There’s been a lot of drama with the Warriors as of late.
That’s what happens when one of the leaders of your team punches a young star in practice, and the video gets leaked.
And the Warriors being more TMZ than NBA as of late has allowed another significant storyline to fly under the radar:
This was supposed to be a big offseason for Klay Thompson. After his return to the court after nearly 1,000 days away, injured, last January, this summer’s workouts were supposed to restore his All-NBA form.
But we haven’t seen it, yet. Thompson didn’t play when the Warriors went to Japan for two exhibition games. He didn’t play in the Warriors’ preseason games Sunday or Tuesday, either.
And now, according to Warriors coach Steve Kerr, it’s questionable if Thompson will play in the team’s regular-season opener on Oct. 18.
What’s going on with Klay?
It’s both easy and difficult to explain.
The simple answer: Thompson came into camp well behind his teammates’ game-readiness. So the Warriors are being cautious with Thompson now that he’s back in the facility. The team’s training staff has time to ramp up Thompson ahead of the season opener, so they’re taking it.
Then there’s the complicated answer: Thompson is still dealing with the massive injuries that sidelined him for two-plus seasons. Not just the physical tolls that come from tearing his ACL (2019 NBA Finals) and Achilles tendon (November 2021), but the mental challenges that stem from the injuries as well.
Thompson was forthright and positive in his media day press conference last month. He said he loved that he could do so much training this off-season.
“It was amazing. [It was] So nice just being in the gym and working out and getting shots up,” Thompson said. “I did a lot of things I do in rehab, like calf raises and all the stuff, to squats or whatever. But to be just free in your body and my perspective about what that means because of what I went through, I couldn’t ask for a better time off, really. It was great.”
But what Thompson didn’t do during the offseason was scrimmage.
“I didn’t play much this summer,” Thompson said when the Warriors were in Japan. “With what I went through the last summer I was healthy… it was really hard for me to get out of it, mentally. It’s hard to explain. It’s like a mental block in a way.
“I’m going to face it one day, but [last] season was so taxing, just coming back. It was hard to win a championship and then play a month later… It was a lot.”
A mental block on playing 5-on-5 basketball? That’s going to be an issue for an NBA player.
But it’s also understandable why Thompson had trepidation scrimmaging on his own time.
Thompson’s situation is a reminder of how complicated the mental side of modern athletics can be.
Now, you won’t catch me throwing too much sympathy professional athletes’ way. I deeply respect their craft — evidenced by my line of work — but I refuse to be wowed by the sacrifices they make for their gigs. This isn’t to diminish the risks and downsides of being a professional athlete, but we all make sacrifices for our jobs. And I think we’d all like to be compensated like professional athletes for the trouble.
That said, it’s hard not to feel for Thompson here.
If you went swimming in the Pacific and were bit by a shark, you might have trouble jumping back into the ocean.
If you’ve ever been in a car crash, you can remember how jumpy you are after you get back behind the wheel.
Most of us just spent nearly a year indoors and even longer wearing masks and being wary of everyone around us. It wasn’t a seamless transition going back to “normal” life — or whatever we thought normal was before the pandemic. Some people still can’t make the switch.
And if you had your Achilles tendon explode during a casual basketball game, forcing you to do a year-plus of rehabilitation to return to a job you love, you might not be keen to be playing pickup hoops anytime soon.
Still, Thompson’s mental block is not a normal situation, and it did come as a bit of a surprise to the Dubs.
So credit to the Warriors for handling this situation with grace and understanding. I’m sure there would be some teams that would have made a bigger stink out of this situation. They might have tossed a “man up” into the mix, too. The Dubs didn’t. They get it.
Of course, the hope is that Thompson can play on Oct. 18. Perhaps he can even play in the Warriors’ preseason finale later this week. But even if he can’t make it on the court Friday or next Tuesday, the Warriors are doing the right thing by not rushing the wing along. It’s a long season, after all.
And credit to Thompson for being transparent about what’s keeping him out of the Warriors’ lineup. Basketball players might have superpowers on the court, but this is a reminder to us that these players are still human beings.
No, we can’t all play like Klay, but I’d like to think we can all relate to what he went through this summer in our own way.
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