Getty Warriors impending free agent Klay Thompson
It was not a great ending to what has been a rough year for Warriors star Klay Thompson. He scored zero points on 0-for-10 shooting, was a minus-12 in the box score and missed all six of his 3-point attempts. The Warriors got drubbed by the Kings, 118-94, in the second play-in game in the Western Conference, ending Golden State’s season.
Possibly ending Thompson’s career with the Warriors, too. He is at the end of a five-year, $190 million contract the Warriors gave him back in 2019, even as he was slated to miss a year recovering from a knee injury. Thompson wound up missing two years, as he later tore his Achilles tendon, too.
But the Warriors paid him and, despite that, Thompson has shown no inkling of giving the team a hometown discount in extension talks. The Warriors can extend him, still, until July 1. Around the NBA, execs say he should consider inking a deal with Golden State while he can.
“It is going to be a slow market for everyone, there is not a lot of money out there,” one Western Conference exec said. “If you are 34 and you had two major surgeries, you have to face that reality.”
Draymond Green on his belief the organization will prioritize Klay Thompson: “They did right by me. They’ve done right by Steph. They’ve done right by all of us. Klay tore his ACL and they gave him $160 million dollars.”
Warriors Offered 2-Year Contract
Thompson, according to The Athletic, turned down a two-year, $48 million extension last offseason. There’s no indication that the Warriors will put that deal back on the table. Tuesday’s epic flop won’t necessarily decide that, but it does not exactly strengthen Thompson’s position.
“I don’t know what kind of money he thinks is going to be out there for him,” one Eastern Conference GM told Heavy Sports. “But it is hard to see where it is going to come from. No one is giving him $25 million per year—good luck if they do. He really ought to be taking the best offer from the Warriors as soon as he can.”
Thompson wrapped up the 2023-24 season with 17.9 points per game on 43.2% shooting and 38.7% 3-point shooting. It was a wildly inconsistent season, though Thompson had appeared to be heading to a strong finish. After a bench stint, he returned to the starting lineup for the final 10 games and averaged 21.8 points on 49.1% shooting and 41.6% 3-point shooting.
A realistic deal for Thompson would be closer to the $20 million per year range, the GM said. “You never know how a team values a player, but I could see him getting two years and $40 million, maybe three years with the third year partially guaranteed,” the GM said.
Klay Thompson Might Not Get Many Offers
The question then would be which team would be willing to give Thompson that much of a commitment. A young breakout team in need of veteran leadership—the Thunder or the Magic, for example—have come up. But if it is playoff experience those teams are after, it can be had at a much more reasonable price tag than what they’d have to pay Thompson.
“Orlando, Oklahoma City—he does not necessarily want to go there by all indications,” the executive said. “So they’d have to pay him a bit more to get him to go there. Now, you’re overpaying a guy who’s way into his 30s and dropping him into a team that, you don’t know how he is going to fit. That’s risky. It’s not a sure thing he is going to get an offer from teams like that.”
Philadelphia is another potential landing spot, given the team’s impending cap space and competitive position. That would make some sense, though the Sixers may have bigger fish—Paul George, for one—earmarked for their cap space.
But being a backup option for Philly is not a great position for Thompson. Again, that leads back to the Warriors, the team that clearly wants him, despite his shortcomings.