Home basketball Klay Thompson’s Last-Day Heroics Snatch Title Away from Steph Curry and the Warriors

Klay Thompson’s Last-Day Heroics Snatch Title Away from Steph Curry and the Warriors

basketball — 04/16/2024

There wasn’t any seed-stealing for the Golden State Warriors in Sunday’s regular-season finale. But there was a major heist between teammates, courtesy of Klay Thompson.

Thompson snatched the NBA’s free-throw title from Steph Curry on the season’s final day, thanks to a perfect 5-for-5 performance at the charity stripe. With those baskets, Thompson finished the season with a 92.7% free-throw percentage, edging ahead of Curry’s 92.3%.

As one Redditor pointed out, Thompson didn’t even qualify for the NBA free-throw leaderboard until Sunday’s game. Heading into the tilt against the Jazz, Thompson had hit 122 free throws this season, three shy of the statistical minimum. But he got fouled shooting a 3-pointer late in the first quarter and made all three free throws, officially reaching the leaderboard and supplanting Curry, who was resting Sunday in preparation for the play-in tournament.

Thompson’s percentage lead was slim enough that he could not afford a single miss on the day — and he didn’t. Two possessions later, Thompson was fouled again and sent to the line, where he nailed both free throws. He would not shoot another for the rest of the game, but those five were enough to win the crown.

At least publicly, neither Thompson nor Curry seemed to recognize the thievery that had occurred. Thompson didn’t mention it in his postgame interview on NBC Sports Bay Area, and neither player has posted about it on social media. Thompson spent the afternoon following the game taking Chris Paul and Moses Moody out on his boat on San Francisco Bay.

But one has to imagine this will sting Curry, as it’s the second time in three years that a Warriors teammate has yoinked the free-throw crown from him. Jordan Poole did so during the 2021-22 season, with Poole’s 92.5% besting Curry’s 92.3% (yes, he shot the same exact percentage in two different seasons). It led to a cheeky trophy presentation at the start of the next season:

Curry is still the NBA’s all-time leader in free-throw percentage at 90.98%, one of only three players above the 90% line in their NBA careers. But it’s now actually been six full seasons since Curry last won an individual season’s free-throw title. He’s finished second three times, third once and fifth once (he didn’t qualify in 2019-20 because he played in only five games, though he shot a perfect 26-for-26 from the line that year).

We’ll have to wait until next season to see if Curry will present Thompson with a trophy, like he did Poole. But for Thompson, it has to be cool to cap a year that he admitted was personally trying at times with a career-high free-throw percentage and a trophy ripped from the hands of his Splash Brother.