Why Klay doesn’t like cameras (Exclusive!)

[first 8 paragraphs of article are free]

NEW YORK, NY — This was supposed to publish while I was in Philadelphia, but I still have zero rhythm when it comes to posting on this site, other than when I happen to be on a Golden State Warriors Zoom call and have enough time on-the-spot to start a “live thread” of quotes, which sometimes I use for the titles of other Zoom-sourced videos on our YouTube channel (sometimes I don’t, depends on my energy level).

So I think I will try harder and harder just to post on here as if they were tweets, rather than long-reads like this one. It’s kinda like preparing for an NBA game vs preparing for a workout. So far I’ve been writing these pieces (other than the Zoom calls) as if they’re NBA games. Hopefully that will gradually change over time.

Anyways, the story of the previous Wednesday’s “ho hum” win over the Blazers before this road trip (as described by Steve Kerr himself!) was really Klay Thompson’s long 15- to 20-minute pregame workout.

Yes, I was there to capture it this time:

I actually wasn’t there the time Klay was at pregame before that, so overall I’m two-for-three on Klay workouts on the main court before a game at Chase. And, yes, Klay didn’t like being filmed, again (which prompted me to write this written piece awhile back).

So… here’s where the paid subscribers get to view an additional eight minutes (NBA restricts all public posts to two minutes) of the end of Klay’s workout that night, plus see when he said, “F—!!!” after missing a shot and then laid into us camera men, especially the ones overtly filming him from a big TV setup (I’m not sure if he noticed me, but I shot him on both my iPhone 12 Mini and the big iPhone XR, so I’m sure he did). What exactly he said to us — and, of course, the video itself and what his trainer Charlie Torres told us is the impetus for Klay’s disdain for cameras — is beneath the paywall demarcation line below…

I mean, it’s ironic, right? The NBA is the biggest stage on Earth where cameras are the norm and you’re basically on the planet’s biggest fish bowl. Why is Thompson so sensitive about that? Is it just that he comes from a more introverted background (something I totally get, as I’m the same)? Is it that he plays the game first and foremost for the love of it and has never gotten caught up in the glamour?

Actually, no, Torres told me…