San Francisco, CA – Historically, Klay Thompson would defend the best offensive player on the opposing team. Now those days are over according to Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr. The job of taking on the most dangerous player on the opposing team now belongs to Andrew Wiggins, even if Thompson's injuries never happened.
“I still want Andrew (Wiggins) to take the most dangerous guy,” Kerr told Clutch Points. “That's a great role for Andrew, but most teams have more than one dangerous guy. So Klay will start getting some more difficult matchups as we go, and I think he's perfectly capable of handling them.”
Everyone knows how great of a shooter Thompson is already, but the average fan might not have understood how good of a defender he was. The three-time champion only made the NBA All-Defensive Team once, but after being the Warriors' best on-ball defender for years and one of the best in the NBA, he probably deserved more selections.
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Making the NBA All-Defensive Team is extremely difficult, and in most cases, it takes team success and popularity to get noticed. There are a ton of things about defense that don't show up on the stat sheet, so you can easily be overlooked. Warriors forward Draymond Green is arguably the best defender in the world, and each year he has to promote himself to be recognized as one of the top guys, even though when you watch him, it's quite obvious.
Now that Wiggins is the Warriors' new defensive lead, it could potentially get him known as one of the league's best defenders, just like Thompson was in his prime.
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