Klay Thompson 2021 Media Day Press Conference | Golden State Warriors

clay i'll just start with a general one how's it how's it feel to to be back at media day and to be getting closer to getting back into game action oh it feels so good to put this jersey on and it feels great to be on the court even better be on the court so incredible absolutely incredible is the headband going to be part of this season all year well it's been with me my whole rehab so could be we'll see how i shoot you know i'm pretty superstitious clay we all know i mean they don't want to put an exact timetable on this but and we've asked you this many times but do you have a set date and is there like one milestone in your mind that you want to hit before you're back on the court i don't have a set date but i um don't anticipate anything before 12 months it's not that's at least till late november early december and then it's kind of just a feel thing you know it's a lot of condition you have to do but there is an end point and that's what excites me the worst is far far behind me coach kerr said that uh bob myers had already joked with him and said you you have to come back at a home game have you have you thought about that and what the what the crowd will be like when you do walk out oh yeah thought about that moment for two years you know i really miss basketball um i miss playing for the warriors in front of our great fans so yeah i would be lying to you if i said i would not think about that but i think about it every day and uh get a little nervous thinking about it but it's going to be very special it's going to be a great night clay i'm sorry go ahead jane i saw you uh doing your photo shoots and and you got off the ground always there that uh looks like looks like you're you're healthy i mean i know that's that's one it's one thing but it's another thing to do in a nba game with the best athletes in the world but i'm excited my goodness just to be able to walk around run and jump again and you take that for granted when you go through the injuries i have so i'm just excited to play with the team tomorrow and get up and down that's gonna be a fun day with how competitive you are and have been your whole career i'm sure over the last two years the word patience has probably taken a new meaning to you that it has you know you gotta really be patient with your body your mind knows you can do things that you're always used to doing but sometimes the human body can snap a ligament or two and that rehab process is a long one and uh you know you got to be like water and just let that frustration roll off your back especially when you want to come back and be one of the greats clay you described 2020 as the worst year of your life i mean through the injury hardships and losing your grandmother and everything else that was going on how do you feel like you've you've grown through that hardship do you feel like you've changed in a personal way yeah i have such a healthy appreciation for this game and um you know i wouldn't really gloat in my past success but when you have a lot of time on your hands you can re-watch a lot of film and sometimes i re-watch those and think how did i do that or i can't believe our team did this and that's what inspires me when i'm doing this rehab to do that type of stuff again and also i am able to relate to younger athletes who go through these things so that's a positive and i know you've always loved basketball but would you say you've fallen in love with basketball again or did watching that i've always loved basketball did watching that film make you fall in love with the warriors again or the situation no i always loved the warriors like this team that drafted me they um i've seen the fan base grow i've seen the team go through you know my rookie year winning 23 games four years later breaking the nba season record for wins 16-1 the playoffs another record so i'm very prideful to be a warrior and so should everybody else who puts on this uniform because it is truly a privilege to play for this organization clay chris alvarez abc7 uh welcome back what's your response from your teammates like when they see you i know a lot of people are excited to see you but can you seat your teammates as when you're around yeah feeling like a veteran and it's uh it's just been great to lean on these guys especially over the last year i got to watch a lot of them play so hard and i got to watch guys carve out a nice niche for themselves in the nba and now i want to come back and be able to help them you know we all have a role to do whether it's lead the team in scoring or play 10 minutes a game these guys take great pride in that and that's what excites me is that our front office does a great job in selecting great guys who want to win and as far as captain clay this summer is there a wait list for the boat on your teammates and how long might that reservation be uh that's a great question it's definitely a wait list you got to tell them you got to show me you can tie a boat knot you have to be able to not get seasick for at least an hour and um i don't know you just have to have an enthusiasm for the ocean like i do and then i'll let you on the axle par clay what have you learned about how strong you are mentally to be able to endure that downtime uh i'll learn a lot more when i come back and i feel that game action because i'm still in the middle of my rehab i'm like probably 75 80 percentile what i need to do so when i get close to 100 percent i'll start to feel myself again but um what i learn as far as mentally just there's things that you cannot control but you can control how you react to every situation and i've learned to take a more emotional conscious approach to crap that comes my way what exactly can you do right now on the court um i can make a lot of jump shots i um pretty good at defensive sliding my timing's a little off my reaction time's not there but that's also being rusty two years so i anticipate you know with hopefully in the next four weeks play five on five again one on one and then from there it should be smooth not smooth sailing but it should be up from there you know i've done everything but five on five one on one so i'm feeling very confident in my body again what did you think of the way they rebuilt the roster this summer and the idea of you know you guys trying to compete for a title this year and also obviously you got two rookies james still coming along and and that mesh i think it's great i think the future's bright and the present is even brighter so uh you know i actually got young guys that listen to me it's pretty crazy how time has evaporated but i am excited to coach these guys and just play alongside them and um hopefully teach them a few of the little tricks i've learned over the years and oh i mean i just get excited seeing these young guys run up and down with their spry legs and their ability to get above the rim gets me excited to try and you know develop their skills a little more in their basketball minds play the world has changed a lot since you last played i mean obviously the pandemic has been a bit bigger made a big effect but we've had a lot of social justice movements and so forth in that time too what have you been able to like sort of persevere and what have you been able to see and take from the way things have changed in our lives over the last couple years um i mean i've learned as professional athletes and nba players we have a platform it's our right to do what we want with that platform well that's bring more attention to social justice issues or you know promote your own business or a small business or the community and i've learned that this uh it's a very special opportunity to have these type of platforms you know world leaders sometimes don't even have a biggest platform as we can and i think it's great that we voice not only our frustrations but we try to empower communities that may be marginalized and you know i thought a really special moment for us last year was walking through oakland with juan toscano and watching him lead you know he grew up in the east oakland it's tough we all know how tough it is out there and just follow him and his friends and the neighborhoods and to chant the names of those who've been unfairly murdered for and unarmed that was probably my favorite moment of the year it was very empowering and it was so surreal and special and i hope to see juan do that and be so vocal about it because um you know i was very lucky had a privileged lifestyle growing up my dad played the league i went to private school so sometimes i think for so many people out there we need to be more empathetic what people go through on a daily basis and i think the warriors organization is at the forefront of that they're so involved with the community not only in oakland but in san francisco san jose and they've empowered a lot of people and i think juan toscano will have a movie about his story one day he's a so we got some great minds on our team and i've learned that as nba players we can be at the forefront of change if we really want to clay count on that note what what have you learned as you got older that perhaps you didn't see from a social justice standpoint growing up and true i learned that the cards are stacked against a lot of people um you know i was the son of an nba player so for a lot of my life i was able to operate in spaces with a lot of a lot of white people a lot of people who come from great families who go to college who are lawyers doctors but then you know you come to the nba and you learn from your teammates you learn from players who come from the inner city or lb who came from the favelas of brazil and you know they've worked so hard to elevate their lifestyle but they it's hard because you have so much family and friends who you want to have that same american experience and sometimes those cars are just stacked against you whether it's the neighborhood you grow up in the school system you're in it's hard just to even attain insurance your next meal and 2020 really taught me that we still have such a long way to go especially in this country you know for people to have the same opportunity i had as a kid you know i had everything handed to me i had gym access i had great schooling and i want every child no matter what color you are to have that opportunity and it might seem like it's impossible but it's not and i think you start within your community first you're trying to empower those around you whether it be your family or friends then you try and go bigger we got the platform playing for the warriors you know you try to preach great things whether it's valuing time your family your relationships rather than material things or the big house or the mansion but really just the ability to inspire people is what i learned 2020 is all about in in las vegas did you ever have a racial incident growing up or did you being the son of your father just protect you too much from that no i would you know being um at private school a lot you know sometimes you're really only there's only a few kids of color so you would hear ignorant things but it didn't affect me as much as it does now in adulthood because i was a child you know i just let it roll off my back whether it was hearing the n-word or racial ethics about marginalized groups you just learn that's ignorance and all you can do is check people for it and i learned in adulthood how deep words really cut you know you you remember those traumas as a kid and i didn't get much at all but you know so many of my friends in the nba have so many stories about being stereotyped whether it's being pulled over for being black or checked in the shopping mall for buying stuff and not thinking you could afford it stuff like that just opened my mind and trying to be more compassionate to people who've had to deal with that from their grant for generations and uh i think 2020 really showed us that the world needs more love and just to try to hear people's story because you don't want to be judgmental of people who've gone through so much clay um coming back from two years you look at the roster and i think it's just four guys that you've played with with steph drummond well three oh kavon and now andre coming back does it when you look at this roster you look at all the new faces and do you almost feel like it's a changed team from last time you played with them not really i mean i got so much playoff experience with those guys you named but definitely the bench has obviously changed you know there's a lot there's like a revolving door in the nba it's a business but um you know jordan pulls in his third year like i remember when he was my rookie like where's time gone really and why is it his second year so it gives me a lot of life to see these young guys reminds me of you know when me steph and draymond first came on board and how everything was so fresh and every night was a big opportunity whether preseason or playoffs so uh although it does feel like a new team there's still a ton of familiarity between you know the core guys who've been here and um luckily for us these guys are willing to do whatever it takes to win clay when you when you went down initially you were uh reaching a kind of a new level of your ability uh do you feel like from what you've done and how far you've come do you still feel like uh that level is attainable oh yeah that's my it's my last taste of hoops was 2019 finals and i was really shooting the heck out the ball and i might not get there right away but i expect to be there at some point during the season and i think very highly of myself when it comes to scoring and being a two-way player and although i've been through tough injuries i'm not going to use that as a crutch i'm going to go out there and play as hard as i can and luckily for me we got a great training staff who won't let me loose until i'm really ready but um i was on my way you know i was playing the best i ever played in the finals so i expect to take off from that note that i mean that's just that's just my attitude clay a lot of guys are extending their career um into their close to their 40s do you have an idea of when you would like to play as long as it might be and do you think you can get like stuff on you know you want to go like steph and tom brady like those type guys i would like to but sometimes stuff happens you can't control and um health is obviously the most important factor when it comes to longevity so uh i just want to kill it this year not even this year i just want to kill it at training camp but i would love to play tom 40 i mean the greatest shooters i've always had longevity whether it be ray allen reggie miller our staff i mean steve kerr played forever i plan on helping out i plan on shooting in this league for a long time what do you think andre returning can do for you guys oh just his leadership the man has had one of the most incredible careers in a warriors jersey you know he's one of our three finals mvps he is a clutch defender a clutch shooter and even more importantly his you know when they say more than an athlete andre represents that he has been a great investor in the bay area he's a great family man you know to see little andre junior now 14 about to go into high school is crazy and he can just you know like be a shoulder for these young guys in a year he uh has really figured it out and i'm just happy to have him back i still go to him for advice on the daily so i love i love andre he uh will have his jerseys with in the rafters one day as he should because he's you know a hall of famer in my book

Channel: Golden State Warriors

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Keywords: Golden State Warriors, Golden State, Warriors, GSW, Dubs, DubNation, Dub Nation

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Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021