One of the first things that pops into the minds of basketball fans when they are told the name Clay Thompson is “Game 6”. Whenever Golden State were with their backs to the wall and at a losing distance from relegation in Game Six, No. 11 in blue-yellow was the one who pulled them out of the pit on the way to Game Seven and a reversal. Three years ago, Clay threatened to do it again on the road to a miraculous comeback and a fourth championship in five years, but no one could have predicted what happened at the end of the third quarter and the implications for the future of the NBA.
On June 13, 2019, the Warriors played their last game at the Oracle Arena in Auckland. It was Game 6 of the Finals series against Toronto, with the Canadian team leading 3: 2 and after Kevin Durant tore the Achilles tendon during the fifth game. As befits status and significant subtraction, Thompson was the best player on the field and kept the Warriors in the game with 28 points, 66.7% from the field and eight free throws without a miss.
About two minutes before the end of the third quarter, at the height of the momentum when Golden State had an 80:83 advantage, he got a ball in a burst and tried to sink. Danny Green jumped in with him and committed an offense, Thompson landed badly on his left leg, lay down on the floor and held his knee in pain. After five minutes of anxiety in which a lame man went down to the locker room, the number 11 in black returned to the floor to throw the free throws he received so he could be part of the game in case the injury was not serious. He did not return for 941 days.
In the past six months, Thompson has played 53 games, scored 1,038 points, sniped 184 threes and returned with Golden State to the NBA Finals for the sixth time in the last eight years. All the time he sat on the sidelines led him to this specific moment, to Game No. 6 so identified with him, to give one more big performance that would provide an exciting ending to a journey no American player has had to go through in his career.
No glue, no celebration
The continuation of the Golden State story since that day is known and mostly interspersed with sadness and disappointments. She lost the championship dramatically and failed to win a third straight title. Kevin Durant left at his request in a trade to Brooklyn, and the Warriors finished the following season in last place in the league, with Steph Kerry playing just five games.
Meanwhile, Thompson tried to broadcast business as usual. He signed with the opening of the 2019 transfer market on a maximum five-year contract totaling $ 190 million during what thrilled the league. The fans’ expectation was that he would try to return towards the end of the 2019/20 season but the situation where the team was incorporated into the Corona made him rest until the summer and miss an entire season.
The summer of 2020 was strange all over the world and in the NBA in particular. The corona and bubble break in Orlando caught everyone by surprise, including those who were not part of the rush at Disney World. During a routine training session in California, after videos of his training and getting fit were released, and a month before the start of the 2020/21 season Clay Thompson made a bad move with his right foot when he went up for a shot in the game. A week later, the Warriors issued a statement confirming everyone’s apprehension – a rupture full of the Achilles tendon. He will miss another season and is unlikely to return to being the All-Star he once was.
All in your head
The period he was off the field changed Thompson. Ever since he started playing basketball at age eight, his head has been aiming to be one of the greatest of all time. His father, Michael Thompson, was selected first in the 1978 draft and won two championships with the Lakers, but failed to leave a significant mark in the league and retired after 14 years as a professional basketball player. Clay wanted to be better than his father and the sequence of tragic injuries left that in doubt.
Until those moments, Thompson had never missed over nine games in a row. Warriors General Manager, Bob Myers, Once told him: “Basketball is like air and water for you, you must have it.” The main concern of his family and close friends was the mental state of Thompson, who had previously admitted that he must always remain competitive and on the move, but at the same time it was all taken away from him.
The one who helped him recover throughout the period is his older brother Michael (named after his father). Michael’s career has not skyrocketed like Clay’s, but he too can boast of being a “Splash Brother” when he took the Development League championship with the Santa Cruz Warriors along with Steph Kerry’s little brother, Seth. Since retiring in 2018, Michael has moved on to run some of Clay’s businesses around the world, but it all stopped for a moment after the little brother’s Achilles’ heel rupture. “No one would want to go through this process alone,” he told the Time.news.
Another who took an important part in his mental rehabilitation was one of the most famous mentors in the world, Tony Robbins. Thompson met with him several times and Robbins instructed him on how to turn the fear and apprehension behind the injuries into positive thoughts. Since then, every morning he starts the day with therapy in cold or frozen water. According to Robbins, if you start the day when you freeze, you will be able to overcome any obstacle afterwards.
Finding inner peace
While out on the floor, Clay Thompson had to find more ways to pass the time and channel his energy into other things. He played a lot of chess and video games to maintain his competitive and mental instinct, but his inner peace came from the Gulf. A few months after the first injury he bought a boat and occasionally toured with it throughout California. Occasionally he would stop for fishing or swimming, but this is what cleared his head: “You can not have a bad day when you are in a boat,” he said Thompson To the New York Times, “It really helps me mentally. If I’ve had a hard time on a certain day then I get on the boat and sail towards the city or just wander around, it always helps.”
Clay’s love for water was not accidental. The Splash Brother grew up in Southern California and has always found peace of mind in the Pacific. Until the injury he sailed mostly in a smaller and simpler boat, along with his dog and best friend Rocco, but after the injury he was persuaded to buy something more advanced, and it can not be said that it did not work: “It brings me happiness, everything to do with it. Except winning games, There is nothing that makes me happier. ”
Despite all this, the only thing that interested him was to play basketball. Towards the end of last season, after a win over Denver, Kerry comforted his friend on the bench after he had tears in his eyes because he wanted to get up and play in front of the home crowd, who had just returned after a year in which the authorities did not allow crowds into stadiums. Last November, after a win over Portland, with a towel on his head, he sat alone on the bench for over half an hour and did not move. All that went through his mind was how much he loved the game and how much he wanted to get on the floor again.
Less running, more release
Clay Thompson’s first game at the Chase Center was more than exciting. Every person who watched the game, whether or not a rival Cleveland or neutral, saw an entire crowd cheering for 48 minutes for one man to return to doing what he loved. He scored threes, passed players and even gave a resounding dunk that drove the whole hall crazy. A return to such fitness, coupled with the great time Golden State was in, led fans to believe that the championship could reach San Francisco for the first time in the franchise era.
Although they thought he would become a more marginal player than he had been in the past, Thompson tried to prove that the injuries were behind him and he could return to being the same “Splash Brother” he had been in the league for seven years. Its game may not have changed too much on the surface, but the way it is used is more extreme.
In the past he was more moving on the pitch and moving between blocks to reach free throws. Today, when his movement is a bit more restricted, he gets more shots as the free kicker stands over the arc and more lowers the ball to the floor. In other words – he thinks more than before. In the current playoffs, Thompson throws 3.4 shots on average after getting the ball at the end of an offense. That’s more than 1.2 shots than he did in the 2018/19 season and one shot more than the regular season. Kerry’s superiority makes defenses more crowded and so Thompson manages to make an impact without being too active in the offense.
What also stands out in Clay in the last playoff is the instability. After scoring 42% against the Nuggets’ defenselessness, he surpassed that figure in just five of the 15 games in the other series. In most cases he scored by 30%, missing completely free shots and sometimes forcing them to try to get into the rhythm, but 3.2 threes out of almost nine shots is not an encouraging figure for the third-best scorer in the last millennium.
Momentary explosion
Although he has not found stability in the past six months, Thompson has proven in some cases that when his handle is working, he is unstoppable. This was evident in the show in game number five against Dallas, which dragged the Warriors to victory at a time when his backline teammate failed to make an appearance, or the sixth game against Memphis where he played the most minutes of the season (42) and returned with eight threes. In each series he will manage to find the good sequence that will remind everyone of his greatness.
In case you forgot, Thompson holds the record for threes for one game (14), the record for points in one quarter (37), the record for threes in one quarter (9), the most points under 30 minutes since the shot clock went into effect (60), second only to Damien Lillard in the number of threes in one playoff game (11), second only to Kerry in threes in the playoffs (444) and the second in history to score 10 threes in a row in one game. He does not need a series to eliminate a team, he can do it in less than 48 minutes.
His best-known nickname in the league is, as mentioned, “Game 6 Klay” thanks to those plays that kept the Warriors alive and stunned the rivalry, who dreamed of a sensational victory over the best team in the league in recent years. The first time was against Oklahoma of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, where he buried 11 threes in a hall full of Thunder fans and sent the series to a seventh game after trailing 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals. In 2018 the Warriors were again with their backs to the wall, this time against Houston, but Thompson scored nine threes and snatched four times to turn the creators on their way to advancing to the NBA Finals and a third championship. Although his figures are better in Game 5, this saying about Thompson helps to create fear in the opponent and a sense of security that if no one shows up, he will be the one to take the reins and save the homeland.
The game against Toronto threatened to enter the same list, but the same injury 2:24 to the end of the third quarter torpedoed it. Game number 6 is where some of the greatest stories in the history of the NBA Finals were created: Ray Allen’s three in 2012, Michael Jordan’s winning basket against Utah in 1998, which was his last in the Bulls uniform, and Yannis’ 50 points Antocompo last season. If we go beyond the finals and focus only on the hall where the game will be played, TD Garden, we will be exposed to some of the great historical appearances of recent years, such as the iconic LeBron James game from 2012 or Jimmy Butler who buried 47 points there less than a month ago. It’s Clay’s time to shine.
Get the honor back
In honor of the 75th season of the NBA, the American media and the league have selected the 75 greatest players in league history. In practice, 76 players were selected, with some 50 old ones left in place and joined by 26 new ones. The one who did not make the list was Clay Thompson, who was offended and took his lack of choice personally. He made sure to visit her several times on his Instagram account and wrote: “I’m still nervous about this stupid list, I’m tired of all this disrespect. Apparently victories are not as important to others as they are to me.”
It may be that his lack of choice stems from the fact that he played his entire career alongside Steph Kerry, or that he did not play for two years, but that does not detract from his greatness. Every great player in the league in recent years talks about not being given the respect he deserves and is free to talk about it on social media, like Durant or in front of everyone after victories like Kerry and James. Until that moment, Clay remained modest and did not speak on this subject, but something in him was broken. The league list showed him that in terms of the league and the media, he had failed to fulfill his childhood goal and become one of the best in history.
Tonight’s game (Thursday-Friday, 4 p.m.) is the most important in Clay Thompson’s career. All eyes will be on him and he got a chance to do what he failed to do in 2019 and bring the Warriors a seventh championship, which will give a Hollywood ending to the entire journey that has gone on in just over three years. In TD Garden, in front of the team adorned with history and in front of 20,000 enthusiastic spectators, the player with number 11 on his back will step up with all the pressure on him to give another memorable performance, one that will make everyone give him the respect he deserves and allow him to sign another chapter in history Of the NBA.