Luka Dončić has never played with anybody as accomplished as a shooter as Klay Thompson, and it may be a game-changer for him.
Some consider Klay Thompson a top three shooter in the league. He averages 41.3 percent from three over his career. Despite shooting 38.7 percent last season, he shot 41.2 the season before with a high of an incredible 44 percent in 2018.
This is not a guy anyone can leave alone at any point on the floor, and that opens up a lot of space, especially in the paint, for both Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić.
Here’s one of the more impressive examples of Klay Thompson’s technical skills. He’s coming off a screen, turns and catches it at the perfect time, delivering the famous no-dip three, which is a shot only the most accomplished players can perform in-game.
Not only is Klay Thompson on the highest level when it comes to catch-and-shoots, creating space for himself at the perimeter and moving off-ball, he was also named to the NBA All-Defensive second team in his rookie season 2011-12.
If we didn’t know this already, what this tells us is that he is a high IQ basketball player, who can read the offense (and knows where to be on defense) and has great vision, not unlike Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Derreck Lively and Dante Exum.
The way Klay Thompson can read the game sets him apart from a lot of other players. Done are the days of deer-in-headlights stagnant offense, with Thompson, a lot more plays and actions are possible. Watch him create and find Trayce Jackson-Davis for lobs, behind the back passes and notice how he feeds him in the paint. This was last season; “Magic looking” the announcer calls it.
Some of these clips also show how much he works off-ball, an often overlooked and hard to quantify skill in this sport.
Last year, in a piece coach Jason Kidd later referred to in a press conference, I asked: What if Luka Dončić was surrounded by dynamic, high-IQ players, who had the ability to move off-ball and weren’t afraid of the moment?
The Dante Exum theory: Why surrounding Luka Dončić with players who have high-level European experience is a winning recipe
And the truth is that even though I highlighted European players and players with experience in Europe (like Dante Exum), Klay Thompson fits that mold hand in glove. He is the type of player who will fit in seamlessly next to Luka Dončić, because he has all of these specific skills. It’s all dependent on whether he buys in, of course, but from all accounts, that’s the reason he is in Dallas to begin with.
Right after the move from Golden State to Dallas became official in the beginning of July, Thompson spoke to the media about what attracted him to the Mavericks, explaining “Dallas was so attractive because of the young players they have, the style of play, the world-class treatment these players get from the organization…” He said that he saw himself watching the Mavericks during the playoffs, envisioning how he could fit with this team and help them win.
And there’s no denying that the gravity of Thompson at the perimeter has the potential to set Luka Dončić apart from the rest this season. Along with Kyrie, the options are unlimited for Luka when it comes to taking advantage of the fact that defenders won’t be able to leave Klay at the perimeter to go into help defense. That leaves either Luka one-on-one (easy points), or it leaves another player completely open as his defender will be forced to help instead.
So perhaps the headline of this article should have been: Why Klay Thompson may be the reason Luka Dončić can win MVP this season and the Mavericks will contend again.
With a bought-in Klay, Luka Dončić could end up finally getting his flowers after working uphill with poorly constructed rosters for so long. Those days are ultimately gone.