OAKLAND — Klay Thompson continues to be ridiculed on social media for his shooting woes. He was an abysmal 3-for-16 in the NBA Finals opener. He scored 6 points and missed all five of his 3-pointers. Those facts continue to be the biggest mystery in the Bay Area. Those are facts worth criticizing.
And that’s fine. Let the people who don’t fully understand basketball troll Thompson for likes and retweets. Let them make their memes in Photoshop. They don’t understand what he’s doing on the other end of the floor has actually helped the Warriors win 13 playoff games in a row.
You can make the argument Thompson — and not Draymond Green — has been the most consistent defensive force during the 2017 postseason. The Cavaliers shot a combined 1-for-12 on Thompson. His main defensive assignment, Kyrie Irving, hit 10 shots. Cleveland had to constantly switch off of No. 11 to score the basketball Thursday night.
That’s the point people are missing. If the Warriors had to choose between Thompson making shots or Thompson playing elite defense, they’d choose the latter every time. Let Kevin Durant and Steph Curry do all the scoring. They are clearly more than capable of carrying the entire load offensively
“He’s chasing Kyrie around and pick-and-roll action, pin-down action, iso action and transition,” Mike Brown said after a 113-91 Game 1 victory. “And you’re not going to stop Kyrie, Kyrie’s going to score, that’s what he does. And he’s one of the best in the world at it. And give Klay Thompson a ton of credit because he’s out there fighting over screens, getting hit, trying to contest, trying to rebound, trying to do it all for us defensively.”
Klay with the CLAMPS pic.twitter.com/HsNmgkPGZs
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) June 2, 2017
The Warriors aren’t ignoring his shooting slump. They know it’s a part of the game and it’s not having the best impact on the offense as a whole. It almost looked like the Warriors were forcing Klay the ball at times to try and get him going. Draymond Green elegantly answered why Thompson is still freeing up other Golden State teammates even though he’s not sinking shots.
“Just because he’s not hitting shots don’t mean we’re going to stop going to him,” Green said. “He loosens up the defense. They’re still chasing him all over the floor. They’re not just going to leave him open. So it’s never a point like let’s feed Klay, let’s get him going. That’s one of our guys. We’re going to get him the basketball.
“But the most important thing is the way he’s defending. We have enough guys who can score on this team that if one guy can’t get it going, we can go other places and we — and then our ball movement and our flow allows everyone else to get baskets as well. We’re not just going to say, oh, man, we really need to get Klay going.
“One thing about him is he’s going to keep shooting. He took 16 shots tonight. That’s a lot of shots. And we don’t expect him to stop shooting. We want him to keep shooting, and we know he will. But his defense the entire Playoffs has been spectacular. That’s huge. I think everyone always — you just are looking and waiting for that game of where he just goes off. But if that game never comes and he continues to play the defense that he’s been playing, we should be just fine.”
You can criticize Thompson all you want. The Cavaliers may even have to leave him open in order to double-team Kevin Durant in Game 2.
Just know that if you only bring up one side of the story, you seem completely ignorant of how basketball works. If Thompson was slumping on defense instead of offense, Game 1 would’ve been a helluva lot closer.