How a fan letter is helping Warriors’ Thompson rehab
Jeff Bird, a middleschool teacher in Eureka, was relaxing at home on his 40th birthday Sunday afternoon when he received a call from a friend with some startling news: Warriors guard Klay Thompson was talking about Bird on TV.
At first, Bird thought maybe one of his buddies had gotten Thompson — his favorite player — to give him a birthday shoutout. It wasn’t until Bird pulled up video online of Thompson’s news conference, in which the fivetime AllStar credited him with writing “one of the greatest things I’ve read in a long time,” that Bird remembered he had sent Thompson a letter 31⁄2 months earlier.
At the time, Bird was trying to come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t get to watch Thompson — out with a torn right Achilles tendon — drain catchandshoot jumpers or defend the opponent’s best scorer for the second straight season. One morning, after staying up late thinking about how much his late community college basketball coach would’ve appreciated Thompson’s style of play, Bird arrived to work early and wrote Thompson a 370word letter.
In it, Bird explained how he and his old teammates at College of the Redwoods — a twoyear school in Eureka — had bonded over watching Thompson dominate games while barely dribbling. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, their coach, Bill Treglown, taught them an offensive system that called for nearconstant movement, a barrage of 3pointers and a maximum of two dribbles at a time.
As Thompson helped propel the Warriors to five Finals and three NBA titles, Bird and his old teammates talked often about how Thompson epitomized the traits that Treglown had tried to instill in them: selflessness, effort, toughness. Thompson was a sort of continuation of Treglown’s legacy. In 2005, six years before the Warriors drafted Thompson, Treglown died from stomach cancer. He was 62.
When Thompson first read Bird’s letter in early December, he had been struggling to deal with being away from basketball for a second consecutive year. Knowing that his play helped a group of former communitycollege players celebrate their late coach meant as much to him as any encouraging note or call he received. Thompson has a picture of the letter saved on his iPhone, just in case he needs it to help him get through a rehab exercise or deal with the monotony of not playing.
“It made me realize why I get to do what I do,” Thompson said Sunday in his first media availability since he suffered his Achilles injury in midNovember. “Just to get that (letter) from Jeff and hear how he knows that I would make his old coach feel good about watching us play, that made me feel really good.
“That meant a lot to me because I know we have a great influence, but you just never know who’s watching.”
Tears welled in the eyes of
Bird’s parents as they watched Thompson say those words on Bird’s computer screen. As special as it was to Thompson that a middleschool English and physical education teacher about a fivehour drive away would want to make him feel better as he faces another lengthy injury rehab, it meant just as much to Bird’s family and friends that a celebrity would take such an interest in what Bird had to say.
In the days after Thompson spent almost two minutes publicly thanking Bird for the letter, Bird has heard from dozens of people from the Eureka area.
Treglown’s daughter, Tracie, said that she thought her late father played a role in the timing of Thompson’s message being on Bird’s 40th birthday. College of the Redwoods head coach Ryan Bisio told Bird that Thompson’s comments made numerous members of the school community emotional.
Treglown won more than 500 games in his 33year career at that community college and is considered one of the greatest coaches in the history of Humboldt County basketball, but few outside of California’s North Coast region were aware of him until Sunday. Thompson’s response to Bird’s letter reinforced that Treglown left a legacy that warrants remembering.
Many of his former players are now coaches trying to get their players to hoist as many 3pointers as possible and seldom dribble. Bird has attempted to install the system at Zane Middle School in Eureka, though he admits he is often pleased when his team simply makes layups.
The reason behind Treglown disciples’ obsession with the offense is simple: Some of their fondest memories came playing it. Twenty years removed from his last College of the Redwoods game, Bird speaks in excited tones discussing the “Raining 3s from the Trees” Tshirts Treglown handed to the team and Treglown’s insistence on benching anyone who didn’t shoot enough 3pointers.
“We weren’t very good,” Bird
said, “but that was the most fun I ever had playing basketball.”
Bird’s teams at College of the Redwoods were comprised mostly of local players who were undersized. Given that those squads had little chance beating opponents oneonone, they relied on Treglown’s system to make games competitive.
In Bird’s sophomore season at College of the Redwoods in 200001, the Corsairs went 46 in conference. Four of those six losses came in overtime.
Treglown had gotten the idea for the system from a coach at tiny Hoopa High School in nearby Hoopa (2020 population: 3,201), located entirely on the Hupa reservation. After watching teams made up of Native American teenagers rarely taller than 5foot10 beat much larger schools in the area again and again, Treglown decided that, to maximize his limited resources at College of the Redwoods, he’d need to adopt a similar style.
When the Warriors blossomed into an NBA heavyweight, Bird — a lifelong Golden State fan — saw his favorite team executing many of the same principles Treglown had preached in practice: speed, offball movement, passing. No one personified all of that more than Thompson, who, in addition to being one of the greatest 3point shooters in NBA history, routinely leads the league in miles run.
When Bird sent two copies of the letter to addresses for Thompson he found online, he didn’t expect to hear back. If nothing else, Bird figured, at least the writing process allowed him to put some of his feelings about his former coach on paper.
“Seeing Klay talk about it, I was kind of blown away,” Bird said. “It just kind of cemented what I’ve already thought about that guy, and that’s just that he’s the coolest dude ever. He made my birthday.”