Klay Thompson Family Upbringing: The Quiet Kid Played Baseball With Kevin Love Too

klay thompson family upbringing (Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account)

There’s an excellent 10- to 15-minute read of Golden State Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson‘s family upbringing in the latest issue of Slam Magazine, written by Abe Schwadron (@abe_squad). You can read the full article here.

One of the more interesting tidbits was that Thompson had played baseball with Kevin Love on his fifth- and sixth-grade all-star teams:

And yet, his most memorable childhood sports experience wasn’t even on the hardwood, though it does feature another legend out of Lake Oswego.
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“Actually, my best team ever was my little league baseball team. I was on the same team as Kevin Love. We won state and everything. We were only a couple games away from going to the Little League World Series,” says Klay, who remembers playing every position but catcher, while Love was primarily a pitcher. “Kevin looked like a giant when he was on the mound. He was like 6-1, 6-2 in fifth grade.”

Apparently, Love would have chosen baseball over basketball if he were left-handed. As Charley Walters of TwinCities.com PioneerPress writes:

Mychal Thompson, the former University of Minnesota Gophers great who was in town recently as radio analyst for the Los Angeles Lakers, talked about what a phenomenal baseball player Love was as a youngster.
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“A Little League legend,” Thompson said.
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Thompson knew because his sons played baseball with and against Love and watched him pitch perfect games growing up in Lake Oswego, Ore.
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Love passed up playing baseball in high school to focus on basketball despite a fastball clocked in the low-90s mph as a ninth grader.
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“I always wanted to be like (future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher) Randy Johnson because he was 6-10,” said Love, who also is 6 feet 10. “But he was a lefty. If I was a lefty, I’d probably still be playing baseball. I still love baseball, and I always think about what if I were out on the mound.”

Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle touched on this two summers ago at Team USA camp:

Minnesota power forward Kevin Love and Thompson grew up together in Portland. They even played on the same all-star baseball team in fifth and sixth grades.
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‘To see Klay here is a little surreal, and I’m sure Klay would send the same thing right back at me,” Love said. “I think he’s the type of guy who progressively gotten better throughout his rookie season, and he’s a guy who is going to continue to improve and have more successes. At his size, he’s going to be very effective for years to come.”
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Thompson said that as early as the second grade, he and Love would have competitions to decide who was the better basketball player.

Aside from the Love connection, Schwadron describes Klay’s childhood:

“He was different from his brothers Mychel and Trayce,” the father, now in his eighth season as an analyst for the Lakers’ radio broadcast team, explains. “He took after his mother. He was a very quiet kid. Sometimes when he was little, we’d wonder where he was, and he’d be off in a corner reading his books. One of his favorites was Green Eggs and Ham.”
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Klay’s older brother would tag along to dad’s practices and games as a toddler, but Mychal was out of the League before Klay was 2. As such, Klay’s earliest real memories of dribbling a basketball are from his playmaking days in CYO rec ball, or shooting on the backyard goal his dad installed one Christmas, rain or shine, imagining himself as Penny Hardaway, Kobe Bryant, Reggie Miller or Allan Houston.

Not too long ago on Klay’s birthday, Mychel posted this picture:

The intra-family matchups sounded like bitter blood clashes:

Around that same time, the legendary Thompson backyard battles began—always 2 on 2, always the same teams: Mychal, two-time NBA Champ, and his youngest son Trayce, now a top prospect in the Chicago White Sox organization, against his eldest son Mychel, who debuted with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011 and now plays for the Warriors’ D-League affiliate in Santa Cruz, and Klay. “Usually one of us would quit before the game even ended, because it would get pretty heated,” says Klay, while his dad claims the older boys would complain about him cheating in favor of Trayce…
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“I still think if we had a rematch, me and Trayce against Klay and Mychel, we could beat them, because I could still back Mychel down in the post, and Trayce is stronger than Klay, so he could muscle him out of the way,” Mychal laughs, adding, “Don’t tell Klay I said that.”
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When Klay is relayed the message—sorry, Mychal—a week later in BK, he rolls his eyes. “Man, he can barely run.”