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Klay Thompson Reveals His Plans to Get Out of Shooting Slump

He wants to channel ‘Game 6 Klay.’

Zach Koons

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The start of the 2022 NBA Finals hasn’t been without struggle for Klay Thompson, but the Warriors sharpshooter thinks he has just the trick to help himself out of his small shooting slump.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday ahead Wednesday’s Game 3, Thompson said that when he’s going through an offensive downswing, he often goes onto YouTube to pull up videos of himself from better past performances. When asked what he might search for this time around, the 32-year-old had just the answer.

“I’ll probably just YouTube ‘Game 6 Klay’,” Thompson said with a smile, alluding to some of the iconic performances he’s had in Game 6’s in his career. “There’s some very high-pressurized situations I was in and I ended up shooting the ball well. When you can do it when your back is against the wall, you can do it at any given moment. It’s just about keeping that mental strong.”

Thompson won’t have to scroll back too far in the YouTube database to find one of his legendary Game 6 downpours. Just this year, in the Warriors’ series-clinching win over the Grizzlies in the Western Conference semifinals, the five-time All-Star scored 30 points and drained eight 3-pointers. He followed that performance up with a 32-point outburst in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals to close out the Mavericks. 

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Despite showing flashes earlier in the postseason, Thompson has failed to get going in the Finals. Through the first two games, which Golden State and Boston have split, he’s gone 10-for-33 from the field, including 4-of-15 from beyond the arc. After scoring 15 points in the series opener, Thompson dropped in just 11 points in Game 2.

With the series knotted up at one game apiece, the Warriors still have time to kickstart the second Splash Brother, but will need him to start contributing as soon as possible. The two teams will tip-off in Boston on Wednesday for Game 3 and Golden State is surely hoping to get “Game 6 Klay” a few days early.

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Zach Koons
ZACH KOONS

Zach Koons is a programming editor at Sports Illustrated who frequently writes about Formula One. He joined SI as a breaking/trending news writer in February 2022 before joining the programming team in 2023. Koons previously worked at The Spun and interned for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He currently hosts the "Bleav in Northwestern" podcast and received a bachelor's in journalism from Northwestern University.

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