Thompson’s injury: The Warriors’ guard tore the ACL in his left knee during the third quarter. An MRI exam confirmed the diagnosis.
Warriors guard Klay Thompson tore the ACL in his left knee during Thursday night’s season-ending Game 6 loss to the Raptors in the NBA Finals, the team announced about 2½ hours after the game.
Thompson hobbled out back onto the court to make two free throws with 2:22 remaining in the third quarter of Game 6 at Oracle Arena. Minutes earlier, the Warriors’ All-Star shooting guard had been helped to the locker room after a scary fall following a dunk attempt.
If he hadn’t shot the free throws, Thompson could not have played the rest of the game. After his foul shots, the Warriors committed a foul to get a stoppage and allow Thompson to head back to the locker room for medical treatment.
Midway through the fourth quarter, the Warriors announced that Thompson was done for the game. He was seen leaving the arena on crutches.
“I think ... he wasn’t aware of the rule that if you don’t shoot the free throws you can’t come back in the game,” head coach Steve Kerr said after the Warriors’ 114-110 defeat that clinched the championship for Toronto. “So I think somebody told him in the hallway. Klay being Klay just turned right around and shot the free throws. We committed the automatic foul to get him out of the game, and he came back and told me — I think there was two minutes left in the third — ‘Just a two-minute rest, and I’ll be back.’ Next thing I heard was that he was done for the night.”
Thompson has a storied pain tolerance, including currently playing on a strained left hamstring. He missed only one game in his first three NBA seasons, and that was to attend his grandfather’s funeral. He missed Game 3 of this best-of-seven series with the hamstring injury, ending a streak of 120 consecutive postseason games played.
After Thompson initially went to the locker room Thursday, he was running around and doing jumping jacks in hopes of convincing the medical staff to allow him to return to the game.
“He’s a Warrior, no pun intended, but that’s how I’d describe him,” forward Draymond Green said.
When Thompson exited Thursday, he was the game’s leading scorer. He finished with a team-high 30 points on 8-of-12 shooting from the floor and 10-of-10 from the foul line.
Thursday’s injury came just three weeks before Thompson is set to become an unrestricted free agent. The Warriors have long been expected to re-sign him to a maximum contract, and that shouldn’t change in the wake of his injury.
Thompson is the rare player whom Golden State would pay max money despite knowing he could miss all of next season. The typical recovery timetable for an ACL tear is nine to 12 months. If Thompson only misses nine months, he wouldn’t return until mid-March — a month before the end of the regular season.
Kevin Durant, who will also become a free agent July 1, faces a similar situation after suffering a torn right Achilles tendon in Monday’s Game 5 win. Like ACL injuries, Achilles injuries typically have a recovery timetable of nine to 12 months.