Ethan Strauss of the Athletic in his new book “The Victory Machine” referred to the time the Warriors tried to trade Steph Curry and Klay Thompson for -then- New Orleans superstar Chris Paul.
“First off, that’s false. That never took place,” former Golden State general manager Larry Riley said on 95.7 The Game. “And therefore, I think everyone learned something. When you — I had to tell my mother this because she grew up in the days of Walter Cronkite — when you see something on TV or you read it in the newspaper, it’s not necessarily true.”
The Warriors drafted both Curry and Thompson during Riley’s reign in the front office. The former GM claimed that they were never talks about trading neither of them.
“And I never had a conversation with anybody about packaging our two guards to do something else. Steph Curry came to the Warriors and he won himself over as a Warrior for life — if he wanted to be — at the second half of his rookie season. He established the fact — this is our point guard for the next 10 years.
And while there was a lot of discussion about the possibilities of trading him, it was never a reality. And we never had a discussion about trading Klay Thompson and Steph Curry for anybody else.
And it would be very interesting because the author of this piece, without doubt, talked to somebody who gave him some information. So, it would be a little bit interesting to track that, but I can tell you right now, that never happened.
Now, I suppose it might have happened after I left and there could have been a discussion with Bob Myers, but you’re telling me this was 2011? And that is not the case then.”
Riley was demoted to director of scouting after Bob Myer’s promotion to GM on April 2012.
