SAN FRANCISCO — No breakup is mutual.
No matter how much the involved parties insist on both sides being on board, someone is the initiator — and someone feels hurt.
It stung just a little bit more for Klay Thompson, who was unable to cap off an emotional Chase Center homecoming with a win for his Dallas Mavericks. Instead he was forced to watch Stephen Curry, his Splash Brother for 11 seasons, score 10 unanswered points down the stretch and put Dallas to bed with yet another improbable, clutch step-back 3-pointer en route to a 120-117 Golden State Warriors win.
“It hurts to be on the other side of one of his flurries,” Thompson said after losing to Curry in their first-ever NBA matchup. “The guy got hot at the end and hit some ridiculous shots.”
The lead-up to the thrilling conclusion was about as entertaining as it gets, with Thompson scoring 22 points — his most as a Maverick since opening night — while going 6 of 12 from 3-point range. After hitting consecutive 3s in the second quarter, he hit the Warriors with an imitation of Curry’s signature shimmy, which Draymond Green called “terrible” and “awful” in the same sentence after the game.
There was plenty of back-and-forth all game, both on the scoreboard and in the trash-talking department, but ultimately Curry stole the night.
“I couldn’t imagine it going any other way, where he played well, the crowd got an amazing show, went down to the wire,” Curry said afterward. “Can’t really draw it up any better.”
If there was some extra fire from Thompson — once considered a lock to retire a Warrior alongside Curry and Green as the rare high-level athletes to play their entire careers with one franchise — it might have to do with the fact that he was ghosted by the Warriors this summer. Contract proposals from Thompson’s side in advance of free agency were not only refused, but met without counter offers, according to The Athletic. About as painfully clear of a signal that things were over that he could possibly receive.
And just as no breakup is entirely mutual, no breakup is entirely clean. They’re not only sad, but they also strike at the very core of your identity. One study found that individuals tend to experience “reduced self-concept clarity” after parting ways with a significant other and that loss of self leads to an increased level of emotional distress.
It must have hurt to know that the franchise to which you gave 11 seasons, an ACL and an Achilles tendon wasn’t interested in having you around anymore. Further, this happened after an inconsistent season in which Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said he could tell that Thompson was struggling to reconcile the player he used to be with the player he had become.
“He was not happy, and that was hard to see because he deserves to be happy,” Kerr said prior to Tuesday night’s game. “At his core, he’s a very happy person, and so it was tough to see him struggle with the repercussions of those injuries.”
The one almost universally true piece of advice you can give to someone going through a major change is also the one they definitely do not want to hear: Things will get better with time. That seems to be the case for Thompson, who had all summer to come to grips with the fact that in a few short months he would be going through media day and taking photos not with the teammates and organization he considered family, but with a new group in a new city.
There’s a reason he reportedly turned down more lucrative offers elsewhere to join the Mavericks, fresh off an NBA Finals appearance with two of the best shot-creators in the business already on board in Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. Nothing helps you get over your ex like having a new someone on your arm worthy of showing off.
Thompson is an ideal fit next to Doncic and Irving, serving as a floor-spacer while getting wide-open looks he could only have dreamed of back in his prime. Of course, the reality is never so simple. He’s been solid out of the gate, averaging 14.5 points and four rebounds per game on 37% 3-point shooting. But more importantly, the fresh start seems to have clarified his mind and given him a new sense of purpose.
“As an athlete, your career has a start and has an end, and as you get older, you get closer to the end. That’s just the nature of being an athlete,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, who played 19 seasons in his Hall of Fame career, said of Thompson. “And so for Klay, I think — one, he’s happy. Sometimes change is better for both sides and both sides win. Klay wins, the Warriors win. He moves forward. And so I think his mental is in a great place, because he’s trying to help us win.”
If Klay going to the Mavs was like moving on to a new significant other, Tuesday night’s spectacle was like running into your old flame at a wedding. You knew it was coming, both sides had time to prepare — Green said he watched Thompson’s tribute video in advance to avoid being overwhelmed by emotions prior to tipoff, while Curry went into the tunnel during the festivities in an effort to remain focused — but when the moment arrives and you see that person for the first time, it’s surreal.
In that way, Thompson’s return on Tuesday night will help progress things toward closure. The next time they play will be more like bumping into your ex at a coffee shop, catching up on how they’ve been and moving on with your day. The memories will sustain both Thompson and the Warriors and, slowly, any overt bitterness about the breakup will dissipate. They’ll move on as friends that share a bond nobody can ever snatch from their grasp.
“I think this game helped, because you can just understand what it feels like to really see him on a different team and him to come back to the place that he called home for so long,” Curry said after the win. “I don’t know how it’ll play out when we play them, what, two or three more times, I think?
“I don’t know, but it’ll be a little bit more normal next time.”