Klay Thompson Receiving Undeserved Scrutiny

The General Thought Process

Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Love is an NBA superstar. Averaging 26.1 points, 12.5 rebounds and 4.4 assists on 45.7 percent shooting from the field, Love is the premier power forward in the league. Despite being known as a liability on defense, he’s considered to be the most offensively talented player at his position. No one in the NBA can match the numbers he puts up on a nightly basis, and he’s certainly a valued commodity in the NBA.

Live Feed

Blue Man Hoop

Klay Thompson is not an NBA superstar. He averaged just 18.4 points which, out of the NBA’s max total of 450 players, was only good enough to be ranked 25th among the NBA’s leaders in points per game. He averaged just 3.1 rebounds and 2.2 assists last season — which isn’t very impressive at all — and shot 44.4 percent from the field — which is lower than Love’s average — and 41.7 percent from behind the arc.

While he’s grown into a reputable on-ball defender and improved his game off-the-dribble, he still hasn’t learned to create for himself and get his teammates involved. And apparently, he’s the NBA’s biggest ball hog!

Now it’s no secret that Love is better statistically than Thompson, and that’s the thing: had the trade been JUST Thompson for Love, that deal would have been a no-brainer. There would have been several factors to contemplate such as the deal’s affect on team chemistry and finances, but ultimately what the Warriors would have gained with Love at the expense of Thompson would have been worth it.

Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case, even though some saw it as exactly that. But how did fans come to see the Love debacle as simply a game of cat and mouse centralized around Klay Thompson?