USA TODAY International Edition
Warriors’ Thompson will miss season with tear
The Warriors’ worst fears materialized.
All- Star guard Klay Thompson will miss the 2020- 21 season after an MRI taken Thursday revealed he tore his right Achilles tendon, according to a person familiar with the details. The person spoke to USA TODAY on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss publicly. ESPN first reported the news. This marks the second consecutive season Thompson will miss after injuring his ACL in his left knee in a Game 6 loss to the Raptors in the 2019 NBA Finals. The Warriors said Thompson injured his right leg during a pickup basketball game against other NBA players on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
That development did not influence the Warriors from selecting Memphis center James Wiseman with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft later in the day. General manager Bob Myers said the team considered Wiseman as a top priority to revamp the center spot. Thompson’s injury will prompt the Warriors to upgrade their wing and backcourt depth during free agency.
Myers said he has been given “the green light” to use the team’s $ 17.2 million trade exception that it acquired after dealing veteran Andre Iguodala to the Grizzlies last summer. Other than that, the Warriors lack definitive options to complement All- Star Stephen Curry. They have second- year guard Jordan Poole, a player who developed with mixed results his rookie season.
As for Thompson, the Warriors hardly hesitated with granting him a fiveyear, $ 190 million contract in free agency even after he injured his left knee. The five- time All- Star played a key role with helping the Warriors win three NBA titles out of five Finals appearances for his consistent shooting and perimeter defense. Before that injury, Thompson had missed only one playoff game in his eight- year NBA career and played in 615 out of a possible 640 regular- season games.
As for the draft Wednesday night, philosophically the Warriors valued talent over positional need because that will help them adapt.
So the Warriors selected Wiseman, who impressed them with his rim protection, athleticism and jump- shooting potential. At No. 48, Golden State picked Arizona guard Nico Mannion.
“We had him No. 1 on our board,” Myers said of Wiseman. “Certainly, the Klay thing made you think for a second. But it was a short amount of time. We decided to stay the course we always felt. But you have to take a pause and think about things for a second.”
Once the Warriors finished drafting, Myers had much more time to think about Thompson’s injury. The player called Myers before the draft began with the news of the injury. Myers admittedly did not have all the details. Thompson isn’t known to be a talker, after all.
But Myers understood why Thompson had played in such a setting. He observed that Thompson was “looking good and feeling good” during the team’s two- week minicamp in early September. Since the Warriors had medically cleared Thompson, Myers hardly sounded surprised Thompson played a pickup game considering teams will begin training camp on Dec. 1. Still, that didn’t soften the concerns.
“Klay doesn’t like missing five minutes of anything,” Myers said. “He was probably bummed out he had to leave the pickup game.”
Thompson’s injury offered another reminder on how the Warriors’ championship dominance ended abruptly.
Kevin Durant strained his right Achilles in Game 5 of the 2019 Finals after missing 14 playoff games with a strained right calf, which marked his last game with the Warriors before signing with Brooklyn. In Game 6, Thompson injured his left knee and has not played since. And then four games into the 2019- 20 season, Curry broke his left hand and returned for only one game in March. The Warriors finished with the NBA’s worst record ( 15- 50), never making it to the bubble return.
“The injuries you’ve dealt with the last couple of years, it doesn’t harden you or make it easier,” Myers said. “But I was hoping we were through all of that.”