Klay Thompson wants to stay with Warriors but feels blessed regardless of future

SAN FRANCISCO — There’s been an expectation from those around Klay Thompson that he will actively attempt to keep his expiring contract, unknown future and theoretical free agency from becoming a distraction this season. He’s seen his Golden State Warriors franchise live under those clouds before. That’s not an experience he necessarily enjoyed.

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But quieting it doesn’t mean ignoring or avoiding it. Thompson’s approach is pretty straightforward. Outside noise emerges in silence. The topic isn’t off-limits. Ask him. He’ll let you know where it stands.

“I’ll talk about it,” Thompson said.

It’s an 80-degree Friday in San Francisco. Great weather typically brings out a great Thompson mood. He lingered around Chase Center for a couple of hours after practice. Extra jumpers. Extra weight work. Showered and dressed. There was a skateboard in the building. He rode it around a little bit. He chatted up some arena workers setting up for a Romeo Santos concert.

“What kind of music is it?” he asked. “Should I come back for it?”

Practice wrapped around 1 p.m. At just past 3 p.m., Thompson finally sat down with The Athletic for an interview on this pivotal point of his career. Several subjects were discussed. His contract situation was the hottest topic.

“It’s not going to be a thing,” Thompson said. “The fact that I’m going into my 13th season — that alone — it gives me such peace of mind. Granted, I’ve made money, I’ve been able to take care of my family, myself, the people I love. But when I started playing this game, I never once thought I’m playing the game because I’m going to be rich and famous. Never did.

“I played this game because my dad played. I idolized him. My favorite athletes were hoopers. Kobe (Bryant). Clyde Drexler and Rasheed Wallace, guys I was able to watch growing up. Reggie Miller. I just wanted to do something I loved for a living. It happened to be basketball. The fact I’m doing it for a 13th straight season is amazing.

“I don’t need to go into this year and … I know if I just do my job and I’m in shape and I compete at my highest level, I’m going to make money in this league for a long time. So I don’t worry about it. I’m blessed beyond measure. Obviously you want to make the most in the window you have as an athlete. But I’m not going to let that get in the way of winning a championship. When you win, everything else will be taken care of.”

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There was a report last season that Thompson expected a max-level extension offer from the Warriors during the summer. That isn’t, and wasn’t, coming. The rising luxury-tax bill, punitive second apron and realities of the market demand the Warriors get Thompson’s number significantly lower than the near-$50 million that his max would start.

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Thompson won’t downplay his value. There would still be extreme demand for his skill set and services on the open market. But he’s not oblivious to the circumstances or desperate to grapple for every available dollar. Andrew Wiggins came back on a long-term contract averaging $27.2 million per year. Draymond Green did the same for $25 million on average over four seasons. Both received player options on the back end of those slight discounts.

Thompson and the Warriors will have to find a number and structure that’s reasonable for both sides. It could happen via extension in the coming weeks. It might hold until next summer.

But two things are clear. One, the Warriors are committed to Thompson. Part of the Jordan Poole trade was about freeing up long-term flexibility to keep Thompson around. That remains the intention. Two, Thompson’s eyes are not wandering. He is committed to the Warriors.

“Yes,” Thompson said. “Absolutely. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. To play for one franchise, man? That’s so rare. In any sport. Football. Baseball. Basketball. Australian Rules Football. To play for one club is insane. It’s some real legendary stuff. Even what Udonis Haslem did. He’s revered in Miami. Locally. That’s what I cherish. Going around the country, going around the world and people from Northern California or Warriors fans in general are just so prideful about the Warriors. And I was here before banners were hung up. So in a way, it’s our baby. You want to ride it out. I’ve just been so lucky to be a part of this franchise. It’d be so hard to envision myself in another uniform.”

The larger question is how Thompson will age into his mid-to-late 30s. The answer will partially define how long this Warriors’ run of contention can go. He turns 34 in February. Last season, Thompson’s 12th, was a roller coaster. It started and ended poorly enough that it may be difficult for some to remember how spectacular he performed in the middle of it.

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This Warriors core won its fourth title in June 2022, five months after Thompson returned from a 941-day absence from those devastating mid-prime ACL and Achilles tears. He started all 22 playoff games during that run, averaging 36 minutes, expending every ounce of energy he had left to help push the Warriors to the finish line in Boston.

That shortened offseason was filled with celebration, appreciation and exhaustion. The Warriors traveled to Japan for the preseason in October 2022.  While there, Thompson revealed that he’d experienced a “mental block” and couldn’t bring himself to play summer pickup basketball. The last time he’d competed in an unsupervised environment, he tore his Achilles. He wasn’t yet ready.

That had him out of game condition when he entered camp. He wasn’t even cleared to make his preseason debut until the finale. He started the regular season ice cold, averaging more shot attempts than points during an inefficient opening month, culminating in his frustration ejection in Phoenix when he was flashing four rings at Devin Booker and the Phoenix bench.

Thompson was forcing. The Warriors were losing. They were 0-8 on the road. His shot selection was causing enough of an issue that the team had a locker room meeting on several subjects, including a frank conversation between Thompson and Green about dialing it back.

There was a belief that Thompson’s lack of activity in the summer led to the slump, which added to early season struggles the Warriors never fully escaped. Is there a level of regret?

“Not at all,” Thompson said. “Not at all. I worked so hard that summer. I just didn’t play pickup. I worked really hard. I did weights. I did conditioning. I did individuals. I just didn’t play pickup, I think for good reason. Because the last time I played, it was so traumatic. I don’t regret it at all just because of the emotional toll those last two and a half years took.

“That’s what people don’t understand. When you’re building your body up and you can’t even do a calf raise. When you have to do the same tedious exercises for months and months, it takes such a mental toll on you. That’s what I meant when I said I needed a break from pickup. The two and a half months leading up to it were so strenuous. It was the hardest time of my life. Now that I’m healthy and that’s far behind me, it’s so much easier. It’s so much fun coming to the gym and being able to get your prep in, get your work in and to play basketball, sharpen your skills every day. That’s so much easier than the rehab side of the sport. That was the most testing time of my career. I have no regrets on how everything came out.”

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Thompson became a little more selective with his shot diet, but, mostly, he just rounded into shape. He exploded for 10 made 3s in Houston in late November, and his season turned around pretty rapidly. Thompson averaged 27.0 points in January and 25.5 points in February, the two most productive scoring months of his Hall of Fame career. He kept the Warriors afloat with Steph Curry out. His shooting splits in that 21-game sample: 46 percent from the field, 44 percent from 3 and 90 percent from the free-throw line.

“I think (my struggles were) a little overrated,” Thompson said. “The microscope on our team now is insane. You gotta accept that. I didn’t shoot the ball well at times. I’m human. But guess what? I still led the league in made 3s and shot 41 percent. That’s insane. Over 300 makes. I’m not going to sell myself short. I know how incredible that is. To do that after an ACL and an Achilles, that’s hard work.”

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It was objectively one of the greatest shooting seasons in NBA history. Thompson became only the third player to ever make 300 3s in a season. Curry has done it four times. James Harden has done it once. Thompson has now done it once. Harden shot 36.8 percent the season he did it. Thompson shot 41.2 percent. That was a higher clip than one of Curry’s seasons.

But it all went splat in the second round of the playoffs. Thompson only made 34 percent of his field goals against the Lakers and went 3 of 9, 3 of 9, 2 of 6 and 2 of 12 from 3 in the final four games, three losses. He took a few ill-advised jumpers late in the gut-punch Game 4 loss and finished 3 of 19 in the elimination Game 6, the last taste of failure he’d get before a long summer.

“Stings bad,” Thompson said. “Bad. Because you want to win against a team that is a division rival, you want to beat your hometown, you want to beat your friends who are fans of the team, you want to beat LeBron (James) obviously. We have such a deep history with him. Kudos to him. He’s still out here playing at the highest level he possibly can. So, yeah, it stings. Any time you come up short of your goal, and we have many times, it’s just motivation. It’s fuel. You think about it the whole summer. How could you have prepared better?”

Thompson said he went back and watched the film of all his misses from the Lakers series.

“I learned that I was fried. I was tired,” Thompson said. “All my shots in that Game 6 were short. They were all on line. They were just short. I don’t know if that’s mental fatigue or physical fatigue. But it happens. Then on top of that, I learned as I get older, I’ll have to rely on my teammates and my smarts to be as efficient scoring the ball as I possibly can be.”

On the plane ride home from Los Angeles, Curry, Green and Thompson came together for a discussion about the future. There was already a collective feeling that the franchise was committed to better maximizing the present. Veteran help would be coming. But they all had individual responsibilities to the group if they were to return to legitimate contention.

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Thompson agreed he needed to have a better offseason and arrive to training camp in better shape. Consider that box checked. Thompson entered the facility significantly closer to regular-season game shape than the year prior. It’s something Steve Kerr has noted publicly and many others have backed up privately.

“I was hungry to play again,” Thompson said of his summer. “I was hungry to work on my skills. I got over the mental hurdles of that rehab stuff. I really kind of developed a routine where I go to the gym, I warm up for 30-45 minutes, then I get to play. I cherish that. That’s way more fun than doing individuals all the time. I cherish the fact that I get to play with different players from all around the world that play on different continents. … I played a ton of pickup. I think being eliminated — when you play to June, it’s such a marathon compared to being eliminated. I hate losing, obviously. But when you lose in the West semis, you have an extra month longer.”

Thompson competed in Chris Brickley’s pickup run in New York City. He spent time at Jordan Lawley’s runs in Irvine. He came together for the Warriors’ involuntary workouts and scrimmaged with Chris Paul and his other new teammates a ton.

“Different players from all demographics,” Thompson said. “I played with some top high school players, some collegiate players, guys that played in Europe. I got to play with my boy (Kevin) Love, which was so much fun. Hadn’t played together in 20 years.”

Kerr made headlines last week when he said Thompson will defend power forwards in some of the Warriors’ smaller lineup combinations this season.

If Thompson’s out there with Curry, Paul and Wiggins, it’s a pretty obvious adjustment. Paul and Curry will defend the backcourt. Wiggins is always assigned the league’s best wings. That places Thompson on the power forward, a position, as he pointed out, that is no longer loaded with Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett and Karl Malone. It’s a different age.

Thompson is 6 foot 7 and sturdy. He still considers himself a shooting guard, but he has lost a step laterally after the injuries and is now more effective using his strength and competitiveness against bigger opponents rather than chasing quicker guards. This isn’t new. Thompson held up well on post switches in the NBA Finals back in the day against Love and guarded Lakers big man Jarred Vanderbilt the last time we saw him in the playoffs. Those are the type of assignments he will get. He isn’t concerned, despite internet skepticism.

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“You don’t hang banners without being able to guard freaking anybody,” Thompson said. “Not even guard. Just accepting the challenge. I’m not going to shy away from anything that’s presented in front of me. Power forward? Small forward? It’s basketball. I’ll guard whoever I’m told to guard and give it my all. I don’t have time for Twitter banter and people doubting if I can do a job. Oh, sorry, X banter. The challenge is we have to lean on each other to rebound. We’re small. Teams are going to attack the glass on both sides. It’s on me to grab five boards a night. Then offensively, we just play. We’re all very smart, we all know how to win. We just have to be unselfish and take great looks when we can.”

Chris Paul on Klay Thompson pic.twitter.com/RrEjWGkL2b

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) October 7, 2023

The Warriors open the regular season later this month against the Suns. Thompson appears more prepared than a year ago. But he will ultimately be judged on what happens in April, May and perhaps June.

“I’ll be better in the upcoming postseason when that time comes,” Thompson said. “But no regrets (about last season). I played my absolute hardest, and at times, it was the most elite I’d ever been. Especially that stretch after the new year. I was on fire. Hopefully I can have a similar start to the season. I’m in such a great spot right now. I’m in good shape. Come opening night, I’ll be in the best shape possible.”

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(Top photo of Klay Thompson: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)

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