Klay Thompson Laid The SmackDown On A Bottle Of Gatorade


Klay Thompson is one of the NBA’s most fascinating stars. He spent what seemed like his entire summer gallivanting around China for his sneaker sponsor Anta, and from that one trip alone we got to witness Thompson Shaqtin’ himself on a 360 dunk attempt before filming a bizarre commercial featuring him bathing with his new kicks.

Thompson went from his summer in China to the 2017-18 NBA regular season where he landed in the middle of a news report about dangerous New York City scaffolding. We don’t know if there is some higher power at play, or just Thompson’s incredible luck, but wherever Klay goes, hilarity seems to follow. It’s a gift.

Whatever the case may be, Thompson found himself in the middle of another moment after the Golden State Warriors defeated the New Orleans Pelicans on Saturday night. But first, some backstory. Thompson is one of the many professional athletes to have an endorsement deal with the sports drink company BODYARMOR.

Gatorade has an endorsement deal with the NBA, so there is some obvious conflict here. During every NBA press conference, you’ll see a bottle of Gatorade at the podium for whoever is up there. Some players drink it, some don’t, but it’s always there unless a player decides to remove it.


BODYARMOR’s Klay Thompson has a rich history removing Gatorade bottles from his press conferences. In fact, KNBR’s Sam Hustis has documented Thompson removing Gatorade from his press conferences dozens of times. If you have some time to kill, searching Twitter for the hashtag #KlayHatesGatorade is an oddly satisfying endeavor. I’ll drop my personal favorite below, which documents the life of a Gatorade bottle during post-game pressers when you’ve got different athletes with different endorsement deals to worry about.

The logic here is pretty simple. A company like BODYARMOR is paying Thompon a lot of money to endorse their sports drink, and if he’s spotted with a bottle of Gatorade every night, there isn’t much value to that endorsement. BODYARMOR would be paying for what Klay Thompson is giving Gatorade for free.


Through the dozens of videos under #KlayHatesGatorade, you can see Thompson carefully placing the Gatorade out of the shot, or under the table. He has never resorted to violence, until now. On Saturday night, Klay took his Gatorade hatred to a new level.

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Klay Thompson laid the SmackDown on a bottle of Gatorade 😂

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We haven’t seen this kind of disrespect since Madusa threw the WWF Women’s Title into a trash can live on WCW Nitro. Here is your NBA equivalent. Thompson essentially tossed Gatorade in the trash, and we cannot wait to see how Gatorade, or Gatorade athletes, respond. And if this sparks some kind of an NBA-wide sports drink war, even better.

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