How Canadian Tristan Thompson went from ESPN back to the NBA

A year ago this month, Tristan Thompson was working for ESPN. 

The 32-year-old Brampton, Ont., native played for three teams during the 2021-22 NBA season and went unsigned in the off-season, deciding to take a job as an NBA analyst for ESPN in January 2023. It was a natural fit. Anybody who has spent any time with Thompson (or watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians) knows that he is a made-for-TV personality who is equal parts charismatic and upbeat — that he can talk to anyone about anything. “He's one of those guys who's never met a stranger,” his childhood friend and former teammate, Cory Joseph, once said. And it didn’t take long for Thompson to look the part on TV. 

Still, the six-foot-nine centre who won a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 knew he could still play. And the Los Angeles Lakers gave him a short opportunity to do that beginning in April, when Thompson suited up for six games and played a total of 32 minutes in the Lakers’ run to the Western Conference Finals before returning ESPN for the remainder of the playoffs. 

In the meantime, Thompson’s former team was faltering. The No. 4-seeded Cavaliers lost a five-game series to the No. 5-seeded New York in the first round of the playoffs, as the Knicks exposed their physical flaws by bullying them inside the paint and on the glass, rebounding 34.9 per cent of their own misses and out-rebounding the Cavs by an average of 8.6 rebounds per game to score 36 more second-chance points in the five-game series. The young Cavaliers looked shaken and in need of veteran help, with 25-year-old centre Jarrett Allen admitting that “the lights were brighter than expected” in the team’s first playoff run together. 

That’s when Thompson knew he could be of service.

“Yeah, just the toughness. At the end of the day, playoffs is all about grit, matchups and just a desire to win,” Thompson recently told Sportsnet.ca inside Scotiabank Arena. "I feel like, with my experience, I could help our team.”

“We’re kind of quiet,” Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman said after signing Thompson in the off-season. “Tristan is not quiet in a very, very good way. So, he’s gonna push us. He’s going to push us to heights — we hope — we could get to when we had him as our starting centre.”

Thompson was drafted fourth overall by the Cavaliers in 2011, which at the time was the highest a Canadian player had been drafted since the ABA/NBA merger. He played the first nine seasons of his career in Ohio, was mentioned by name in LeBron James’ statement upon returning to Cleveland in 2014 and was a key member of the 2016 title-winning team that famously came back from a 3-1 series deficit in the NBA Finals to defeat the dynastic Golden State Warriors. “I helped build this franchise,” Thompson said, calling Cleveland “home to me.” 

That history played into the mutual decision for Thompson to rejoin the Cavaliers on a one-year, veteran minimum contract this offseason, with head coach J.B. Bickerstaff saying: “It's the right thing to take care of the guys that have taken care of the organization in the past.” But it was Thompson’s outgoing personality and championship experience that sealed the deal, adding much-needed toughness, grit and leadership to a team with one of the youngest starting lineups in the league.

“It’s awesome,” Bickerstaff said about having Thompson back in the fold. “Tristan doesn't have bad days. You know, when he's around the team, his spirits are always up, and he doesn't allow you to have a bad day.”

“Energy, good vibes,” Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell said about what Thompson adds. “I think that's a big thing: every day is a good day for Tristan, you know what I'm saying? And I think that energy, you feel that around in the locker room.”

Thompson said he has always embraced the role of being a leader and helping show young players the ropes, noting that he got his love for people from his mother, Andrea Thompson.

“She's always been the bright spot of the room and brings the energy,” Thompson said. “I think to be a great leader, you got to be able to understand every person's personality and how to get the best out of somebody. And I've just been always that type of person that knows how to read a room. So, for me, it's just part of who I am.” 

Andrea passed away suddenly in January 2023 due to a heart attack, leaving Tristan reeling and the Thompson family in urgent need of a caregiver for Tristan’s youngest brother, Amari Thompson, who has epilepsy and other medical conditions requiring around-the-clock support. So, Tristan — who has called Amari his “motivation,”  started, in 2022, the Amari Thompson Fund to help vulnerable adults with epilepsy, and became a Special Olympics Global Ambassador more recently — took the 17-year-old Amari into his home and filed to become his legal guardian and primary caregiver. 

All the while, Thompson was working hard to stay in peak basketball shape in case his chance to return to the NBA came. Five days a week during the off-season, Thompson would wake up at 5 a.m. in his California home, work out with weights, take his daughter and nieces and nephews to school, go to the gym, pick up the kids from school, be a dad for the evening and repeat the routine the next day. 

“I just kept myself busy and tried to just emulate some type of routine that would keep me sharp, but like in shape and active,” Thompson said. “So, it's something I enjoy doing. I spent a lot of time with my kids, which was great because we don't get that a lot (while) playing, so took full advantage of that.

“It was just getting ready, getting ready. I’ve been a big believer in staying ready so you don't have to get ready. And when my number was called, I was ready to go.”

Similar to his outgoing personality, Thompson gets that work ethic from Andrea, saying: “She was a woman that worked three jobs: School bus driver. Bagged groceries at two different supermarkets.” All the while, she was raising four boys. “So, she's always been a hard worker," he said. "That's what she instilled into me in terms of just always working hard and having a purpose and, as men, we should always have ambition and drive.

“So, that's just the way I was brought up. And I am trying to instill that into my kids.”

That off-season work is paying off for a thinned-out Cavaliers team that is in desperate need of Thompson to not just lead from the bench, but play meaningful minutes at backup centre due to third-year forward Evan Mobley suffering a knee injury on Dec. 6 that will keep him out for six to eight weeks following surgery.

In 15 games since the Mobley injury — which has coincided with a jaw injury to point guard Darius Garland — Thompson is averaging 5.2 points, 5.1 rebounds (including 2.5 offensive rebounds, a Thompson special) and 1.5 assists on 67.9 per cent shooting in 15.3 minutes per game. The Cavaliers are a 9-6 in that time, with the seventh-best record in the Eastern Conference. 

“He's a pro and understands what he needs to do on a day-to-day [basis] to be ready to impact and play at his peak,” Bickerstaff said. “He knows to play the way he plays, he's got to be in great shape, he's got to take care of his body. He knows that if he's not, then he'll let his teammates down. And he doesn't want to do that.

“He wants to be able to have an impact. He wants to be able to hold people accountable. And if you're not doing the things that make you your best, then it's hard to hold others accountable.”

Thompson has taken full advantage of the opportunity to play for a thinned-out Cavaliers frontcourt, bringing hard-nosed defence, crushing screens and timely rebounds to the Cavaliers during this important stretch of their season. But in the long run, what he does off the court for a young Cavaliers team is just as important. He is there to make sure the young Cavaliers don’t get too caught up in the emotional highs and lows of the NBA season, while also holding his teammates to the same high standard he experienced during his four seasons with LeBron James, keeping them accountable at times when they might not want to hear it. 

“He's a guy that's been there, that's won a championship, has seen it,” Mitchell said. “So, there are days where he holds us accountable. There are days where it's like, you know, ‘Breathe, it's a long season.’

“You need a guy like that who has been there.”

A Team Canada reunion?

Speaking of teams that could conceivably use Thompson’s help, the Canadian senior men’s national team qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics after winning bronze at the 2023 FIBA World Cup last summer. Thompson said it was “great” to watch Canada win bronze and to see “all the effort and hard work that everyone’s put in through the years [pay off].” Adding that “it just doesn't start this summer. It started, you know, 15 years ago, and just kept building from there.”

After representing Canada at every chance he got since he was 17 years old at the 2008 FIBA America’s under-18 championship — aside from his draft year in 2011 and in 2015, when he was waiting on a contract extension from the Cavaliers — Thompson has not suited up for the red and white since the 2016 FIBA Olympic Qualifying tournament in the Philippines, where he was the starting centre for a Canadian team that lost in the final to France. Despite also not committing to Canada Basketball’s three-year summer core announced in 2021, Thompson is interested in joining the team for its first Olympic Games since 2000, saying: “Yeah, I’ll play in Paris. I talked Rowan [Barrett], talked to Jordi [Fernandez]. So, we're talking, we're talking.”

Coincidentally, Team Canada’s one historical weakness is size and rebounding at the frontcourt positions, where Dwight Powell was its only reliable centre at the World Cup. And Thompson sees a lot of similarities between the needs of the Cavaliers and the ones Team Canada could have this summer, assuming it allows him to fight for a highly coveted spot on the 12-man roster headed to Paris. 

“I mean, we saw the areas that our team needs to get better at,” Thompson said. “You saw it. So, I think it's a lot of similarities between why I came back to Cleveland and with Team Canada, both teams kind of need the same thing.

“So, I think I fit that calling card.”