Klay Thompson’s departure from the Golden State franchise, in which he played for 13-long season and earned four NBA titles, was not an easy decision. However, recent reports have surfaced the basketball world and shed light on what convinced the veteran shooter to change his destination for Dallas this upcoming campaign.
According to Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd, his pupil Kyrie Irving was instrumental in the Warriors icon signing a three-year, $50 million deal in Texas. In a recent interview with NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dubs Talk, the former player opened up about this recruitment process and talked about everyone involved in it.
“When it comes to recruitment, a lot of people were part of the process,” he shared. “But one of the biggest factors was Kai [Irving]. Kai was able to connect with Klay, player to player, and share his experience of what it’s been like in Dallas over the past two years. He gave Klay an honest assessment of what he thinks could happen with him on board.”
Klay Thompson with his new teammate Dereck Lively II…
Steph had some jokes! 🤣
📺 Aces-Liberty | ESPN
pic.twitter.com/RJTxFstIIR— NBA (@NBA) September 8, 2024
One thing for sure was that Kidd did not feel comfortable taking in all the credit. “I’d love to say it was all me, but it wasn’t. It was a team effort. But in this league, player-to-player recruitment is huge. This was all about Kai and Klay being able to have that conversation,” the coach confessed.
Interestingly enough, Mavs owner Mark Cuban also had a lot to say about his team’s newest acquisition, and even offered some insight over how they expect to use Thompson in a Dallas jersey. The famous entrepreneur guaranteed that they expect to utilize his talents differently than how they used him in Golden State.
“Obviously, the big addition for us was Klay,” Cuban explained. “He’s someone you have to guard closely because he’s going to knock down 40% of his shots. At Golden State, he was always running around and coming off screens.
Instead of having the sharpshooter run around coming off screens and constantly on the move, they expect to ease his workload so he can concentrate on shooting. “That’s not really our style. We’ll run some plays like that for him, but mostly, he’ll be positioned in the corners or on the wings, catching and shooting from Luka [Dončić] and Kyrie [Irving]. Hopefully, it makes his life a lot easier,” he said.
Irving recently admitted that he felt disappointed with his performances during the last NBA Finals run against the Celtics, which ended 4-1 for Boston
The NBA veteran was recently talking to his crowd in a Twitch stream, and he got real about his feelings towards his club’s loss in the Finals against Boston back in June. The skilled hooper revealed that he was disappointed in his own displays during that series which ended 4-1 in favor of the Celtics.
“Last year was definitely disappointing from the standpoint of not winning the Finals as a team and coming up short,” the point guard expressed. “We got there for a reason, but blood is definitely in the water.”
Just in the first two matches of these past NBA Finals, Kyrie had missed every single one of his eight attempts from beyond the arc, and was only dropping in 35.1% from the field. If you compared that to his performances during the first three rounds of the playoffs (2.6 three-pointers per game at a 42.1% clip), it was a great decline.
“I’m always going to take accountability, and it starts with me,” he held himself accountable. “I didn’t play my best down the stretch, and that’s been eating me alive—in a healthy way. I’ve stayed motivated, and we’re gonna be back. We just need to have fun and take it day by day. But losing f— sucks.”
