Bob Meyers on Klay Thompson: ‘He’s a top-5 shooting guard’

Front office executives often overrate their own personnel. The perfect example of that may be with the Golden State Warriors and shooting guard Klay Thompson as rumor has it that they aren’t too keen on throwing Thompson into the flurry of Kevin Love trade talks, but in this instance, Bob Meyers, the general manager of the Warriors, hit the nail on the head with his comments about Klay on KNBR.

Klay Thompson IS a top-5 shooting guard, coming off a season where he averaged a 18.4 points on 44 percent shooting and .417 percent shooting from three, all three statistics being career highs, along with 3.1 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game. As far as rankings would go, he’d likely fall at fourth behind James Harden, the consensus best, Dwyane Wade, and Kobe Bryant, depending on how well Bryant plays once he returns to the court.

And as Meyers said, Thompson will surely get paid a lot once extension talks begin. The Warriors have the opportunity to work out an extension in-house, but if they can’t come to an agreement, then the organization will allow the free agent market to decide how much Klay is worth and if he continues to improve in the upcoming season, there’s no reason to think he won’t demand a similar contract to the 4-year, $40 million extension Demar Derozan received in 2012. And considering Klay is a superior player to Derozan, he’ll demand something closer to a rookie max contract.

We’ll see how big Meyers is on Thompson when it’s time to shell out money for his investment.