Thompson delivers more Game 6 heroics
OAKLAND – Klay Thompson wasn’t ready to be done.
It sounds like such an obvious sentiment, right? A professional athlete who enjoys winning championships would prefer to keep playing for another title rather than head home for the summer. In other news, people need air, and fish like water.
But when the Golden State guard worked his Game 6 magic again on Saturday night, hitting nine 3-pointers and scoring 35 points in the Warriors’ 115-86 win that forced Game 7 in Houston on Monday, his inspiration truly was that simple. Again.
Anyone who was in Oklahoma City on May 28, 2016, remembers the look in Thompson’s eye when he saved the Warriors’ season. There was a determination that cut through the pressure of the moment, with the 73-win Warriors moving on ONLY because Thompson made 11 3pointers in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals.
“I just knew this wasn’t going to be my last game, man,” he said that night.
Fast forward two years, and his message had a familiar theme: belief in oneself.
“I learned, as I get older, if you play with passion, you play hard, and you leave the game saying ‘I gave everything I have tonight in those 48 minutes,’ you can live with the result,” the 28-year-old Thompson said.
So long as this star-studded Warriors core stays together and they keep winning, the debate will continue about which player is the most important and why. Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are the clear leaders in the clubhouse when it comes to sheer talent, and Draymond Green will always be known as the “heart and soul” of the club, as coach Steve Kerr deemed him years ago.
But it’s games like this that remind you why the cool-and-collected Thompson is such a perfect fit – not to mention why the Warriors need to lock him up with an extension when July rolls around. It’s not only because of his shooting ability that was on full display as Golden State turned a 10-point halftime deficit into a 29-point rout, or, of course, the durability that is so often overlooked (he has missed just 21 regular-season games since entering the league in 2011).
It’s the combination of Thompson’s play and his personality that allows Golden State to be great.
No one has had a better perspective on Thompson’s Game 6 heroics than Durant. His Thunder paid the price the last time this occurred. When asked about it afterward, he smiled and said, “Next question.”
Curry, seated alongside Durant on the postgame podium, quipped that, “I think we both blocked that whole year out of our memory,” in reference to the Warriors’ infamous collapse against Cleveland in the 2016 Finals.
But therein lies the beauty of Thompson’s presence. The Warriors were down 17 at one point in Game 6, facing all the questions that will surely come if they can’t get to the Finals against a Rockets team that doesn’t have Chris Paul. And then Thompson started to find the net, hitting shot after shot in stride with Curry (29 points, five 3s), and the Warriors were on their way.