The Warriors bet on the future; Klay watched Moody painfully go down in Dallas.
Nobody wanted this.
Moses Moody’s season ended with a patellar tear in front of former teammate, Golden State Warrior guard, and future Hall-of-Famer Klay Thompson. A man who suffered his own horrendous knee injury as a Dub.
Remember that the Dubs let go of Klay Thompson two years ago. Not pushed, not shoved. They held the door open, thanked him for everything, and handed the shooting guard future to two kids who had barely scratched their potential: Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski. The next chapter of Splash Brotherhood, typed up clean in a front office memo somewhere, filed under “Trust The Process.”
Monday night in Dallas, Klay knocked down five threes in a Mavericks uniform. On the other sideline, one of his replacements was carried off on a stretcher. The other one finished the game on legs that have been asked to carry weight they were never supposed to carry this soon.
The Warriors won in overtime. Nobody felt like celebrating.
Here is what makes it devastating beyond the injury report. Moody had missed the previous ten games with a wrist sprain. He came back Monday and scored 23 points while adding three steals, hooping like we always knew he could. He was, for one night, exactly the player the Warriors chose over the icon on the other sideline. Then that icon watched his student go down the same way he once went down. Different city. Same horror. Same floor betrayal dressed up in a new uniform.
Klay’s other mentee Podziemski finished the game, turning into something like an iron man for this team (team high 72 games played this season). But look at what he’s carrying with Steph and Jimmy Butler out. And the Warriors are asking the former Santa Clara product to hold it together, which he is fighting to do without complaint, drama, or a safety net.
Klay knew what that weight felt like. He carried it himself once, in a different era, before the dynasty calcified into something permanent. He was always one chess move ahead of the defense, and continued playing chess with Moody even after his departure from the Bay.
The Two-Timeline theory already lost one of its pillars when Jonathan Kuminga went to Atlanta. But Moody stayed and became in his fifth year exactly what the theory promised. A versatile, switchable, shot-making wing who could guard the league’s best and make sound decisions when there was no veteran safety net beneath him. In starting 49 of 60 games and posting career highs across the board, he was becoming the proof of concept the front office had been waiting on.
Klay watched his basketball inheritance play out in the most painful possible register. Moody down. Podz still standing, bearing weight that would buckle most veterans. And Klay, the vet who defined the position for a dynasty was across the court, still knocking down threes deep in his 30s, still reminding everyone in that building exactly what the original looked like.
The Warriors let Klay Thompson walk so the future could arrive faster. He watched it take the floor before Moody collapsed. The dynasty comes with heartbreak.