Golden State Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson was on fire Thursday night with 30 points and a will to carry his team to a Game 6 victory for the chance at a three-peat title in Game 7. But an awkward landing sent him to the ground, grabbing his knee. He walked off the court with help from teammates. The cameras followed him and the Splash Brother could be seen trying to walk the injury off in the tunnel.
Thompson returned to the court and made two free throws. Perhaps in denial about the reality of his injury, he jogged down the court as if loosening the knee to get it ready for the next possession. Whatever glimmer of hope Thompson had of completing the game gave way to reason and he returned to the locker room.
From outside the door, esteemed reporter Doris Burke said she heard Thompson on the other side jumping up and down to test the knee. She reported that Thompson’s father asked his son repeatedly if he had heard anything pop in his knee. With Thompson answering repeatedly to the negative, hopes lifted just a little of a possible return.
The efforts Thompson made to get back on the court came as no shock to his teammates.
Triple-double behemoth Draymond Green was asked after the game if it surprised him to learn Thompson was doing jumping jacks in the back to try to make a return to the game.
Green said it was no surprise at all and also reminded reporters that Thompson had even played through a hamstring injury, which many athletes won’t do.
“Klay is crazy,” Green said, of the teammate he also claims has the biggest heart of all the Warriors.
But as quickly as Burke issued that initial report, she followed with a second stating that he was ruled out of the game.
ESPN senior writer Ramona Shelburne reported on Friday that as Thompson sat at his locker before departing the arena on crutches to get an MRI at a Berkeley-area imaging center, his phone rang. It was Kevin Durant popping up on FaceTime — a beloved teammate who, on Monday, had suffered a ruptured Achilles in Game 5 of the Finals.
The team’s best player and back-to-back Finals MVP was calling from his room in the same New York hospital where he’d undergone surgery two days prior. In that moment, if anyone in the world understood the crushing emotions of devastating injury, it was Durant.
Thompson knew he needed medical attention too.
The knee swelled in the locker room, quickly, and became increasingly painful. Thompson knew something was seriously wrong — something well beyond jumping jacks and stretches.
With a single-minded warrior mentality like Thompson’s, it is easy to imagine that if his knee hadn’t screamed more loudly team officials and family may have had to forcibly remove him from the arena.
Thompson was driven to the imaging center by his brother with his parents trailing in another vehicle. Thompson followed the rest of the game on the NBA app. Immediately after emerging from the imaging machine, Thompson reportedly asked if the Warriors had won the game and, if so, if he could possibly be ready to play in Sunday’s Game 7.
Devastating answers to basic questions would follow:
- No, the Warriors did not win. Without Thompson and Durant, and the other Golden State players hobbled, the hill had become too steep to climb.
In the eloquent words of Shelburne:
The team seemed to be dragging itself along — too talented and proud to surrender, but too tired and injured to mount the kind of fight it has become known for.
- No, there would not be a Game 7.
- No, there would be no confetti and champagne for the Warriors. Not this year.
- There would be no parade.
The very next concern for Thompson was his impending free agency. What impact would the failure to three-peat have on his value? he was asking while still in the exam room, already thinking about the future of the team and the teammates he calls brothers. How would the shredded ACL in his knee factor into his future post-injury potential?
All of that is yet to be seen. But reports already are swirling that the Warriors are preparing to offer max contracts to both Thompson and Durant. For now, for the Warriors organization and its beloved fans, it’s a time of reflection on a triumph era.
