WARRIOR BY NAME, warrior by nature.

With Golden State three points up late in the third quarter against the Toronto Raptors, and the pivotal Game 6 of the NBA Finals on a knife-edge, Klay Thompson went up for a dunk and came down awkwardly on his left leg.

The Warriors later confirmed that Thompson had in fact torn his left ACL which makes what happened next all the more remarkable.

As he hobbled off the court and back towards the locker room to get checked out, clearly in some discomfort, a Warriors official reminded Thompson that he wouldn’t be able to return to the game if another player stepped in to take his two free throws.

And so, with one good leg, he returned to the court to take the shots, making both to push the Warriors out to a five-point lead.

Golden State then gave up an intentional foul, allowing Thompson to come off to have the injury assessed.

“I think what happened was he was unaware of the rule that if you don’t shoot the free throws, you can’t come back in the game, so I think somebody told him in the hallway,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr explained afterwards.

“Klay being Klay, he just turned right around and came back and shot the free throws, and we committed the automatic foul to get him out of the game.

He came back and he told me, ‘Just two minutes.’ I think there was two minutes left in the third. He said, ‘Just a two-minute rest, I’ll be ready,’ and next thing I heard was he was done for the night from Drew Yoder, our trainer.”

Toronto reeled in Golden State in a thrilling finale to win 114-110, giving Canada its first-ever NBA title.

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