golden state warriors thread

But as he struggles and the youngest Warriors solidify their places in the rotation, it’s unclear what Klay’s next contract—or role—will look like. But Thompson says he’s open to a reduced role if it means staying with the only franchise he’s suited up for.

“Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he tells me. “I’ll be 35 next year. At 35, coming off the ACL and an Achilles [tear] and still have the ability to be a really good player. Maybe not the guy who scored 60 in three quarters and scored an NBA record 37 points in a quarter, but still a great threat out there. I’ve modeled my game after Reggie [Miller] and Ray [Allen], and those guys were incredibly effective until their late 30s. So I plan on kind of following that mold.”

A new deal this summer would continue Thompson’s partnership with Green, Curry, and Kerr. And even if that means his offensive responsibility will be diminished, that’s a small price to pay to compete alongside the guys he came up with.

...

“I put in so much work to get back to even just playing basketball that I just needed a little perspective shift and rather than trying to be the old me or be an All-Star in the NBA or whatever,” he says. “Just to be as effective as I can in my current role and, most importantly, just have fun, man, because at the end of the day, I only have so many years more doing this and got to have fun. I can’t be stressed because things don’t go my way. I just got to continue to have fun. I thought I did a good job of that tonight.”

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/2/12/24070258/golden-state-warriors-steph-curry-steve-kerr-draymond-green-klay-thompson

Hopefully he'll get better at keeping that perspective during the actual games, bc he's been in his head a lot lately. I did love when he smacked the ball out of nurkic's hand to take a T for Dray, though.

lol btw

Maybe not the guy who scored 60 in three quarters and scored an NBA record 37 points in a quarter, but still a great threat out there.

Freakin love klay man. Hes clearly going through it and trying to be a good soldier at the same time. I think he’s accepting it and will be a great teammate from here on out. But it’s hard to come to grips with a new reality as an athlete. I think he’s been playing pretty well and he has some big games ahead he just won’t have it every night. Still provides tons of spacing and is a solid heady defender on bigger wings/forwards. Smart of the warriors not to pay him big in the offseason, let him slowly realize what his worth is. I bet he gets around a 3/60-70 team option on the third type of thing after this year.

Steve Kerr will not coach the Warriors tonight in Utah. He is in Serbia for Dejan Milojevic’s services. Kenny Atkinson will be the acting head coach. Also in Serbia for the service: Mike Dunleavy, Chris DeMarco, Ron Adams, Zaza Pachulia, Rick Celebrini.

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) February 12, 2024

xp would love to see Klay take far fewer 3s off the dribble. Stick to catch and shoot and pull up transition 3s. Keep him out of the 4th quarter too. But he's not remotely who he was at this point, he's a plus rotation guy if his shot falls. When it's not, he's an honest to goodness liability out there and you see dudes like Quinones outplaying him.

i really dont think hes a liability unless hes chucking (and missing), which hes been much better about recently. they'll always have to respect his shot which leaves things open for kuminga and wiggins to work.

another big problem imo is klay has been stuck with 2nd unit lineups that have no idea how to maximize what he does so he ends up being like the only offensive player out there and it leads to some bad shots (not always his fault). i think theyll be trying him in a few different ways now that his mind has caught up with the reality of his situation.

If Klay he could get into the 20 min / game mindset he could also go harder on defense. It’s been sad to see the slippage there post injuries

DRAYMOND FROM HALF COURT 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yoTIMJtrr2

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) February 13, 2024

The Golden State Warriors will win the NBA playoffs

If Klay he could get into the 20 min / game mindset he could also go harder on defense. It’s been sad to see the slippage there post injuries

Time was Klay was clearly in the top 20 NBA players. He's not that now, but he's got some productive years in him as a rotation player. His defense has slipped more noticeably than his shooting. He used to be able to defend like a sonofabitch when he was called on for that.

Yah he was the guy who would guard the star/quick PGs but now he’s too slow but doing well against taller 4s and some wings. There was an adjustment period but they’re all settling into their roles now.

maybe 20 min/game sells him short. He can still light it some nights but other games have been rough. Gather folks don’t think he’s ready to move to 6th man gunner role just yet.

He still brings too much to move to the bench. That may come in the next 12-18 months tho… but who’s coming for his position? Podz still too young and unproven, moody can’t find consistent playing time still. Podz seems like the guy but that’s likely another season or two away and he’s gotta continue to rise pretty steadily.

Really loved how Klay mostly just let the game come to him last night. He's still so great at catch and shoot. Hopefully when CP3 comes back he can set him up for more of those than he's been getting. I'm a little worried about CP3 slowing the game down when they've been doing so well playing with pace but he really unlocks a lot for Trayce, Klay and especially Dario, who hasn't looked the same with CP3 gone.

Yeah last night was how I want to see him play more on a regular basis. Only took 7 3pt shots. My comment above about him being a negative player when missing shots was also a bit of an observation into his mindset - when he starts bricking, his defense gets worse and he forces bad shots to try and get out of his slump. He starts beating up on himself and he was indeed getting outplayed by the back half of the bench.

If he can just keep a positive mindset, stay in the flow of the game, and focus on areas he can control when the shots aren't falling, like defense, screening and cutting - he's a great role player.

That said, I disagree that he brings too much to come off the bench, he could be our next Iggy.

He’s not a connector/do-it-all like iggy. And also he’s playing a lot with the bench anyway. He usually checks out after 4-5 minutes then comes back in with the 2nd unit.

Idk how many more heartbreakers I can take this season

Unreal

This is the sixth loss this season for the Warriors after leading by at least 15 points -- blew a 22-point lead against the Clippers earlier this year. Only the Spurs have more.

— Kendra Andrews (@kendra__andrews) February 15, 2024

Just when you thought they'd moved beyond this

Seems like Kerr and Klay are determined to prove their critics right.

yeah last night was one where kerr shoulda looked elsewhere earlier and shoulda gone defense over offense when the lead started to slip a bit. podz missing those two flagrant free throws really killed the momentum and swung it the other way.

just saw the klay intentional foul down 3 with 37 seconds left…

not good, he had been sitting and clearly not paying attention to time/score.

Brandin Podziemski is starting in Klay Thompson’s place tonight in Utah. Thompson not currently listed on injury report, so appears to be coming off the bench. The lineup: Steph Curry, Podziemski, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, Draymond Green.

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) February 16, 2024

hmmm

Lacob sez he wants to get entirely out of the luxury tax sooner than later:

The Warriors are carrying a $206 million base payroll this season, with another $100 million or so in projected luxury tax penalties thanks to repeater rates after their frequent trips past the tax line. They’re also well into the dreaded second apron, which removes a lot of tools to add players.

But next season, things could change without a major talent subtraction. The Warriors have about $140 million in payroll commitments to nine players, not counting the expiring deals of Klay and CP3, and, Lacob said, they’re aiming to get out of the tax completely next July. That would give them $31 million in wiggle room before the projected $171 million luxury-tax line to try to re-sign Klay and/or CP3 and add anybody else. They could also increase the space if they do something like off-loading Kevon Looney’s $7.6 million contract for next season, which is only partially guaranteed.

“Our Plan 1, or 1A, is actually we’d like to be out of the tax, and we think that we have a way to do that,” Lacob said. “That kind of is the plan, not just under the second apron. I’ll tell you why that’s important, because the truth is that we need to be out of the tax two years out of the next four, below the tax line, in order to get this repeater thing off our books. We don’t want to be a repeater. It’s just so prohibitive, not to say we wouldn’t do it if we had to, but you’ve gotta look at what the downside is to doing that.

“There’s a Plan 1B, I guess, and 1B is we could go even further than that and we could make big changes if we had to. If this team were to slide all the way down and not do well the end of the year here, you know there’s gonna be big changes. But if we do really well, we might decide to go the other way. So everything’s open, we have to be flexible, I can just tell you that the goal is to not be a lottery team ever. The goal is to be competitive, the goal is to win and ideally, if it’s possible, to win championships or compete for championships.”

https://theathletic.com/5277938/2024/02/15/warriors-joe-lacob-luxury-tax-jonathan-kuminga-steve-kerr/

yeah if youre not gonna contend theres no reason to pay the lux tax, wonder how steph feels about that tho

lacob says a lot of things

Is it too late for Klay to qualify for 6MOY?

Lacob has seen the future and it has no banners to hang.

They can get under the threshold and still compete. They are overpaying for CP3 and Klay by a lot. They don't need to pay Kuminga until the year after next.

https://theathletic.com/5294114/2024/02/23/warriors-clifford-ray-dolphin/

Ray was also told that there was a shot clock: Once he inserted his arm into Spock’s mouth, he had exactly 3 minutes to pull out the bolt. Anything longer would risk suffocating the dolphin.

Wonder if he’ll take the rest of the season off

Andrew Wiggins won't play against the Wizards tonight for personal reasons https://t.co/S7fBA5GdGb

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) February 27, 2024

#MoodySZN

Steve Kerr on Andrew Wiggins: “Wiggs is dealing with a personal matter... We do expect him to be back but we just don’t exactly know when.”

(via @WillardAndDibs)

— 95.7 The Game (@957thegame) February 28, 2024

At least the kid will finally get some minutes. Excited to see him start to blossom as a reliable hustle 3 and D guy while they go 8-1 over the next nine games and then get a month of DNPs and occasional garbage time minutes when Wiggs comes back.

Man, this is now the 2nd year in a row Wiggs has got family issues. Was enjoying the fact he was back to playing well.

Hope his fam turns out ok.

was there an actual well-reported story on what’s going on? I can’t remember

Nope. Some stuff about maybe his fathers health last year but the warriors have been super tight lipped about it

One of my favorite wins of the season. A scheduled loss road back to back and they got in at like 6am due to a flight delay or whatever. Raptors are not good and Scottie got hurt but it’s the kinda game they could’ve lost easily.

I wish this was the kind of stuff we always got from mic’d up segments instead of what we usually get. pic.twitter.com/BPHn56X3Sb

— Yaya Dubin (@JADubin5) March 1, 2024

Andrew Wiggins is expected to return to team activities with the Warriors this week after tending to a serious family matter, sources tell me and @anthonyVslater. Wiggins is en route back to the Bay Area today after missing the previous four games. pic.twitter.com/HyxAX56oNd

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) March 5, 2024

someone needs to just spill the beans it’s ridiculous

i dont want to belittle the situation, but what if maybe hes a sims guy

His dad is dying.

where are you getting that from? I’m not questioning his commitment or anything, I would totally respect that — it’s just very odd that there’s this code of silence around the situation, why would his dad being sick be such a secret? everyone’s parents get old! I suspected it was something considerably more harrowing

lol this season is nuts
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIC2zqNbQAApWy-?format=jpg&name=medium

heh