Klay Thompson’s ankle injury won’t keep him out of Game 2 of the NBA Finals

It looked ugly, but Thompson plans to play through the pain.

Klay Thompson had an ugly injury in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Cavaliers, but according to The Vertical’s Shams Charania, he plans to play through the pain and be available for Game 2. The Warriors are calling Thompson’s injury a high ankle sprain that includes “significant bruising in the ankle.”

They’re lucky it’s only a sprain. It could have been a lot worse.

Thompson caught a pass with about 6:15 to go in the first quarter of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, but while J.R. Smith attempted to close out, he lost his footing and slid into Thompson’s leg. The result was an awkward twist of the all-star guard’s knee, one that sent him limping straight to the locker room.

Thompson later returned to action and finished Game 1 with 24 points on 50 percent shooting from both the field (8-of-16) and three (5-of-10). Warriors head coach Steve Kerr gave his two-way wing all the glory for playing through the pain to help Golden State sneak away with a win at home.

“Klay is just a physical specimen,” Kerr said Friday on a conference call, according to The San Jose Mercury-News’ Mark Medina. “It’s just incredible resilience and stamina to play both ends night after night with 40-plus minutes in the playoffs. He’s a machine.”

Thompson admitted after 82 games and three rounds in the playoffs, everyone is sore. But a shot at an NBA championship numbs the pain.

“At this point in the year, everybody is going to be banged up and will play through it,” he said, via The Mercury-News. “You can be sore going into the summer time. That’s how I look at it.

“The stakes on the line right now are huge. So that helps. If this were Game 32 of the regular season, I would not have played [on Thursday]. It’s a long, long grind to get to where we want to be. But since we only need four wins to hoist that trophy, the pain tolerance can go up.”

The Warriors couldn’t have afforded another injury. They were without Andre Iguodala for more than half of their Western Conference Finals series against the Rockets, and Thompson is one of the premier two-way guards in the NBA. Iguodala had the same injury as Thompson, and he still has not returned to action.

Thompson had also injured the same left knee in Game 4 of the West Finals against the Rockets.