NBA 2022 Finals: Former LA Lakers fan Klay Thompson goes up against the team he rooted against

Former Los Angeles Lakers fan Klay Thompson will be going up against the Lakers’ biggest historic final when he faces the Boston Celtics in the NBA 2022 Finals. Klay, whose father, Mychal Thompson, was a Lakers player between 1987 and 1991, watched his father be a part of the championship-winning Lakers team of 1987, who defeated the Celtics in the Finals. The Lakers and Celtics have one of the historical rivalries in American sports history that dates to the 1950s and 1960s, with the likes of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. The Lakers and Celtics have met in the NBA Finals a record 12 times, with their last meeting being in the 2010 NBA Finals.

Thompson recalled this in his recent interview as he said, “Life comes full circle, now being able to play them in the Finals. I watched them in college, Game 7 at Staples with my dad in 2010. And now it’s 12 years later, and I get to play the team that I was rooting against. It’s amazing. In my rookie year, just playing that team of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and KG was like a ‘welcome to the NBA’ moment for me because just a couple of years before, I was watching them battle Kobe and Pau in the Finals, and I was just mesmerized by how great those teams were, both the Lakers and the Celtics.”

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Thompson said about the current Celtics, “They’re physical. They’re athletic. It’s gonna be a dog fight.”