Even though the Warriors have won four championships in eight seasons, Mychal Thompson believes there’s still a lot the team can learn from other NBA dynasties.
Klay Thompson’s dad recently appeared on 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast,” where he told hosts Bonta Hill and Joe Shasky how Golden State can continue its dynastic run.
The key in Mychal Thompson’s eyes? Keeping the gang together, even as key players like Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. approach free agency.
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“[Owners] Joe Lacob, Peter Guber, [general manager] Bob Myers, they have to learn the lesson from the Chicago Bulls, Kobe and Shaq’s [Los Angeles] Lakers,” Thompson said last Thursday. “Don’t break it up too soon. The Bulls broke theirs up too soon. They could have won another couple, but for some reason they got tired of winning rings. Explain that to me.”
“Shaq and Kobe had something special. Even they said, and they’ve admitted, they shouldn’t have left each other, separated, because they had more chances to win.”
The Thompson patriarch knows a thing or two about NBA dynasties himself, having won two championships with the Showtime Lakers during his 13-season career in the league.
He pointed to Kevin Durant as a perfect example of what happens when a player leaves a good thing to search for titles with another team
Golden State Warriors
“KD left to go pursue a ring someplace else. He should have stayed, because they had something,” Thompson told Hill and Shasky. “But when you have something as special as the Warriors have right now in the palm of their hand, you keep it together as long as possible until you suck out every last possible drop of fuel.”
If Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Thompson’s son Klay are the engine that makes this dynasty go, then the pieces around them are the fuel the NBA vet speaks of. The Warriors have made it clear their main offseason objective is to try and retain their vital free agents, and the team reportedly will look to discuss contract extensions with both Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins this summer.
And with Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and James Wiseman waiting in the wings, plus the team’s three new players taken in the 2022 NBA Draft, the future is bright.
“They better keep this team together for the next -- I mean everybody -- keep them together for the next four or five years, and they can win several more rings,” Thompson continued. “They are that good, that deep, because as Klay, Steph and Dray get older, they have youngsters coming up behind them to take up a lot of their slack.
“And that way they can preserve Klay, Draymond and Steph’s minutes and let them play late into their 30s and be still All-Star caliber players.”
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The Warriors are a dynasty all their own, but Thompson wants to see them reach their full potential and run it back.
Because although the Warriors core now has four rings on their fingers, he knows they’re nowhere close to being done yet.