The look on Klay's face is great. You know he just wants to turn around and scream 'WTF are you doing'
Thompson isn't an elite defender. He's a better defender than Curry but hardly elite. Both Curry and Thompson have the luxury of having Bogut and Green to back them up when they get beat. Curry gives up on plenty of plays but when that happens the Warriors have great help defense and Green and Bogut are there waiting. Jason Terry said the same exact thing last week. Thompson's primary responsibility is to take away the jumpshot. When he gets beat Green and Bogut have his back. Go to NBA.com and watch the video of Harden vs Thompson or Iggy. They play way up on him to deny the shot and he goes by them fairly easily but then he's challenged by Green and Bogut at the rim. You can look at most any defensive metric that you want and Harden isn't at the bottom of the league. The difference is that when Harden gets beat then many times there's no rotation over to stop that man. People like to quote Harden's DPRM. He's at -0.78 which is #48 among shooting guards. That sounds bad, right? It does until you realize that Klay Thompson is at -0.72 which is just above Harden at #47. Likewise, J.R. Smith is at -1.22 (57th), Wes Matthews is -1.32 (60th),D.Waiters is -1.59 ( 65th), D. Wade -1.73 (68th), Reddick -1.79 (69th), A. Wiggins is at -2.04 (72nd), A. Affalo is -3.00 (79th). Thompson takes the better scorer so that Curry doesn't have to. That's a tough role for him but that doesn't make him an elite defender. Trevor Ariza took the toughest assignments for us this year but he was bad defensively all year.
