The Dallas Mavericks see Klay Thompson as the key to their title aspirations

DALLAS – When asked for one word to sum up the Dallas Mavericks’ style this season, superstar Luka Doncic thought for several seconds before coming up with his answer.

“Championship,” Doncic said at media day Monday at the team’s practice facility before the Mavs left for Las Vegas for training camp. “That’s the goal.”

The hope is that Klay Thompson, a four-time champion during his 13-year tenure with the Golden State Warriors, can be the final piece to the Mavs’ title puzzle after arriving as a valuable free agent addition this summer.

“I feel like our dreams can be possible because he’s here now,” said Mavs co-star Kyrie Irving, who played a prominent role in recruiting Thompson, his 2011 classmate and former Team USA teammate. “He has added great value to our championship aspirations.”

Irving stressed that Thompson’s title experience could benefit the Mavs, who advanced to the NBA Finals before losing to the Boston Celtics in five games last season. But a discussion of Thompson’s value — even at 34 years old with two major injuries in his relatively recent medical history — begins with his historic three-point shooting.

The Mavs prioritized adding a 3-point threat after struggling from distance in the Finals, when Dallas shot just 31.6% from 3-point range. Thompson is a career 41.3% three-point shooter (38.7% on 9.0 attempts per game last season), which ranks sixth in NBA history with 2,481 3s made.

“When it’s me and Kai, when we have the ball, you can’t help Klay,” Doncic said. “Because if you leave it wide open, it’s going to work. So I think spacing is going to be crucial for us, but more than that, I’ll tell you after a couple of games.”

With Irving having Thompson’s familiar number 11 in Dallas, Thompson chose to wear number 31 as a way to honor Reggie Miller when he passes him on the all-time 3s list, as Thompson enters the season 80 3 shy of that distinction. This also happens to be the number worn by Jason Terry, who coach Jason Kidd mentioned as the last perimeter shooter the Mavs used.

“We had shooters, but we didn’t have Jason Terry or Klay Thompson,” said Kidd, who played alongside Terry in Dallas, including for the Mavs in the 2010-11 season. “That’s rare. When you talk about Klay, he’s going to go down as one of the best shooters ever. So having him on our side, it makes the game easier offensively. Spacing is a big thing in our league.”

“When you look at the teams that can make the game easy — Boston, ourselves — those are the ones that can win championships.”

Thompson said he believes his game “complements the roster very well” and that he gives the Mavs’ offense “a whole new dimension.” He admitted he will have to make a major adjustment to adapt to the Mavs’ style of play, which is radically different from Golden State’s system.

“From an X’s and O’s standpoint, I’m going to have to adjust to maybe playing with these good creators,” Thompson said. “In Golden State, the offense was movement-based. But I mean, just being able to play with Luka the last few days, his pick-and-roll ability is probably the best I’ve ever seen. It’ll be fun to play with him in those sets because he brings Lots of attention and gets a lot of open looks from the ocean, so I’ll be there to shoot them down.

“I think it will just take a few weeks to get used to this new system, but opening night fortunately isn’t until (October 24). So this pre-season could be the most important for me in many years, and I can’t wait to start tomorrow and learn.” It’s a system, but I know I’m a professional, so I can adapt accordingly and I’m looking forward to doing that.