Golden State Warriors: 5 Reasons Keeping Klay Thompson Makes Sense

2. Defense:

This one’s been driven into the ground more times than Breaking Bad’s won at the Emmys, but we can’t talk about the benefits of keeping Klay Thompson without mentioning the defensive end. Though his defensive rating of 106 last season wasn’t great, keep in mind that he was always tasked with the toughest defensive assignment to hide Steph Curry’s deficiencies on that end.

Thompson is a tenacious on-the-ball defender and during his time with Team USA this summer, he’s shown he’s fully capable of putting pressure on a ball-handler to the point of forcing turnovers. He’s quick on his feet, can move laterally pretty well and will be one of the better perimeter defenders in the league in a few years. Kevin Love? He’s never even been called an average defender before.

Love and Lee are both poor individual defenders, and both would benefit from playing alongside Andrew Bogut in the frontcourt. But Martin would be a MAJOR downgrade from Thompson on the defensive end, especially since he’s already 31 years old and is pretty much the best player he’s ever going to be. The Warriors had a top-five defense last season and by keeping around Thompson and Barnes (another promising defender), the Dubs will keep their core values intact.