SAN FRANCISCO — On the far court of the Warriors practice facility Saturday afternoon, Klay Thompson came sprinting around a screen set by James Wiseman, where he set up to receive the ball from Jonathan Kuminga. He pulled and fired. It clanked off the rim. Everyone else in the five-on-zero drill paused. But Thompson demanded the ball again. Kuminga passed it back, and Thompson sank it. He would settle for no less.
Thompson finished the drill by huddling with his playing partners – Wiseman, Kuminga, Jordan Poole and Juan Toscano-Anderson – then moved on to an individual shooting drill, where he made all but one of his 10 shots. He was ready.
Out the double doors, up a set of stairs and a short walk through the underbelly of Chase Center, Warriors coach Steve Kerr was playing coy on stage in the interview room. For 20 minutes, he asked reporters to “work with me here” and “read the tea leaves.” Thompson had been cleared by the Warriors medical staff to make his long-awaited return Sunday – tipoff 5:30 against the Cleveland Cavaliers – but Thompson had the final call.
“Just keep your phone handy,” Kerr said.
Then, at 2:10 p.m., those phones buzzed with a notification: In a snippet of the movie ‘Space Jam’ posted to Thompson’s 10.8 million followers on Instagram, Bill Murray tells Michael Jordan, “Perhaps I could be of some assistance.”
Thompson added the caption, “How I’m pulling up to Chase tomorrow.”
In what should go down as one of the most memorable nights in Warriors history, Thompson’s two-season absence will come to an end Sunday, fully recovered from tears to his left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and his right Achilles tendon.
The last time Thompson played in an NBA game was June 13, 2019. He was averaging 26.0 points through the first five games of that year’s NBA Finals and already had 30 by the 2:22 mark of the third quarter in Game 6. Then he went for a dunk in the lane, fell to the floor, and has been working his way back ever since.
The journey has been so long, so arduous, so personal, that the Warriors deferred to him to make the official announcement. With a ‘Space Jam’ clip, could Klay have been any more Klay? He described Bill Murray as his “spirit animal.”
“He makes you realize that this is real life and not just basketball because he still has a personality,” said Juan Toscano-Anderson, who will be one of 11 Warriors to play alongside Thompson for the first time on Sunday.
To: #DubNation
From: @klaythompson pic.twitter.com/UCFFgkaDlu— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) January 9, 2022
It will have been 941 days between Thompson’s last jumper and his next one, enough time for the Warriors to build a new, billion-dollar arena on the San Francisco waterfront and overhaul his supporting cast: notably with Andrew Wiggins, the sharpshooting wing whom Golden State acquired about seven months into Thompson’s initial rehab. The player Thompson is replacing in the starting lineup, Jordan Poole, was drafted weeks after Thompson’s initial injury and has completed the evolution from potential bust to franchise cornerstone in the time Thompson has been away.
“The good thing is anybody on earth can play with Klay because he doesn’t dominate the ball,” Kerr said. “He’s a really easy guy to play with, but we’re going to need reps – for him and with him – for him to really get going.”
Sometime around 5:30 p.m., with the lights dimmed and players dancing, Klay Thompson’s name will bellow from the public address system inside Chase Center for the very first time. Then, he’ll step on to the court alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green and Kevon Looney for the first time in forever, and Wiggins for the first time ever.
Curry welcomed back his Splash Brother with a message on social media, where he changed his Twitter avatar to a photo of Thompson, his mouth wide open just below a pair of turtle-patterned club-master sunglasses. He’s clearly enjoying life.
Another photo of Thompson captured attention in the later stages of his rehab process. After the Warriors’ Nov. 26 win over Portland, a solemn Thompson remained on the bench, a towel draped over his head, for 30 minutes after the final buzzer. It was a rare public display of the toll the long and arduous rehab process had taken on him.
That week, at the end of November, Thompson rejoined his teammates in practice for the first time. Toscano-Anderson remembers a classic Klay flurry during one scrimmage: 12 points in 43 seconds.
“I said, ‘Damn, we’ve got two guys who can do this?’” Toscano-Anderson recalled with excitement.
There were rumblings of a return timed around Christmas. But the holiday game in Phoenix acted as a different milestone: Thompson’s first time traveling with his teammates. On their next road trip, he would scrimmage alongside Curry for the first time, providing the duo a trial run of sorts for Sunday night.
Thompson called that scrimmage, inside Denver’s Ball Arena after their Dec. 28 game against the Nuggets was postponed, “a big moment for me.”
“That was really crucial milestone,” Kerr said. “It felt like an important emotional event, to see the group together again.”
For Kerr, another game came to mind when thinking about the emotion and anticipation of Klay’s return.
On March 13, 1995, the Chicago Bulls got their own star back from a multi-year absence. Michael Jordan was set to play his first game after two years away from the NBA. Kerr, a fellow member of those Bulls teams, remembers the drive to the airport.
“I was driving with Jud Buechler, my teammate,” Kerr recalled. “I turned to Judd and was like, ‘What’s Phil Jackson going to do? Do you bring him off the bench? Do you start him?’ And Jud goes, ‘Steve, Steve: As a general rule, when you have your own statue outside of the stadium, you’re in the starting lineup.’”
It wasn’t quintessential Jordan – he finished 7-of-28 from the field – but the fans were just there to see the spectacle. The Bulls eventually went on to win three more championships. With Thompson and Curry and Green, the Warriors already have three titles and, off to a 29-9 start this season while getting reinforcements like Thompson, are hopeful for more. Sunday is sure to be a spectacle.
“There’s clearly a buzz in the air,” Kerr said. “It’s not the outcome of the game that is so anticipated; it’s the moment itself. It’s the occasion. It’s what’s being celebrated. … With Klay, the moment will be about a guy’s perseverance and his love for the game and everyone else’s love for him. That’s why it’s going to be special.”
Back in the interview room Saturday afternoon, Toscano-Anderson ambled off the stage. Before exiting through the door, he had a final message for the reporters in the room — and the rest of Dub Nation: “See y’all at the show tomorrow.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com