A five-time All-Star with two All-NBA selections and one All-Defensive selection, Klay Thompson has long been one of the NBA’s best shooting guards. Unfortunately, injuries robbed him of two prime seasons.
In the 2019 NBA Finals, Thompson suffered a torn ACL in his left knee, which sidelined him for the entire 2019-20 season. He then suffered a torn right Achilles tendon in the lead-up to the 2020-21 season, sidelining him for another entire season and then some.
It wasn’t until January of this season that Thompson made his highly anticipated return. Considering he’s coming off of not one, but two significant injuries, he’s looked better than anyone could’ve expected. He averaged 20.4 points in the 32 regular-season games he appeared in, the third-highest scoring average anyone has ever posted after missing two straight seasons.
Thompson finished the season particularly well, scoring 30 or more points in four of his last six appearances.
Even so, Thompson’s game has changed since we last saw him. According to the NBA’s play type data, he’s not scoring with the same frequency off of screens and in transition as he did in 2018-19. Instead, he is spotting up much more.
Those differences have become even starker so far in the 2022 NBA Playoffs.
MORE: Watch the NBA playoffs on Sling TV (U.S. only)
Some of that, of course, is to be expected.
Prior to his injuries, Thompson was one of the most active off-ball players in the league. The NBA’s play type data only goes back to 2015-16, but Thompson led the league in scoring off of screens in each of the four seasons before his first leg injury. He still does that more than anyone else in the league — he remains a genius at manipulating screens, both as a shooter and cutter — but he’s not doing it quite as much as he once did.
Even the way Thompson is spotting up has changed. He’s still catching and shooting around the same amount, but he’s attacking closeouts more than he used to.
| Season | Catch and shoot possessions per game | Catch and drive possessions per game |
| 2018-19 regular season | 2.2 | 1.0 |
| 2021-22 regular season | 2.5 | 1.9 |
| 2022 playoffs | 3.4 | 1.7 |
Many of those catch and drives had led to midrange pull-ups that started to become a bigger part of his game in 2017-18. It’s not necessarily a bad shot for Thompson as he connected on 45.0 percent of those opportunities in the 2021-22 regular season, but it’s one he can fall in love with at times.
Such was the case in Golden State’s Game 2 loss to Memphis when Thompson settled for a few too many of these on a night he went 5-for-19 from the field:
Not that Thompson ever got to the basket much compared to other players at his position, but only 6.1 percent of his field-goal attempts in the regular season came around the rim. Sounds low, right? It’s the lowest mark of his career, with his previous career-low being 12.1 percent.
The thing with Thompson is that he’s still a don’t-leave-him-at-all-costs outside shooter. In the 32 games he appeared in during the regular season, he knocked down 3.6 3-pointers per game at a 38.5 percent clip. It was the first time in his career that he’s made less than 40.0 percent of his 3s, but the only other player in the league who could match both of those numbers was his fellow Splash Brother, Stephen Curry.Â
That’s carried over into the playoffs, with Thompson nailing 3.9 3-pointers per game at a 38.6 percent clip. It’s not as exclusive of a club, but he’s still part of an incredibly small group.
Thompson struggled almost as much in Golden State’s Game 1 win over Memphis as he did in its Game 2 loss, but he managed to make the biggest shot of the game to help the Warriors steal one on the road.
This is vintage Klay:
He might not be the exact same player, but there are some things about Thompson that will never change.
