What do you do when a season goes sideways, when the numbers stop whispering and start testifying? When “veteran presence” quietly mutates into “aging shooter searching for relevance”? If you are Klay Thompson, you wait for Christmas.
You wait for the one day when Chase Center remembers muscle memory instead of percentages. When the building recalls who you were before the injuries, before the exit, before the box score began telling a colder story than the banners ever did. You wait for December
25th because that day is a part of the tapestry of your illustrious soon to be Hall-of-Fame career.
Klay Thompson has played ten Christmas Day games in his career. He has averaged 16.1 points, shot 38.4 percent from the field, 33.8 percent from three, and made 27 threes on 80 attempts. The efficiency has come and gone. The moment never has. Christmas has often pulled something out of him that regular nights could not. Klay understands that Christmas is theater.
This season, though, has not been regular in any way that flatters him.
Through 28 games in Dallas, Klay is averaging 11.1 points on 36.9 percent shooting, with 35.3 percent from deep. The Mavericks are 12 and 19, a team drifting without oxygen. Losses stack. Roles blur. And Klay, fairly or not, has been more symptom than cure.
His games against Golden State since he departed two years ago tell a quieter truth. There’s been four matchups and a 2 and 2 split, averaging nearly 20 points per game. That’s better shooting than his season average, yet still a version of himself that feels half-remembered inside Chase Center. Familiar, but distant.
Christmas does not care about distance! Christmas is about a single moment that forgives the rest. About waking up on December 25th and receiving exactly what you have been waiting for, whether you earned it or not. Klay needs this game more than any other date on Dallas’ schedule. Not because one win saves a sinking season or because beating the Warriors rewrites the exit. He needs it because Christmas at Chase Center is the rare stage where a legacy can speak louder than a stat line.
This is his biggest audience of the year. The arena where four championships were won. Where memories are welded into fans who will never forget him. And it arrives at a moment when Dallas is begging for someone to steady the wheel. Golden State knows the script. They have lived it. They have watched Klay turn ordinary games into personal declarations simply because the calendar said it mattered. Draymond will talk. Steph will search him out during warmups, that mix of competitiveness and affection hovering between them. The crowd will stand, applaud, and then spend the next 48 minutes praying he misses.
Because that is how love works at this level. This year, the stakes are heavier. At 35, there are not many chances left to remind the league who you are. Career numbers like 44.9 percent shooting and 40.9 percent from three feel like artifacts now. But one night, on the right floor, in front of the right witnesses, can tilt a narrative faster than a month of quiet competence. Dallas needs that version of Klay. The one who averaged nearly 19 points over almost 900 games. The one who once treated 60 points like a warmup. The one who dropped 37 in a quarter and turned Game 6 into a personal sermon against elimination.
More than that, I wonder if Klay needs it for himself.
Not to prove anything to Warriors fans, who will love him regardless of the result. But to remember who he is when the noise fades, when the percentages disappear, when all that remains is the ball, the rim, and a building that still knows his name.
The numbers say he has done this before.
The calendar says there is no better day than today.
One game.
One building.
One chance to remind everyone that even when a season drifts toward the edge, Christmas can still feel like magic.
Merry Klaymas. Let’s see if the old captain has one more night left in those legs…in a loss. BECAUSE IT’S DUB NATION FOREVER BABY, ON MAMAS!
