Klay Thompson’s shot selection was the focus of heated debate for what felt like the first time in the Splash Brothers era.

With the Golden State Warriors trailing the New York Knicks by two points, Steve Kerr devised an after-timeout (ATO) play that appeared to be geared to get Stephen Curry the ball. It was an easy decision – Curry is the team’s superstar, the uncontested best player, and the one who recently blasted a game-winning shot against the Houston Rockets.

Thompson, on the other hand, had other ideas.

The play appeared to call for Thompson to pass to Curry, but Thompson holds possession and chooses to take Evan Fournier off the dribble. Thompson takes Fournier to the free-throw line, fakes him up, and finds himself with an open shot that he misses.

Statistics aside, if you’re Thompson, you’ll probably make that shot 9 times out of 10; it just so happened that this was the 1-out-of-10.

Another reason Thompson should dial his own number: his success with self-created shots this season. This season, he has made about 30% of his field goals unassisted, which is on pace to be a career high. During his debut season, he had a career high of 27% on unassisted field goals.

But that didn’t stop Thompson from drawing ire from some fans, with the major criticism being that he should’ve looked for Curry instead of shooting the shot.

This is a wild assessment for two reasons:

Thompson, as previously said, had a wide-open shot that he barely missed. It occurs.

Curry was being guarded on the perimeter, and if Thompson kicked back out to him, he’d only have time for a deep heave. While Curry has made those jumpers in the past, it is still a low-percentage shot in comparison to Thompson’s.

Thompson is many things, but one of them is not timid. Thompson, who famously and brazenly remarked, “Dog, I get paid to shoot,” will let it fly if he smells even a speck of space.

In that final possession, he had all the space in the world against the Knicks. It didn’t fit. It was still a fantastic look. The discussion has come to an end.

Look no farther than Thompson’s performance against the Los Angeles Lakers to put a nail in the coffin of all the unfair criticism leveled at him: 33 points on 22 shots (7-of-13 on twos, 5-of-9 on threes), and 68.3% True Shooting. Three of Thompson’s five three-pointers occurred in the fourth quarter, during what the NBA refers to as a “clutch” time (the score is within five points with less than five minutes remaining in the game).

But, before we get to the clutch shots, there were hints of Thompson heating up and putting up his finest scoring performance of the season. Some of that was due to Thompson being placed in areas where he can succeed the most, specifically the left corner.

Thompson is shooting 8-of-13 (61.5%) on left-corner threes in a very small sample size. The Warriors are well aware of this, and have purposely placed Thompson in the left corner as a spacer. Thompson’s deadliness is unleashed within that valuable and most efficient piece of real estate by collapsing defenses through penetration or roll-man tagging.

They’ve even set up a specific baseline-out-of-bounds (BLOBs) set for Thompson to get an open corner look — a simple play that involves a sneaky pin-in screen that, if the defense fails to pay attention to and address through timely switching, will leave Thompson all alone and with all the time and space to get his shot off.