Tristan Thompson has big games and big dollars in his near future.
The present is pretty good, too.
The best year of Thompson's basketball life next takes Thompson and his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates to Atlanta, where the Cavs and Hawks open the Eastern Conference Finals Wednesday night. After starting just 15 regular-season games and finishing fifth in the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year voting, Thompson was inserted into the starting lineup for the Cavs in their last series.
It's a new role, and it's a new stage for a playoff rookie, but it hasn't changed a thing about Thompson's approach or production.
The Cavs have enough guys who do the prettier stuff. Thompson knows this. He seems to relish it, too.
"It kills their spirit trying to box me out, knowing that they can't."
Just rebound. And be a dog.
The No. 4 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, Thompson came to the Cavaliers after one year at Texas as a rebounder and a raw but promising prospect. He led the Big 12 in offensive rebounding and blocked shots in his lone college season, and the Cavs were in the midst of a total rebuild. He went from averaging 8.2 points as a rookie to 11.7 in each of the next two seasons, but he's never averaged more than 9.7 shots per game. He scored 8.5 points per game while taking just six shots in the 2014-15 regular season and averaged 8.0 rebounds.
"Just know my role," Thompson said. "Box out, rebound, run the floor. It's no different (starting) or playing a few minutes or always being in there."
He's eligible for restricted free agency this summer, and maximizing that role is going to pay off. Thompson is averaging 9.4 rebounds per game in the playoffs and 3.9 offensive rebounds per game, the most among players still playing. On this Cavs team, he'll often grab an offensive rebound and look to send the ball to the perimeter for an open 3-pointer rather than look for his own shot.
"Tristan is relentless," Cavs star forward LeBron James said. "He's a guy that wants to get better, and you love that. He's working every day."
He was a known commodity in basketball circles, and at Findlay Prep he played with fellow Canadian, eventual Texas teammate and current San Antonio Spurs guard Cory Joseph, amongst other top young prospects.
Ten games into his first playoff run, Thompson said he appreciates that "every possession means a little more." Of his overall growth and path through two countries, two top high school programs, one year at Texas and three years doing dirty work for Cavs teams that didn't sniff the playoffs, Thompson laughed when he said the biggest change he notices in himself is "that I'm not left-handed no more."
He really did switch shooting hands, starting two summers ago while playing for Team Canada and continuing into the NBA. After shooting 55 and 61 percent, respectively, as a left-handed free throw shooter in his first two NBA seasons, he's making 68 percent since.
"I would always kind of kid him that his right hand was better than his left," Barnes said. "He used to kind of sling it from behind his head at the foul line. It wasn't pretty. (During the Cavs-Bulls series) I was watching on TV and he made this little baseline floater with the right hand and I laughed. That's a shot he could always make. It's never been pretty, but he can put it in."
Asked if he's ever been around a player who switched strong hands at an advanced stage of his basketball career, Barnes said no.
"But I've had a couple who probably should have," Barnes joked.
It wasn't that Thompson was truly left-handed. He grew up shooting a basketball with his left hand; he was a left-handed batter when he tried baseball and writes with his left hand, too. But he threw a baseball with his right, and brushed his teeth with his right, and eventually -- after two years in the NBA -- decided to become a right-handed basketball player.
He tries to grab those rebounds with both hands.
"Of course I'm a fan, but he's truly as hard a worker as I've been around," Barnes said. "His zeal, his passion, he's at the very top if you can rate those things. He'd just find a way to do what he was asked. But don't sell him short; he's talented. His energy and effort, those are talents.
"To offensive rebound the way he does, that's a skill. It's an instinct, and then actually going up and getting it, that's a skill. Tristan recognizes what he's good at, how he can impact a game and he embraces it."
Thompson said he's "definitely a smarter player," now, too, than he was in his first three years in the league. Perhaps pushed by James, by the higher stakes or by what might be ahead, Thompson said he's dedicated himself to studying the game more intently than he ever has before.
"Being a sponge," Thompson said. "The great ones are the ones that fit the game and know what's going on, know where everyone is supposed to be. To be better on your craft you have to do the extra work. Film don't lie."
The rebounds don't lie, and even as circumstances have, Thompson hasn't. He knows for the Cavaliers to keep winning, he has to keep rebounding.
