Klay Thompson’s journey to being one of the NBA’s greatest shooters in history started in Pullman, Washington where he starred at Washington State for three years. In his junior year, which was his last year before entering the NBA Draft, he averaged 21.6 points per game and had the Cougars on the precipice of the NCAA Tournament when he got a pulled over and cited for weed possession late in the season.
It became national news and a question about his character going into the 2011 Draft where the Warriors ultimately took him 11th overall. At the time, Thompson didn’t find it particularly funny but looking back now he can only laugh about it, as evidenced by the hilarious way he told the story to Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes on the All The Smoke podcast.
When asked for his favorite college memory, Thompson laughs and goes “You wanna hear a funny one? When I got rolled for a dime bag in my driveway.” He proceeds to lament how weed became legal two years later in Washington, but he ended up on the national news for “the only time” that year because he was trying to enjoy a night of Rock Band with “a nice little sack” and ended up just worrying that his mom and dad were gonna be disappointed in him (32:30 mark of the video).
The Rock Band anecdote kills Barnes, who brings it up multiple times, while Klay recounts getting suspended for the UCLA game, which he calls the second biggest regret of his basketball career, and having to apologize to Wazzu fans for letting them down. It really is an incredible story made funnier by the fact that Klay keeps noting how absurd it was that he got popped for weed when now you can just get it delivered to you.
If it had any impact on his draft stock, it turned out to be a positive in the end because he ended up with the Warriors which has obviously been great for both he and the team, and he has a pretty funny story he can tell now that he’s 10 years removed from the incident.
