The 2019 NBA off-season projects to be even more wild than the 2018 off-season as a third of the league will have max cap space and multiple stars will be available including Kawhi Leonard and Klay Thompson.
The rumor mill has already started where these high caliber players could/should choose to take their talents elsewhere, but Klay Thompson is nipping that notion in the bud for the moment by declaring his loyalty to the Warriors.
This is what he told Marc Medina of the San Jose Mercury News:
“I’ve said it many times before: I would like to be a Warrior for life,” Thompson told Bay Area News Group before hosting a party at Hotel Vitale as a prelude to his first annual Thompson Family Foundation Golf Tournament on Sunday at TPC Harding Park. “Contract negotiations are way down the line. But I think we all have the same interest. I would love to be here for the rest of my career.”
Thompson’s father former NBA player Mychal Thompson was even more emphatic with his son’s desire to be a Warrior for the long term as he told Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle:
“Oh yeah, you can mark it down,” Mychal Thompson said at a party to kick off the Thompson Family Foundation’s first charity golf tourney. “Klay’s going to retire in the Warriors’ uniform. He’s going to play at Chase Center (the Warriors’ new arena, opening in 2019), and he’s not going to be at Chase Center as a visiting player, he’s going to be a Warrior for the next seven or eight years.”
Usually when you have a star like Thompson who could be an even bigger star and the face of a franchise elsewhere, after having the level of success he has had in Golden State, he would decide that he may want to be “the guy” elsewhere. Klay Thompson is a unique guy though, he possesses no real ego it seems and just wants to be a part of a winning environment.
That is not what 29 other teams want to hear though.
