Asked Tuesday about his Dallas Mavericks teammate, Klay Thompson, playing his first career game against the Golden State Warriors, Kyrie Irving was loud and clear with his support. Irving has changed teams several times throughout his career and made waves for how he's chosen to deal with the emotions of returning somewhere he used to play home games.
It's time for Thompson to make a return of his own. In a video posted by 95.7 The Game on X, formerly known as Twitter, Irving gave some advice to Thompson.
“I’m excited for him. I want him to be present as much as possible and to really receive the love and the flowers he deserves,” Irving said. It’s gonna be one of those games tonight. I can feel it.”
Thompson won four NBA championships with the Warriors in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022 with All-Star appearances every season from 2015-2019. He finished sixth in Warriors' franchise history in points, fourth in games played, and second in 3-pointers made. You can guess who's in first place (his last name rhymes with “worry”). He will forever be one of the two “Splash Brothers,” no matter how much effort fans put towards trying to sneakily replace him with Buddy Hield.
Mavericks-Warriors kicks off Emirates NBA Cup
After joining the Dallas Mavericks in free agency this past offseason, it's time for Klay Thompson to return to the city he called home for 13 years.
The lights will be extraordinarily bright for a regular season matchup on a Tuesday night. That's because the Mavericks and the Golden State Warriors are both in Group C of the Western Conference side of the Emirates NBA Cup, the artist formerly known as the in-season tournament. The two teams square off Tuesday night at 7 PM PT.
Over the next month, teams randomly drawn into groups of five will play four games against other teams in their group on what the league has deemed “Cup Nights.” Tuesday, November 12 is the first Cup Night of the season. And so the stage is set for Klay Thompson to experience something he never has before in his life: playing at the Chase Center as a visitor.
The Denver Nuggets, New Orleans Pelicans, and Memphis Grizzlies – along with the Warriors and Mavericks – comprise the Western Conference's Group C. Each group will compete to advance to the tournament's Knockout Rounds, where only eight of the league's 30 teams remain.
Those games are set for Tuesday, December 10, and Wednesday, December 11. Until then, monitoring how teams are doing within group play and tuning in to see those Emirates NBA Cup courts is what you can do to stay caught up.