Not everyone’s sold on the Dallas Mavericks’ acquisition of 4-time NBA champion Klay Thompson.
Shortly before the Mavs tipped off their 2024-25 season on Thursday, TNT studio host and Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley expressed some skepticism on Thompson’s fit with the Mavericks during TNT’s NBA tip-off show. The main reason, Barkley said, was age and injury history.
“He was the best 2-guard in the NBA for a span of X amount of years, offensively and defensively,” Barkley explained, “He’s a future first-ballot Hall of Famer. Everybody likes Klay Thompson. But no player gets better with age.”
Thompson, who’s a few months away from his 35th birthday, is coming off what was statistically one of the worst seasons of his career. His 38.7% 3-point percentage was the worst of any full season he’s ever played. His points per game average of 17.9 was his lowest since the second season of his career. He fell out of the Warriors starting rotation late in the season, and for the first time since his rookie season was used as a bench player. In his final game with Golden State, a 9th place vs. 10th place play-in tournament game last season, Thompson finished with zero points on 0-10 shooting.
“He got the two bad breaks with the ACL and the Achilles, and that’s the reason the Warriors wanted to move on,” Barkley continued. “He’s not the same player.”
Thompson missed all of the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons with a torn ACL and a ruptured Achilles tendon.
The Mavericks, of course, are aware of all this. GM Nico Harrison and head coach Jason Kidd have commented multiple times throughout the summer about the kind of player they believe they’re bringing to Dallas, and Thompson himself has stated how motivated he is coming into the season.
“Credit goes to Nico [Harrison] and Kyrie [Irving] and Jason Kidd,” Mavs minorit owner Mark Cuban said on a podcast in September. “They know him. They’ve played with them. They understand him. That’s why we brought Nico Harrison in, because of his relationships with players. They went out and spent time with them, got to know him better, and Klay was ready for a move.”
But not everyone’s a believer in the Klay Thompson Mavericks, to start out the season, at least. He and the Mavs get their first trial run in Thursday’s season opener against the Spurs.
See Barkley’s full comments below.
"Everybody likes Klay Thompson, but no player gets better with age" ⌛
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) October 24, 2024
Chuck gives his take on the future hall of famer 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/dmbMhwJ3QX
Find more Mavericks coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
