Klay Thompson Should Start for the Miami Heat

Hardaway is a very good shooter.

But Thompson is a threat to a defense that will have them on high alert. He has made 2,899 three-pointers, fourth-most in the history of basketball, having passed Damian Lillard last season. Twenty years of tape have taught every defense in the league that you do not leave him, that you chase him through screens, and that you close out hard even when he’s spotting up in the corner during the third quarter of a February game.

That reputation alone is an asset, regardless of how he shot last season. In his worst season he still shot 38% from beyond the arc. Defenders don’t check the splits before they decide whether to help off him. And that matters enormously in this specific offense, because of what Giannis does.

I have mentioned before how 52% of Giannis’s career assists have gone to three-point shooters. That would be third-highest in the modern record books, and last season it was 69 percent! His whole offensive identity is collapsing a defense and finding the man whose feet are set. The value of having Klay on the court with Giannis isn’t just whether he makes the shot. But his presence out there can make the help defender hesitate for a half-count before the pass ever leaves Giannis’s hands. Hardaway, for all his shooting prowess, does not create it to the same degree.

Thompson is one of the 2 best movement shooters of his generation and a player whose entire game is built on running off staggered screens, relocating on the drive, and getting a shot off in under half a second with his feet already squared.

Although Hardaway can do some of that, he is more of a stationary threat. Good spot-up, capable pull-up, but less dangerous when he’s the one being chased around the floor. Miami has spent the better part of a decade building an offense around exactly the skill Thompson has. The Bam handoff ecosystem with the pindowns, flares, the split cuts that allowed an undrafted Duncan Robinson to earn a $90 million deal is Klay Thompson’s native language. Miami went away from that a bit last season but that machinery is already installed into the minds of some of these players.

The defense between these players is also closer than you’d think. The instinct is to assume a 36-year-old coming off two catastrophic leg injuries is a worse defender than a 34-year-old who’s never suffered an injury that drastic. I’d push back on that, carefully.

Thompson’s defensive profile is low-event as he doesn’t generate deflections or force turnovers like he once used to.

But the rest of the picture is better than the current reputation that he’s been subpar. He’s still contesting effectively at the rim, and his foul rate is elite, which at his age tells you he’s defending with positioning and angles rather than gambling with his hands. He’s the hideable kind of imperfect defender and not the chaotic kind who bleeds fouls and blows rotations constantly as Miami has seen with others in the past.

Hardaway has never been a plus defender either. On a roster where you’d have Davion Mitchell hounding ball handlers at the point off attack and Wiggins taking the opposing teams’ best wing — just envision Bam and Giannis erasing everything behind them. The starting shooting guard is going to be hidden on the opposing team’s least dangerous perimeter player regardless of which one gets the job. Thompson’s size and ALL-DEFENSIVE team prowess gives him a slight edge.

There’s also a roster-construction argument that I think makes sense as to why I believe bringing Hardaway off the bench works best. Hardaway made more threes off the bench than any player in the NBA last season. Miami’s second unit needs a scorer, and moving Hardaway to the bench in order to accommodate a veteran player who has started 700-plus games solves a spacing problem. Thompson has been a starter his entire career. Hardaway has proven he can be a microwave off the bench. Putting each man where his track record proves them to be most effective is just good roster construction.

Klay just spent a year putting up 38.3 percent in the worst spacing environment of his career, on a 26-win team with no gravity around him. Now he’ll stand in windows created by the most unguardable driver in basketball, in a system built for exactly what he does. Heat fans have watched a written-off 36-year-old shooter change everything before.

We still talk about that shot, in that corner, til this day.