Warriors News: Free Agent Klay Thompson Seems to Hint at Departure on Social Media
Four-time Golden State Warriors championship-winning swingman Klay Thompson may not finish his career with the team that drafted him after all.
According to Gabe Lehman of SF Gate, the 6-foot-6 free agent unfollowed the Warriors on his Instagram account this week, while also deleting a lot of the celebratory posts commemorating his most recent title with the club, a 2022 win over the Boston Celtics.
Only one photo, in which he pays tribute to assistant Dejan Milojevic — who passed away during the season — features Thompson in Warriors gear from the last two years. Otherwise, the most recent image with the longtime Splash Brother in Dubs duds hails from April 2022.
He is still following Golden State’s NBAGL affiliate franchise the Santa Cruz Warriors and the team’s community foundation.
Thompson just wrapped up a five-year, $189.9 million contract he inked with Golden State that kicked in during the 2019-20 season… which he missed in its entirety due to the ACL tear.
He will not see a deal of that kind of length or, probably, annual value on the open market this season. But with $266.2 million in career earnings already banked, Thompson isn’t exactly hurting for cash.
Thompson may no longer be the five-time All-Star he was in his prime. That’s understandable, given that he missed two full seasons due to successive ACL and Achilles tears. Once a lethal two-way player, the 2018-19 All-Defensive teamer is now extremely vulnerable on that end of the court, having been sapped of much of his lateral quickness
The 34-year-old is also just not quite the clutch bucket-getter he used to be prior to those injuries. This season, his defensive limitations compelled the head coach to bench Thompson for 14 games, which have been unheard of during his peak Splash Brothers days.
He had one of the worst games of his career, and perhaps one of the worst postseason performances in team history, during a lopsided 118-94 play-in game defeat against the Sacramento Kings this spring. Thompson shot 0-of-10 from the floor and 0-of-6 from deep. It marks his first scoreless. The Kings, by the way, did not even advance to the postseason after vanquishing the Warriors, falling to a Zion Williamson-less New Orleans Pelicans team.
Thompson should still manage to find a decent contract, even if it does have to be away from the only NBA team he’s ever known. Across 77 healthy regular season games this past season (63 starts), the Washington State product averaged 17.9 points on a .432/.387/.927 slash line (that three-point conversion rate came on a whopping nine triple tries), plus 3.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 0.6 steals, and 0.5 blocks. It’s unclear if opposing clubs view Thompson as being even a starter at this juncture, though his elite shooting could still thrive on a team with a strong perimeter defender.
