Warriors’ Klay Thompson taking star turn in playoffs

Before every game, Klay Thompson sits at his locker and reads the newspaper, devouring the sports section, keeping up on current events and skimming through the movie reviews and financial reports.

Thompson doesn’t particularly like being in the spotlight, but he’s finding it increasingly difficult to avoid the attention while putting together what has been probably the NBA’s best 2016 postseason.

A two-time All-Star, Thompson, 26, averaged 27.2 points through the first two playoff rounds — just 0.2 of a point shy of postseason leader Kevin Durant — on 47.4 percent shooting and a league-best 4.7 three-pointers per game.

In the Warriors’ clinching game against Portland on Wednesday, Thompson had his fourth 30-point performance of the postseason and connected on six three-pointers.

Thompson would be more than happy to continue hiding in Curry’s prodigious shadow and uses every forced media session to riff about his backcourt mate’s unmatched ball-handling and shot-making and his other teammates’ screen-setting.

[...] with Curry missing six of the Warriors’ 10 postseason games with ankle and knee injuries, Thompson excelled as the team’s No. 1 scoring option.

Thompson used his unrelenting stamina and 6-foot-9 wingspan to force the high-scoring guards into a combined 38.3 percent shooting — 4.7 percentage points less than their regular-season numbers.

The Warriors will need a similar performance in the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City point guard Russell Westbrook, a ferocious competitor who might be the league’s fastest player.

The Warriors limited the All-Star to 34.7 percent shooting from the floor and 16.7 percent shooting from three-point range in a three-game, regular-season-series sweep.

Thompson said he’s long had great endurance — he ran an average of 2.61 miles per game (1.46 miles on offense and 1.15 miles on defense) in the first two rounds — and his hatred of allowing an opponent to score adds fuel to his fire.

“Klay is lethal,” Thunder shooting guard Andre Roberson said.

The fifth-year guard spent Thursday’s off day strolling through a dog park with his beloved English bulldog, Rocco, watching the deciding Game 6 of the Thunder-Spurs series and having a light dinner.