Whatever you do, don’t ask Klay Thompson a hypothetical question.
He signed with the defending Western Conference Champions, thinking he’d be leaving an aging Golden State Warriors team for greener pastures. Instead, a Luka Dončić-less Dallas Mavericks team was officially eliminated from the NBA playoffs contention on Friday, while ESPN caught the architect of the 2024-25 Mavs with one of the coldest camera shots imaginable.
And Klay Thompson appeared ready to give a reporter the cold shoulder when he was essentially asked if he’d take a do-over on his “Choose Your Own Adventure” offseason decision.
The question: knowing what he knows now, would he still have chosen to come to Dallas this past offseason?
“Don’t do this to me. Don’t do that to me. Don’t do that,” Klay Thompson replied. “That’s kind of a ridiculous question because I don’t own a time machine and don’t believe in going back or looking back. If I did that my whole career, I would not be where I’m at, and I wouldn’t have been able to persevere through two really hard injuries. So, I’m here in Dallas, and I enjoyed my time, and I’m looking forward to the future.”
It was a fair question, but also a bit absurd. It’s the kind of question you ask, knowing full well it’s probably not going to go over too well.
But that’s part of the job. Hypotheticals can rub players and fans the wrong way, but they’re still worth asking. After all, Thompson might’ve had second thoughts if he knew Luka Dončić was about to be traded, Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis would both get hurt, and the Mavericks would end up as the league’s punchline and punching bag.
But as Klay Thompson said, there’s no time machine.
Instead, he gave the answer you’d expect from a seasoned veteran who knows there’s no changing the past. You make your decision, you live with it, and you move forward. Sure, there might be regrets, but there are no rewrites.
So, why dwell on it if you can’t change it?
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.