Klay doesn’t have it anymore. Draymond is spiraling. Steph is frustrated. After four NBA titles, the league’s most expensive team is going out sad.
There is a snippet of “The Illiad, or The Poem of Force,” Simone Weil’s 1940 essay about the blind poet Homer’s Trojan War epic, that has always stuck with me:
“The progress of the war in the Iliad is simply a continual game of seesaw.
The victor of the moment feels himself invincible, even though, only a few hours before, he may have experienced defeat; he forgets to treat victory as a transitory thing.”
The Golden State Warriors seemed invincible once. Now, far from it.
Nobody saw this coming five years ago, when they looked like the most dominant NBA team possible, winning their third title in four years.
But what every new basketball dynasty teaches us, over and over again, is that pride comes before the fall. Everyone goes out sad, eventually.
Klay Thompson was one of the NBA players who most defined this generation, stylistically. LeBron James may have been the best player, Steph Curry the one who ushered in modernity, but when you were thinking about the guys on your team who weren’t good enough, your mind drifted to Klay. Why can’t they be as big as Klay? As good at defending? Why can’t they just shoot like Klay, move off the ball like Klay, not demand the ball all the damn time, not feel the need to prove themselves by going on silly dribbling adventures? He was so good at playing a role that he became a guaranteed Hall of Famer.
But he tore his Achilles a few years back, managed a decent season, and has just not been the same guy. Sometimes he shows glimpses of his former self and lights it up, but time and injury have shaved off the extra precision that made him a force on the court. Now, Klay is just OK
