Klay Thompson wants to stay with the Warriors. But that doesn’t mean they can keep him

NBA free agency is a touchy topic for players because they generally don’t want to talk about and/or haven’t given much thought to their plans beyond their current contract. Most players deflect questions about free agency until they actually make a decision, and most rumors come from “sources” close to a player’s camp.

For example: LeBron James didn’t want to talk about free agency until he made the decision to leave Cleveland for Miami, then didn’t want to talk about it until he left Miami for Cleveland. Now, he doesn’t want to talk about it until he makes his decision this summer and is calling current rumors “a non-story.” Kevin Durant didn’t want to talk about free agency until he left Oklahoma City for the Golden State Warriors.

Paul George is one of few players who have publicly spoken about their intentions for a looming free agency. On Friday, Klay Thompson became another.

Thompson was asked during a recent media session whether he wants to remain with the Warriors when his first unrestricted free agency rears around in 2019. His answer, according to The San Jose Mercury-News’ Mark Medina:

“Absolutely,” he said. “Playing for one team your whole career is definitely special. Only so many guys have done it in professional sports, so it’ll be a goal of mine. Hopefully it all works out.”

“It’s so far away. Anything I can do to stay with the Warriors is first and foremost. God willing, it happens. If not, I don’t even think about that.”

Does Golden State want to keep him?

“He’s certainly shown his worth here,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said, via Medina. “It’s pretty undeniable how important he is. There’s not a lot of guys that can do what he does and be as humble and selfless as he is.”

Thompson has been an invaluable piece to the puzzle as Golden State has rattled off two NBA championships in a three-year span and remain the favorites to win it all this season. He is averaging 20 points per game on borderline 50-40-90-club numbers of 49.4 percent shooting from the field, 45 percent shooting from three and 86 percent shooting from the foul line. Plus, he routinely defends the opposing team’s best player.

No player who has made more than 30 three-pointers this season shoots a better percentage from distance than Thompson, who has drilled more threes (184) than anyone not named Paul George or James Harden.

The easy answer here is yes, but we’ll have to wait and see how the money plays out.

The Warriors just signed Stephen Curry to the first-ever supermax contract worth $201 million over five seasons. The expectation is Golden State will offer a similar deal to Kevin Durant, who signed a two-year, $53 million deal last summer but is expected to opt out and sign a long-term extension in Oakland. Thompson’s free agency comes in 2019, and Draymond Green is in the third-year of a five-year, $82 million contract extension and will become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2020.

The Warriors will want to keep the band together and have the financial means and surplus to do so, but whether they will be able to remains to be seen. Remember: Once upon a time, the Oklahoma City Thunder had a Big 4 of Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and James Harden. Had that group stayed together, they would have certainly made a return to the NBA Finals after being washed away by Miami in 2012.

But the Thunder chose cap flexibility and avoiding luxury-tax payments instead of keeping its core together. They traded James Harden to Houston for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb and a pair of first-round picks. Houston, not Cleveland, is now the biggest threat to Golden State’s championship hopes, while Westbrook is the only pillar of OKC’s Big 4 remaining, though they have ostensibly successfully rebuilt around him.

The Warriors will face a similar predicament soon: Cough up the cash or sacrifice everything they’ve built to evade hefty luxury tax fees. They are already paying a bigger luxury tax bill than any team in the league, but that may change in the years to come, especially if the core as is fails to fend off the Rockets.

Remember: Thompson told The Vertical’s Shams Charania he felt “Kind of disrespected that people keep using the term sacrifice to describe me and describe us. We all want to see each other do well. But I’m not sacrificing shit because my game isn’t changing.”

Granted, Thompson was talking in a basketball context — and he might not have had to sacrifice on the court — but he may have to take less than expected to keep the Warriors together. That’ll be tough to do with other teams offering piping-hot max contracts when the clock strikes midnight on the eve of free agency.

Then again, Thompson also said he’d do “anything” to stay with the Warriors. Anything is probably, most certainly (possibly?) a nod at taking a slight pay cut. Who knows.

Maybe this is why players don’t talk about free agency. At the end of the day, we still have to wait it out.