The one name seldom liked to the Warriors’ surge, however, is Klay Thompson. The 25-year-old started alongside Curry in last season’s All-Star Game and is one of the NBA’s best shooting guards, but for all those accolades his public profile lags behind that of his star-powered teammates.

For some, that might be a problem. But for Thompson, it’s a reality he’s more than happy to live with.

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“I get my due,” Thompson told The Washington Post over lunch in Oakland, Calif. recently. “Winning means so much more to me than getting all the individual accolades or endorsements. I’d rather be known as a champion than someone who puts up great numbers. That’s fine.

“I don’t play to get headlines. That’s how I’ve always been. I’ve always played to have fun and win games, and everything else will take care of itself.”

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If your goal is to have fun and win games as a basketball player, there’s no better team to play for right now than the Golden State Warriors. After setting the league on fire last season, winning 67 games and then claiming the organization’s first championship in 40 years, they have followed that up by going 33-2 after beating the Lakers in Los Angeles Tuesday night.

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Add in the fact that all three of Golden State’s core players are smack in the middle of their primes – Curry is 27, while both Thompson and Green are 25 – and that Thompson and Green are both in the first season of long-term contracts with the franchise, and it’s clear the fun won’t be stopping anytime soon.

It’s even possible things could get more fun next season. The Warriors would have little trouble creating the necessary cap room to sign Kevin Durant as a free agent in July, and will undoubtedly seek a meeting with him.

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Regardless of whether the Warriors add another star to the mix or Golden State simply keeps rolling with what they’ve already put together, Thompson, with his deadly shooting touch and underrated defensive presence, will be right at the heart of it, no matter how much attention he’s getting. This is, after all, the same player that scored 37 points in a quarter last year in a win over the Kings, setting both the nets inside Oracle Arena and the basketball Internet on fire with a video-game performance straight out of NBA Jam.

“We talk about the team, and how everybody impacts the game, and how you’ve got to be ready for every single person out there, and he’s obviously one of those guys,” Curry said. “He might not get the extreme spotlight, but everyone in this gym knows how important he is to what we do. People [here] know who he is, and how important he is to our team and how talented he is … that will never change.”

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But while Thompson has no issue taking a back seat to his more high-profile teammates, that doesn’t mean he thinks less of himself or his contributions. After a slow start to the season while playing through a nagging back injury, Thompson looked right again in December, averaging 25.3 points while shooting a ridiculous 45.5 percent from three-point range – attempting over nine of them a game, mind you – and is now averaging 20.9 points per game after scoring 36 against the Lakers Tuesday night.

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With numbers like that, combined with Golden State’s superlative success as a team over the last season-and-a-half, it’s easy to see why both Thompson and the Warriors think he should be a shoo-in for the All-Star Game again this season, and why he didn’t hesitate to recently pick himself as the NBA’s best shooting guard.

By most objective measurements, Thompson is no worse than the league’s third best shooting guard, behind Houston’s James Harden and Chicago’s Jimmy Butler, two players Thompson specifically said would also be in the conversation. And it’s not a challenge to craft an argument that Thompson should be first because of his ability to impact the game at both ends of the court – which is why he doesn’t understand why his comments generated as many headlines as they did.

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“I was annoyed that’s a story, because if you ask Jimmy or James or Kobe [Bryant] or Dwyane [Wade] who the best at their position is, and they’re all going to say themselves,” Thompson said. “That’s just how we are. We’re prideful. We believe in our abilities.

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“[Being] the best at your position, it’s great and all, but why don’t we talk about who the best team is? That’s all that matters in the end.

“I guess [the attention] means I’ve made it if that’s a story now, so it’s all good.”

Not only has Thompson made it, but so have the Warriors. A year ago, Golden State wasn’t even a favorite to win the title. Now the Warriors are a traveling circus, the top attraction in the NBA by a significant margin. And after their blistering start, they have put themselves in a position to become the only team besides Michael Jordan’s 1996 Chicago Bulls — a team featuring current Golden State coach Steve Kerr in the backcourt — to win 70 games in a season.

Suddenly, Golden State has a chance to make history, and be a team that goes down as one of the greatest of all-time. It’s a dizzying turn of events, one Thompson himself admitted has him looking around and marveling at everything he and his teammates are accomplishing all at once.

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“It’s kind of surreal how good we are,” Thompson said. “I just think about it, like, ‘How are we this good?’ I do [think about it]. It’s like, ‘This good, this fast?’ It’s only my fifth year, and we have such a special team.

“We had a lot of people call it a fluke or whatever, and they won’t do it again, and that motivates us a lot, too. We don’t want to just win one. We have the mix of guys and the youth and great mix of vets to do this who knows how many more times.”

However many more times they do it, Thompson, along with Curry and Green, will be the engine driving this team forward as that trio, much to the chagrin of the NBA, won’t be breaking up anytime soon. And while the first two may keep dominating the spotlight, Thompson will be just fine spending his days launching up one three-pointer after another from the shadows.

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It’s a role that has already produced plenty of fun, and plenty of wins, and it’s likely to lead to more. For Klay Thompson, that’s more than enough to be satisfied.