Amidst reports of chemistry issues surrounding the Golden State Warriors, we learned about a time Klay Thompson was particularly distraught due to a decision by the team’s front office.

Amin Elhassan noted that Thompson was tremendously upset when the Warriors parted with big man Anderson Varejao (via House of Strauss):

“Someone told me that when Varejao got cut, Klay went into this deep depression and at that time, that was the first time that anyone on the team realized that that was Klay’s best friend. No one even knew until he got cut and Klay was all sad, and they were all like, ‘Oh snap, that’s your boy?’ And it turns out, that was his on-the-road buddy. Like, they’d go to dinner together and they’d have a couple of drinks together and stuff like that.”

Varejao was signed by Golden State in February 2016 and was then cut by the front office in February 2017. After this incident, Thompson was very upset about losing his closest friend on the team.

Besides a comment from Thomspon about how Varejao once gave him advice, there is not much public record of their friendship. But it’s not the biggest surprise that Thompson, generally reserved, was close with someone and no one else on the team realized.