Mavs coach Kidd shares advice he gave Klay before Warriors game originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Klay Thompson, the Warriors and Dub Nation are preparing for an emotional day on Tuesday at Chase Center.
The veteran guard returns to the Bay Area to face his former team for the first time since joining the Dallas Mavericks in the offseason, and Golden State will pull out all the stopsincluding a pregame ceremony and commemorative fan gift, to honor its franchise legend.
Thompson will be ready for everything, and Mavericks coach Jason Kidd revealed in an interview with 95.7 “The Morning Roast” of The Game on Monday that he just talked to Thompson about the big game.
“We talked the other day about this opportunity,” Kidd told Bonta Hill and Joe Shasky. “It really doesn’t happen a lot when you leave a team that you’ve been with your whole career. To have the opportunity to come back and play at the home that he built with Chase. [Center]and also the excitement and the championships over in Oakland at the Coliseum. Just realizing it’s going to be an emotional couple of days here when you’re talking about today with practice and then tomorrow’s game.
“And so my thoughts [for him] it was just to enjoy, embrace it and have fun with it.”
Thompson spent 13 years with Golden State after the Warriors selected him with the number 11 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. His new coach, the 51-year-old Kidd, actually played against Thompson and longtime Warriors teammate Steph Curry for two seasons before the Hall of Fame guard retired after the 2012-13 season and knows how special the Splash Brothers duo was .
“They’re definitely up there [the best duos],” Kidd shared. “You’re talking about the Splash Brothers. Just the uniqueness of how they played the game, how they played for each other and helped each other achieve the highest goals and that is to win a championship.
“For two of the best shooters of all time to be on the same team is unique in itself, but they loved to play, they knew how to win, they learned how to win. And so, yes, that combination will go down as one of the best combinations in the NBA.”
For the first time on Tuesday, the iconic duo believed by many to be the greatest backfield in league history will face each other in what should be an emotional night in the Bay.
