware of the challenges and ready to take them on for the good of the Warriors and his career. From Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com:
At Team USA practice, on the subject of sacrificing his role on the Warriors, Thompson said: “I know how good I am in this league. I’m not going to judge my performance off numbers or anything. If we get wins, it really doesn’t matter, man. It’s all good.”
On whether he might get less attention for his exploits, Thompson said: “I feel like I get enough attention, man, [by] showing people how good I am. [Getting less attention] doesn’t matter to me.” […]
On when his priorities shifted, Thompson said, “It was last year in the Finals. I had a game where I had five points and we still won. No one ever talks about that to me at least. They just talk about how great a year we had. Steve Kerr helped me a lot with that. He said: ‘Klay, it doesn’t matter how many points you’re going to score. No one’s going to remember 20 years down the line what you did in Game 3, 4, 5 unless it was something crazy. But they’ll remember that team that brought that Bay Area championship back for the first time in 40 years.” […]
“I look at a guy like Manu Ginobili who came off the bench almost his entire career,” Thompson said. “Never averaged more than 20 points a game, but he’s a four-time champion, you know? He could have easily been on another team and averaged 25 a game, but he sacrificed to win, and that’s what I expect to do next year. I don’t care about averaging 25 or even 20. I just want to finish it out and get back to the Finals and enjoy that ride.”
Thompson is certainly saying all the right things, and there’s also reason to think they’re not empty words. Like Bosh, Thompson has many strengths that do not require him to have the ball to succeed — he’s an excellent defender, an improving passer, and most effective offensively as a spot-up shooter. Unlike both Bosh and Love, he’s used to being more of a finisher than a creator, which suggests that he’d transition into a third option more easily than most All-Stars.
At the same time, Bosh’s October 2014 message to Love wasn’t just about whether a player can handle scoring less if it means winning. It was more specifically about the psychological difficulty of realizing that you’re less important — that you will get the ball in your favored spots less, that you will have fewer plays in which you’re a first or second option, etc. The Ginobili comparison isn’t a very good one for this particular issue, because he was still a focal point of the offense and obviously essential to what the San Antonio Spurs did at both ends.
Again, Thompson is probably better suited to weather this transition than other players who have been in this position. For that matter, his time with Durant and Green on the Olympic team this summer could serve as a sort of trial run. But it’s ultimately something we won’t discover until the Warriors play at least a full season. As Bosh said two years ago, telling someone exactly what to expect does not stand in for the experience itself.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
