Klay Thompson or Kevin Love will get a ring this year, and either way the state of Oregon will be proud. Thompson and Love are both NBA stars and they both grew up in the beaver state. In fact, the two encountered each other well before they ever squared off in the 2016 Finals.
No, Thompson and Love never crossed paths in the league, as the former has played his whole career in Golden State while the latter has played only in Minnesota and Cleveland –although they were almost once traded for one another. No, the pair didn’t team up in college; Thompson went to Washington State while Love brought UCLA to the final four in his only season as a Bruin. The two didn’t even play on the same high school squad.
In fact, to see the connection between Love and Thompson, one has to go all the way back to their middle school days when they played on the Lake Oswego All-Star Little League team in Oregon. In an article chronicling the many similarities between the two stars, The Oregonian revealed that their baseball squad almost made it to the Little League World Series back in the early 2000s. Love was apparently an elite pitcher who could hit 90 mph by the time he got to high school, while Thompson is described as more of an “all-around player.”
If you can’t tell, Love is the giant in the back row of the picture above. Young Klay is a little harder to spot, but he is on the bottom all the way to the left. In addition to playing on the same Little League team together, the two also happened to attend the very same elementary school.
To make this year’s Finals matchup even weirder, LeBron James and Steph Curry just so happened to be born in the same hospital in Akron. At this point, it wouldn’t shock me if Draymond Green and Kyrie Irving turned out to be distant cousins or something.
(Via The Oregonian)
