Draymond Green breaks silence on Klay Thompson’s departure from Warriors

It’s been a busy week for the Golden State Warriors. Star sharpshooter Klay Thompson decided to leave the Dubs and play for the Dallas Mavericks, ending the trio of Thompson, Steph Curry and Draymond Green that had been together since 2012.

Today, Green shares what it meant to him to learn Thompson was leaving the Warriors:

Draymond said of Thompson’s departure: “I don’t really know how I feel about it. Klay told us last week. I don’t know who he told, but I know he told me. I’m pretty sure he told Steph last week. And he was like, ‘Yeah, man, like, you know…’, he started talking to me about the years, like, ‘This has been great, what we’ve done is so special.’ When Klay told me, I could just listen to him, you know, and it wasn’t like, ‘Yo, we could end up like this’ or ‘You should rethink this.’ It was just like, ‘Wow, okay. Congratulations, man. I’m happy for you. This is awesome.'”

“You know, to reassure you, it doesn’t change anything for us. It obviously changes the basketball court. But relationships are what they are. They’re forever. I think I shed a few tears.”

The Warriors core of Curry, Green and Thompson reached six NBA Finals, winning four NBA championships.

Warriors join Steve Kerr’s coaching staff

Amid the chaos of the past week, the Warriors are making some additions to Steve Kerr’s coaching staff, hiring Terry Stotts as a head assistant and Jerry Stackhouse as an assistant.

Stackhouse, a mid-1990s North Carolina basketball icon from Kinston, N.C., who became a two-time NBA All-Star during his 18 years as an athletic power forward in the league, was Vanderbilt’s head coach the past five seasons, compiling a 70-92 overall record.

He and the university parted ways in March after his team’s disappointing 2023-24 campaign (9-23), the program’s seventh straight season without an NCAA Tournament invitation.

Stotts, a longtime NBA head coach with the Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks and Portland Trail Blazers, joins the Warriors after a brief stint as an assistant with the Bucks last season. He resigned in mid-October after an altercation with head coach Adrian Griffin, who was later fired from his position.

Stotts and the Trail Blazers parted ways in the 2021 offseason after another unsuccessful playoff run that led to a first-round exit to the Denver Nuggets. Portland made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals in 2018-19 — swept by the Warriors — and they went to the second round in the 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons.