His shoes always were going to be impossible to fill. But the shape of how Klay Thompson's piece fit the Warriors’ puzzle began to be formed, for just a few games and not for any longer than that.
Thompson no longer is a Warrior. The memories always will be there, but the two sides moved on last summer, and perhaps even before that. Thompson wears a different logo on his jersey than the one he represented for over a decade. His number isn’t the same, and neither is the position he plays after forming the greatest backcourt in NBA history alongside Steph Curry.
Nearly halfway through the first season of Klay in Dallas Mavericks threads and a No. 31 jersey, the Warriors are living the lesson of how hard it is to replace the old version of half the Splash Brothers, while the one who still resides in Golden State is on the losing end to the Toronto Raptors, losers in 16 of their previous 17 games, despite scoring 26 points with seven rebounds and seven assists just two months shy of his 37th birthday.
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Down Draymond Green (back/illness) and Jonathan Kuminga (ankle), Warriors coach Steve Kerr opted to go with a guard-heavy starting lineup Monday night at Scotiabank Arena. Andrew Wiggins slid down to power forward to form a frontcourt with center Trayce Jackson-Davis. Dennis Schröder remained in the starting backcourt alongside Curry, and in came Buddy Hield to provide offense.
Schröder and Hield combined to score 20 points on 8-of-25 shooting (32 percent) and 4 of 16 on threes (25 percent). Each had as many turnovers (two) as 3-pointers made.
“We have a lot of off-ball stuff that we run, and when he’s being guarded like that we like to have him set screens,” Kerr said after the loss when asked about taking press off Curry with the way he’s being guarded. “We should be able to free other people up. That should loosen the defense up. That’s where he can start moving after the screen, after the play.”
Teams aren’t afraid of the Warriors, who at 19-20 fell under .500 for the first time this season in a loss that gave the Raptors their ninth win of the season and fourth since Dec. 1. They are scared of Curry in his 16th season, playing with tendinitis in both knees and his right shooting thumb wrapped and all taped up.
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The 20 points Wiggins scored on 13 shots isn’t an intimidator. The roller coaster that is Hield’s shooting isn’t going to force teams off face guarding Curry, and neither is Schröder’s lack of comfort in Kerr’s offense.
Hield was supposed to be the shooter that could step into Thompson’s role. When the Warriors were 12-3 through their first 15 games, Hield was exceeding expectations and putting up better numbers than Thompson. Since then, a few big shooting nights have felt like nothing more than a mirage. The Warriors are 9-0 when he scores 18 or more points. Seven of those came in their first 12 games.
The worst of the Buddy Hield Experience was seen late in the Warriors’ loss in Toronto. With the Warriors up by one point, 101-100, and only 1:49 left in the game, Golden State had the ball out of bounds with just 2.4 seconds on the shot clock. Kerr called a great out-of-bounds play where Hield came off a screen set by Jackson-Davis and freed up for a wide-open three from the right corner that clanked off the rim.
His attempt at a game-winning three on the Warriors’ final offensive possession wasn’t close in a game where Hield had eight points and missed eight 3-pointers, going 2 of 10.
“He’s had some good looks and he’s a great, great shooter,” Kerr said of Hield. “We know that. I think he’s pressing a little bit. I think all our guys are pressing, because they know our margin for error is slim. He’s just pressing. But I trust him.
“I put him in for the last play because I always believe that he’s going to make the next shot. He gives us spacing, even when he’s not making shots. He gives us spacing. People respect him. They guard him and he opens up the floor. I’m going to keep playing him, I’m going to keep trusting him.”
It now has been a month since the Warriors traded for Schröder. The 12-year veteran guard has played in 14 games for the Warriors, in which they’re 5-9. He was averaging 18.4 points on 45.2-percent shooting and 38.7 percent on 3-pointers for the Brooklyn Nets before the trade, and now is at 10.1 points per game on 33.8-percent shooting and a 22.5 3-point percentage.
Moses Moody played 14 minutes off the bench and scored one point. Moody missed all six of the shots he took, including three 3-pointers, in Toronto. Brandin Podziemski was subjected to sweatpants and a hoodie on the sidelines for the ninth consecutive game because of an abdomen injury.
When the Warriors face the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday to finish a four-game road trip, it will mark 11 months since the last and final player to wear a No. 11 Golden State jersey was benched for Podziemski. The hard-nosed Podziemski, a No. 19 overall pick out of Santa Clara, was named First Team All-Rookie and figured to be Curry’s new running mate, all to be averaging 8.0 points and have a 29.5 3-point percentage in the 30 games (eight starts) that he has played in his second season as a pro.
De’Anthony Melton was the answer – for six games and two starts. The combination of brashly being unafraid of the moment offensively and being a long-armed defensive machine was the pairing that always worked best for Curry. The real tragedy in Thompson grabbing his left knee on the Oracle Arena floor in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals wasn't just the 30 points in 32 minutes he had already scored. That was the season all his efforts of manning up big guards like James Harden and staying in front of athletic marvels like Russell Westbrook was given its flowers in the form of Thompson’s first All-Defensive team selection.
There’s no telling what the version of him averaging 14.2 points on 41.3-percent shooting and 38.5 percent on threes would be doing for these Warriors right now. The version that faded into the Bay’s blanket of fog on that June night in 2019 has still been impossible to replace, and might always be.