Warriors owner Joe Lacob has shared his candid thoughts about Klay Thompson ending his 13-year run with Golden State to take up an opportunity with Dallas.
“It is very difficult, to be very honest,” Lacob said on The Athletic’s NBA Show. “I think everyone knows and I’ve stated it a number of times that we really wanted our Big Three to remain Warriors for life and retire at the same time. It would have been an amazing accomplishment in this day and age. Who stays with their teams anymore? I grew up, and you guys probably too, that’s what you looked forward to, you knew who was going to be on your team every year.
“That was a cool thing. That was a part of fandom, the good parts of fandom.”
Lacob was reportedly one of the main drivers of some “cold negotiations” with Thompson, which is not an uncommon tactic for the franchise to use on players.
But it definitely didn’t work on Klay.
Despite Klay and the Warriors parting ways, Lacob says he still he has a relationship with the former Splash Brother and sounds like he’s just as emotional as every Dubs fans to see him go.
“I’m close to Klay, I would like to think,” Lacob said. “He’s a harder person to get close to than some other guys because he lives a pretty private life, but then again the public parts are pretty fun. He has a way of entertaining people, people really love him. And I love him too. I’ve always — I’m just going to tell you, I used to say I am never trading Klay Thompson. It bugged me many years ago, there was all this media speculation ten years ago when he was supposedly [going to be] traded for Kevin Love. Some day when I pen my own retrospective, I’ll correct some of the truths when it comes to things that really happened then.
“But it’s just inaccurately portrayed. My feeling has always been that Klay would never, ever, ever be anywhere but be a Warrior. And I thought he wanted to do that, too – I think he did want that. And unfortunately, Bob Myers used to say this all the time, he’d say it never ends well. It’s just unfortunate. It’s just the way it is. Things get in the way and circumstances prevail. So this is a very difficult process. His injury, coming back from the injury, which he didn’t play for two and a half of the five years of the contract, and finally came back and really worked hard to get there.
“All I can tell you is we love him. There’s going to be a statue of this guy without question when they’re all retired. I didn’t want to see it happen, but it did.”