{"id":855634,"date":"2026-08-15T02:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T02:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/855634\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T02:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T02:02:16","slug":"klay-thompson-evaluates-plaqueboymaxs-basketball-skills-says-he-could-play-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/855634\/","title":{"rendered":"Klay Thompson Evaluates PlaqueBoyMax’s Basketball Skills, Says He Could Play In Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Klay Thompson<\/a> took a careful look at PlaqueBoyMax<\/a>‘s basketball skills during a livestream and let him down gently. <\/p>\n

At the end of a Twitch stream on Aug. 14, after Thompson and the popular content creator had already run through a three-point shooting contest, PlaqueBoyMax asked the Mavericks player to rate the level he could have reached in professional basketball. The four-time NBA champion gave him a thorough, if slightly deflating, answer.<\/p>\n

“Wow, if you stuck with it, bro… D1 is tough. Like, I don’t think people realize how hard it is to be a D1 hooper. There’s only like maybe a couple thousand of them,” Thompson said. “Bro, you could have been a pro. I think you could like… NBA… Nah. But like, there’s a lot of professional leagues around the world, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson continued by giving the streamer some props. \u201cYou got the athleticism, you’re throwing down, a nice jump shot. You could have played pro somewhere, for sure,\u201d Thompson continued. \u201cYou could have played pro, probably in like… yeah, you know, like third division Italy or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Italy’s top-flight basketball competition is the Lega Basket Serie A. Third division \u2014 around the Serie B or Serie C level \u2014 sits well below the European elite.<\/p>\n

PlaqueBoyMax took the assessment in stride but immediately pushed back on the ceiling. “Damn, I can’t even get the EuroLeague, bro,” he said.<\/p>\n

“EuroLeague\u2019s tough, man,” Thompson replied.<\/p>\n

The streamer then pivoted to EuroLeague’s pedigree, noting that Luka Doncic<\/a> came up through that system. Thompson confirmed it: “It did. Luka, Pau…”<\/p>\n

The stream covered more than PlaqueBoyMax’s basketball future. Thompson also addressed his own NBA situation. \u201cI want to compete for a championship, not necessarily win one, but just have the chance to go and try and get another one,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to play a role on a team that can make a deep playoff run, whether it\u2019s this season or next season. That\u2019s really my only goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson is entering the final year of his contract with the Dallas Mavericks, a deal that pays him $17.5 million this season. Dallas signed Thompson in 2024 partly on the draw of playing alongside Doncic, but the Mavericks subsequently traded Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, leaving Thompson on a rebuilding roster centered around Cooper Flagg.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Klay Thompson took a careful look at PlaqueBoyMax‘s basketball skills during a livestream and let him down gently.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-855634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}