After getting hot with shot vs Grizzlies, Klay gets even hotter in rare outburst

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OAKLAND -- Klay Thompson spent most of the second half torching the Memphis Grizzlies, making his first nine shots and scoring 27 points in 20 minutes.

In the second half, he got heated with the officials.

Thompson’s exceedingly colorful language in reaction to a non-call on a missed shot with 10:23 remaining in a laborious 97-84 win Wednesday night resulted in him being slapped with a technical foul exactly one second later.

“I was hoping he did,” Kevin Durant said of Thompson. “(Ben) McLemore was just grabbing his arm as soon as he shot the ball. And the refs just looked at it and didn’t call it.”

Thompson doesn’t often express his ire or, for what it’s worth, his joy on the court. He’s spare with his emotions, no matter what’s going on around him. He’s in his seventh season and had precisely six technical fouls in his career.

Make that seven after he got a bit too heated with referee Mark Ayotte and was tagged for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, with the wrong tone.

“Nothing I would want to repeat,” Thompson responded when asked what he said that drew the T. “I’ve got to keep my cool. Learn from it and not do it next game. Just play through it.”

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Thompson totaled 29 points, which is another way of saying he had only 2 in the second half as Memphis ramped up its physicality. If it wasn’t McLemore getting rugged, it was Andrew Harrison or Dillon Brooks.

“I knew at some point, with all the grabbing and holding and physical play, that they would let some stuff go,” Durant said. “But I’m sure that frustrated Klay.”

The physical play resulted Thompson getting to the line often enough to shoot six free throws, making them all. He had not shot more than four in any of the previous 30 games.

“They do a lot of holding and grabbing,” he said of the Grizzlies. “But that’s what they’ve been doing since I’ve been in the league. So you’ve got to know coming into the game that it’s going to be really physical.”

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