Klay Thompson is no longer a Warrior, marking the official end of the last NBA dynasty.
Players leave teams all the time. Teams move off players even more frequently. But this is different. This is an icon throwing up the deuces, feeling unloved by the franchise he helped build.
It’ll be jarring to witness, the Warriors’ home grown, Steph Curry’s Splash Brother, and a top 4 Warrior of all-time take the hardwood in non Warrior threads.
But as the old adage goes, loving something means letting it go. Love’s hardest and yet most necessary gesture is liberation, the sacrifice required to accept absence in the name of freedom.
That’s why he had to go. Because for the last five years, Klay hasn’t been free. He with the liberated aura had become imprisoned. His determination to recapture his past, to reach the Hall of Fame bar he set for himself, seemed so consuming as to entrap him.
It’s a plot twist for Klay to end up the one too aggrieved to stay. Five years ago, it would have been crazy to imagine Klay being so hurt by gestures, or the absence thereof, and perceptions of appreciation. He clearly always valued his respect and legacy, judging by his play. But even when he did have a gripe about his respect, it felt more fun banter than bruised feelings, like when he didn’t make the NBA75 list of the league’s greatest players and changed to No. 77 for practice. His public facade was one of indifference to typical social thirsts. He was too locked in on being Klay.
Getting older is brutal on an athlete. Greatness exits the body faster than the mind. What Klay experienced only seems to exponentiate the brutality. His wasn’t a gradual departure. It was snatched from him. Twice. In the middle of his prime. With major injuries in consecutive years.
He’s not the first player to endure such. But his status and his natural proclivity for authenticity gave us a window into this athlete’s journey. He didn’t show everything, but enough to know his happiness was dissipating. As Draymond Green said on his podcast, it’s better to keep the inventory stocked with good memories than to create new bad ones. And he was compiling the bad ones. Not just his blight performances in elimination games the past two seasons. But the moments where his frustration and hurt manifested in ways unbecoming of him.
Klay deserves this new start. He’s earned a refresh. As much as it might hurt for him to go, he’s accrued the grace and understanding from a fan base he’s so endowed.
His peace in life is on the court, plying his craft. Yeah, it’s also on the boat, and in the water, and lounging with his dog, Rocco. But nothing seems to fill him like basketball. Putting a ball with a 29.5-inch circumference into a hoop measuring 56.55 inches around. It’s a simple pleasure he’s mastered. And his mastery has brought so much pleasure.
Klay is still convinced he can play at the level of his heart. More important, that he’s worthy of the space and opportunity to do so.
Klay hasn’t stopped believing. And it is clear he contends the Warriors stopped believing in him — not giving him a monster extension, putting his contract on the backburner, envisioning a role for him off the bench, sitting him at the end of games despite all the magic he’s made.
That’s why his journey to peace was clearly tougher in the Bay. The home where he can’t escape reminders of his former glory and where the reverence, and in some cases its decline, is evidence of what he lost. The ultimate competitor in him gave it a valiant effort, and still does. He helped deliver a fourth championship in 2022. He battled. Against the restrictions of his body. Against the reality being forced upon him.
After the past season in which Thompson had struggled so mightily to adjust to the new realities of his Warriors world, with his contentious contract situation hanging over all of their heads in the most uncomfortable of ways, he had known that his Warriors days were done long before he made that final, formal call to Curry.
“It’s one of those things where you never think you’d ever have that conversation,” Curry told The Athletic on Sunday while at Team USA training camp. “Even to the 11th hour, when I knew all the signs were pointing towards (Thompson and the Warriors) not finding a resolution on the contract, you’re thinking, ‘Maybe it’ll be one of those things where he’d come out and say, ‘Oh, we got it done.’
“You hold out that kind of hope. But, yeah, it was a rough call. When you hear him open up on the whys (of his decision), and just how much he appreciated the friendship and being teammates and champions that we were, there’s no words that really do that justice. I know it was hard for him. You just try to keep it as cool as possible on the phone, because you don’t want to be sobbing and going through that. There was a little bit (of tears). But it’s one of those things where I know when I see him in person, I’ll be able to give him that energy properly.”
If it was a storybook ending, 2022 was just that for the Warriors Big 3. And that is what Klay and the Warriors will be remembered for, not the rough past few seasons or the years of injuries between titles.
But there is another part to this famous adage. The first part — if you love something, let it go — is followed by a hopeful conclusion: if it comes back, it will be yours. Forever, in some versions.
Klay will be back, presuming time will heal any wounds. Not as an opponent but as family. Not as a Maverick, but as a Warrior. Not as the one who left, but as the legend Warriors fans love.
