{"id":81622,"date":"2024-06-17T04:09:30","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T08:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=81622"},"modified":"2024-06-17T04:09:30","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T08:09:30","slug":"warriors-draymond-green-tries-downplay-klay-thompson-offseason-rift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/06\/17\/warriors-draymond-green-tries-downplay-klay-thompson-offseason-rift\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors Star Tries Valiantly to Downplay Offseason Rift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/t\/thompkl01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Klay Thompson<\/a> scrubbed his social media of as much Golden State Warriors-related content as he could find, pandemonium ensued. The fans, ever volatile, were whipped into a frenzy. The ravenous media rushed to write-up a story. Even his teammates felt the need to chime in.<\/p>\n<p>Well, at least one.<\/p>\n<p>Addressing the situation on his eponymous podcast, Warriors star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/g\/greendr01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Draymond Green<\/a> says, &#8220;I know all of you were probably looking forward to me talking about Klay unfollowing the Warriors and deleting some (Instagram) posts or something. I had no idea that happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Money23Green?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@money23green<\/a> on Klay unfollowing the Warriors \ud83d\ude02 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CkdPZSwDeX\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/CkdPZSwDeX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Volume (@TheVolumeSports) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheVolumeSports\/status\/1802038364671250733?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 15, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;It&#8217;s f****** hilarious&#8230; I think that&#8217;s comical,&#8221; he claims. &#8220;I know you all want somebody&#8217;s feelings to be hurt or something. It ain&#8217;t that. Ain&#8217;t never going to be that. That&#8217;s hilarious.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Draymond Green Valiantly Attempts to Downplay Offseason Rift<\/h2>\n<p>Thompson&#8217;s teammates likely do not harbor any ill-will towards him for his actions.<\/p>\n<p>For one, they know more than anyone how much the franchise &#8211;and the core of their dynasty &#8211;means to him. Furthermore, it&#8217;s not as if Thompson&#8217;s sitting at the bargaining table with <em>them<\/em>. Thompson is having trouble securing the contract that he wants from the front office. To take it a step further, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy and director of basketball operations Chuck Hayes are subject to the demands of team governors Joe Lacob and Peter Gruber, as they&#8217;re the ones cutting the check. Ultimately, the last people that Thompson would have a problem with are his teammates.<\/p>\n<p>Still, despite Green&#8217;s attempts to take brush off Thompson&#8217;s passive aggressive negotiation approach, it&#8217;s clear that there&#8217;s trouble brewing in Golden State. If the Warriors respected Thompson the way they once did, the situation wouldn&#8217;t be getting this ugly.<\/p>\n<p>With that said, Thompson is a depreciating asset on the surface. His best skill is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Nonetheless, Thompson&#8217;s rise was about more than his outside shooting; he was also among the best perimeter defenders. Due to the decline in his athletic ability, that&#8217;s no longer the case. As a result, his free market value is that of a 3-point specialist, albeit one with championship experience. From that standpoint, the two-year, $48 million contract extension they offered him prior to the season was fair.<\/p>\n<p>However, his value to the Warriors is much more than that. A mainstay in Golden State&#8217;s rotation for more than a decade, he&#8217;s integral to the team&#8217;s chemistry in the locker room and on the court. If the Warriors aren&#8217;t willing to pay him a bit more after all that he&#8217;s done for the franchise, it makes sense for there to be a rift.<\/p>\n<h3>The $68 Million Question<\/h3>\n<p>There is one small matter though.<\/p>\n<p>In the two seasons that Thompson didn&#8217;t play due to injury (2019-20 and 2020-21), he earned $68.1 million. The Warriors are unlikely to have forgotten that. Put another way, the front office may not feel a need to overpay to keep a player who was still getting his checks while sitting at home. From that perspective, Thompson doesn&#8217;t look like he&#8217;s justified. He just looks greedy.<\/p>\n<p>With the Orlando Magic, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Philadelphia 76ers all having various levels of interest in the five-time All-Star, Thompson may very well be <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/05\/30\/warriors-klay-thompson-appears-set-test-free-agency-first-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">offered a contract<\/a> he finds reasonable. That&#8217;s the case even if he&#8217;s using these teams for leverage in his contract negotiations with Golden State.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, the grass isn&#8217;t always greener on the other side. Thompson won&#8217;t have the same level of influence or admiration with those organizations as he does with the Warriors. A sizable contract from Golden State could lead to serious limitations in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/06\/05\/2024-nba-off-season-preview-whats-next-for-the-golden-state-warriors\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">how they build their roster<\/a> from that point forward.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson&#8217;s said to be good at poker, but will he overplay his hand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Klay Thompson scrubbed his social media of as much Golden State Warriors-related content as he could find, pandemonium ensued. The fans, ever volatile, were whipped into a frenzy. The ravenous media rushed to write-up a story. Even his teammates felt the need to chime in. Well, at least one. Addressing the situation on his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":81632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1608,62,3,36],"tags":[409,70,297,4557],"class_list":["post-81622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-warriors","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","category-podcasts","tag-draymond-green","tag-klay-thompson","tag-nba-free-agency","tag-nba-offseason"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}