Golden State Warriors: Will Klay Thompson avoid becoming Harrison Barnes in the Finals?

Golden State Warriors’ shooting guard Klay Thompson has struggled to find his range this postseason. While the Warriors enter their 2017 NBA Finals matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers on fire, their cold floor spacer is bringing back nightmares of last year’s Finals for Warriors fans.

Widely considered the second-greatest shooter in NBA history, Klay Thompson is having a dreadful postseason on the offensive end.

The same man whose 11-for-18 outside-shooting barrage brought the Warriors from the depths in Game 6 of last year’s Western Conference Finals only made seven 3s in this year’s penultimate round.

While the Golden State Warriors have embarked on the most dominant voyage to the Finals in NBA history (becoming the first team to go 12-0 through three rounds and winning those games by an all-time best 16.3 points on average), Thompson’s shot has been lost at sea.

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Generated 5/25/2017.

The fear among many fans is that Thompson will continue to miss, and cost the Warriors a championship in the process.

The Cleveland Cavaliers consistently left Harrison Barnes wide open during the 2016 NBA Finals, and it paid off. Cleveland was able to contain Thompson and Stephen Curry, while Barnes went 3-of-15 from deep during Golden State’s infamous last three losses.

As this year’s third option, many envision a similar outcome for Thompson: the championship teetering on whether or not he can find his stroke. The odds are that he will, but this is an inaccurate picture for many reasons irrespective of that.

Faulty Comparison

Barnes was an under-appreciated member of one of the best two-year regular season stretches in NBA history.

One of the rare NBA players that can guard all types of forwards—athletic wings, stretch-4s and post-up brutes—at an above average level, Barnes was a key component of the Warriors’ elite defense. On offense, his ability to get out in transition and exploit mismatches was just as important as his outside stroke.

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His reputation, however, hinged almost entirely on that final element. Fans warmed and cooled on him as his temperature from deep fluctuated.

While harsh, this was also somewhat justified. Defenses would leave him wide open in order to focus attention on Curry and Thompson. As a result, games often swung on whether or not he was hitting.

Perhaps that was an unfair burden to place on a guy who was simply an average shooter. Yet Barnes’ inability to attack space and get to the rim off the catch was also a culprit in the magnification of his threes. So too was the visible mental wars he’d fight with himself. Every player is somewhat streaky. Few, if any, saw the massive confidence oscillations that plagued Barnes in Golden State.

At times, Barnes seemed like a big-game player. He shot 42.1 percent from deep in the 2015 NBA Finals, and 53.3 percent against the Thunder in last year’s conference finals. At other times, he seemed to shrink.

The New Barnes

One of the many things that made the Kevin Durant signing so incredible was how it replaced Barnes with not only Durant, but with Thompson too.

Durant replaced Barnes on defense, and then some. He is an even better dual-forward defender, and miles better as a help guy. Durant’s transition defense and weakside shot-blocking has been so impactful that it more than made up for the major defensive downgrade that was Zaza Pachulia replacing Andrew Bogut.

On offense, he replaced much of Barnes’ game as well. He fills the same role as a lob threat and transition finisher. When teams put their best wing defenders on Curry and Thompson, Durant goes at the unlucky fellow forced to guard him. When the Splash Brothers create chaos, he takes the open jumper.

Of course, he does all of these things substantially better than Barnes. He does them so well, in fact, that he often ceases to fill the Barnes role at all. Rather, it is Thompson who defenses opt to de-prioritize.

Defense and Spacing Travel Well

When considering how Thompson can avoid being this year’s Barnes, the first way is by just being Klay Thompson.

Notice above how I said “de-prioritize,” but not “ignore.” As cold as Thompson has been this postseason, defenses are still guarding him. They may be more willing to stick their worst defender on him than they would if were on fire, but letting him stand 25 feet from the basket and allowing Curry, Durant, Green and whoever to play 4-on-4 is something defenses could never do with Barnes.

In this sense, even a cold Thompson is more impactful than a hot Barnes. If Barnes hit four threes in a game last season while Curry and Thompson were contained, defenses would be happy. If Thompson hits zero this year but Curry and Durant go off, there’s little solace for Warriors’ opponents.

Notice the defender constantly stuck to Klay in Golden State’s last game.

There’s this too: Thompson is a more important defender, particularly against Cleveland. For all Barnes’ versatility guarding forwards, he could not handle the most versatile of forwards in LeBron James. The Warriors preferred Green, Andre Iguodala and even Thompson on the King.

Meanwhile, Thompson was and still is Golden State’s first, second and third option on Kyrie Irving. Curry can handle him for a play here and there, but the more he’s on Irving, the more he gets worn down and into foul trouble. He also cannot guard the Irving-James pick-and-roll, because it requires him to switch onto James.

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Thompson can handle those switches, but more importantly, can bother Irving in isolation. People think of Irving’s 2016 Finals and assume he torched the Warriors, but in reality, it was the difficulty of his shots that made his performance so memorable.

Thompson was the one forcing the majority of those tough shots. If he can play the same defense he did last year, and there’s no reason he can’t, the Warriors will be in fantastic shape. Take out Irving’s 17-for-24 performance in Game 5 (when the Warriors were down their best screen-switcher and drive-helper in Green) and his Game 7 shot over Curry, and his Finals plummet from legendary to mediocre.

There’s no telling if Thompson will break out of his shooting slump. His track record says he will, but Barnes’ track record said he’d show up big on the Finals stage. Shooting is the hardest variable to predict in a short series.

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One thing that we can predict, with near certainty, is this: As long as Klay Thompson is on the court, he is in no danger of becoming Harrison Barnes. He could never hit another three, and that would still ring true.