Warriors Slap 'Fake Klay' With a Lifetime Ban

YouTuber made it into Chase Center by impersonating player
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 15, 2022 7:35 PM CDT

A YouTuber who impersonated Golden State Warriors player Klay Thompson to get into the team's San Francisco arena before Game 5 of the NBA Finals has been banned for life, the team says. In a YouTube video, Dawson Gurley can be seen strolling past security guards, wearing a Warriors jersey. "An individual falsely impersonated a Warriors player in a deliberate attempt to access unauthorized areas within Chase Center," the team said in a statement to KRON4. “These actions have resulted in a lifetime ban from both Chase Center and Kaiser Permanente Arena."

Gurley—who resembles "a rudimentary AI rendering of Thompson," according to Dennis Young at SFGate—signed autographs for fans and was greeted by members of the media, his video shows. After entering through a "Media and Team Members" entrance, he spent what he said was 10 minutes "shooting around" on the court before security employees eventually realized they had been deceived and kicked him out. Gurley, who is 29 years old and 6-foot-4, has been impersonating Thompson for years and has more than 8 million subscribers to his "BigDawsTV" YouTube channel, which includes pranks as well as the "Fake Klay" act, the Washington Post reports.

In a letter, the team told Gurleu that he had committed criminal trespass and "deliberately deceived" employees On Twitter, Gurley complained about the ban, arguing that he "technically" didn't trespass and that security had welcomed him in. He said the team refused to refund tickets he had paid for. "Was it worth it to lose 10K on tickets and be banned for life?" he tweeted. "Absolutely. I was an NBA player for 10 minutes bro." (More NBA stories.)

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