Klay Thompson's Bay Area return was classy and a return to pure competition | Good Word with Goodwill
Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Vincent Goodwill and The Ringer's Jason Goff react to Klay Thompson's first game back in the Bay Area and discuss just how special it was to see the four-time NBA champion face his former team. Hear the full conversation on “Good Word with Goodwill” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
I am in San Francisco.
I am here for the Klay Thompson return game.
It was such a classy affair.
Let me just say that when he walked through the door, 400 Warriors employees chasing their employees, like greeted him all the standing ovations, the applause.
He had a two minute video that was really well done.
All this stuff.
I like the theater of it.
Him walking through the tunnel and people are clapping, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's cool.
And then he gets a second introduction like as if the ovation wasn't long enough.
Like I know it's 11 years.
I know it's four championships, but the love is, oh, yeah, you on the other side tonight, we about to boo the out of you because, you know, we love you and you can kind of tell that when they came back to the studio that Kenny and Charles and Kenny even said he's like, I've never seen anything like that in my life, but they want to be on the pro.
Everything is good basketball side of things.
Me, I'm sitting there like, wait a minute, what happened to the gamesmanship and then Steph comes out guarding him the first three possessions.
You know, he strips them, he forces a couple of turnovers.
Yeah, I'm like, this is what it's supposed to.
The Steph was supposed to address the crowd.
Jason and he and Clay talked the night before and basically it was like, oh, no, you don't have to do that because both want to stay in the frame of competition.
I never got to see Isaiah and Joe go at each other.
You never got to see like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili on a, on a lesser level.
You usually don't see guys who are so synonymous with each other have to go against each other.
And I thought that was in a way kind of cool because you got to see both sides, competitiveness come out like Steph playing at clay after he hit a three, it came back to the competition like all the stuff they used to do is to each other.
That's, that's we got a chance to see the behind the scenes stuff.
I think competition is so pure.
I love the purity of it.
Jason, it just felt like people like, oh, they didn't fight the playoffs or the finals.
Nah, it just felt like real.
It's almost like it felt like Meek going against Mike back in the day.
Yeah, you hoop.
Like I, I hoop with my friends.
Hey, II I hoop harder against my people than I do against strangers.