Klay Thompson’s Mavericks-record night reminds him ‘there’s greatness still within you’

It was 7 minutes, 1 second of basketball-shooting bliss. Klay Thompson being Klay Thompson. Swish after swish triggering increasingly loud roars in American Airlines Center.

Granted, it would have been nicer had this been April or May or better yet June, instead of a late-January Monday night first quarter against 6-38 Washington, but for Thompson and the Mavericks it was a welcome burst of pure greatness, regardless of circumstance.

Few of the roughly 20,000 fans in the arena or those watching on TV will long recall the exact score of Dallas’ 130-108 rout of the Wizards, but they’ll sure remember Thompson pouring in those franchise-record-tying seven first-quarter 3-pointers in 10 attempts.

“I can’t lie to you: It felt great,” Thompson said. “It always feels great when you shoot the ball well, but it just felt great because we needed a win where we put a team away early.”

The former Washington State standout scored only two more points before sitting out the game’s final 17 minutes – he was on a 24-minute restriction due to a recent ankle sprain, and he played exactly 23:59. That scarcely mattered, not to the game’s result or for what his early scoring deluge represented.

With his 35th birthday looming on Feb. 8, Thompson still has it. He might not do it often or consistently, but he’s still capable.

And that might be meaningful come playoff time if the Mavericks (25-22) can muster enough good health to get there.

Two early Thompson 3-pointers gave Dallas a 9-2 lead, but he was just getting warmed up. He made three more 3-pointers in a 55-second span to give Dallas a 24-5 lead, then another to extend the advantage to 28-7.

It was vintage Thompson. Not to the degree as the night almost exactly 10 years earlier – on Jan. 25, 2015 – when he drained a still-NBA-record nine 3-pointers in the third quarter of a game against Sacramento, but impressive nonetheless.

Thompson smiled and leaned his head back in disbelief when a reporter mentioned that his record night happened a decade ago.

“That makes me feel seasoned,” he said. “That is crazy.”

Did Monday night’s shooting groove take him back to that and other big nights in his career?

“Absolutely,” he said. “You do that, it reminds you that there’s greatness still within you. It’s obviously harder to conjure up nightly after a decade of so much basketball, but I love to use this quote:

‘Be at your best when your best is needed.’ I know I have another level to reach and we have so much basketball ahead of us. So it’s definitely a confidence-builder and something I can lean on going into the rest of the season.”

This was only the seventh time Thompson has eclipsed 20 points this season, though before Luka Doncic’s calf strain knocked him out for the past 17 games, Dallas wasn’t relying on big Thompson scoring nights.