Your bag is empty.
Klay Thompson might play basketball, but a common football term has been following him around lately: fumble.
Rapper Megan Thee Stallion caused an online firestorm over the weekend with an explosive Instagram story that accused Thompson of infidelity.
Megan Thee Stallion seemingly accuses Klay Thompson of cheating in new Instagram story:
— Pop Base (@PopBase) April 25, 2026
“Cheating, had me around your whole family playing house…
got “cold feet”
Holding you down through all your HORRIBLE mood swings and treatment towards me during your basketball season now… pic.twitter.com/FWw5FaAbJf
“Cheating, had me around your whole family playing house … got ‘cold feet,’” Stallion wrote in an Instagram story which, though it has since expired, has circulated online since it was first posted. She continued, “Holding you down through all your HORRIBLE mood swings and treatment towards me during your basketball season now you don’t know if you can be ‘monogamous’????”
She added, “Bitch I need a REAL break after this one .. bye yall.”
Later, in a statement to E! News, she confirmed she had ended their relationship, which had begun (at least publicly) less than a year prior. “Trust, fidelity and respect are non-negotiable for me in a relationship,” she said. “And when those values are compromised, there’s no real path forward.”
The couple made their red carpet debut in July, when Megan told Page Six that this was the first time she’d “ever been with somebody who’s genuinely a nice person, and he makes me genuinely happy.” Since then, the two seemed nothing but outwardly elated; their Instagrams have been filled with snaps of golf outings, fishing trips and homemade meals of catfish and spaghetti. Thompson even named his boat the S.S. Stallion. As recently as February, Megan was hinted at marriage for the couple, making the abrupt announcement even more of a head scratcher.
What happened after Megan’s Instagram story?
Public reaction to Megan’s announcement was swift, largely in Megan’s defense. Mostly, people seemed stumped that Thompson would step out on Thee Stallion.
HOW IS THIS DIFFICULT BRUH😭😭 pic.twitter.com/tTxb3FaMpA
— zay dante (@zaydante) April 26, 2026
Several high-profile celebrities came out firmly in Camp Megan.
“That is a generational fumble,” streamer Hasan Piker said, exasperated, after reading Megan’s Instagram story live on air. “Klay Thompson, this was the best thing that ever happened to you in your damn life, dude.”
He added, “This is the one ring you should be paying attention to, not the motherfuckin’ NBA rings.”
Author Roxane Gay also seemed at a loss for words while making sense of the news. “The absolute audacity of Klay Thompson,” she said in a TikTok posted on Sunday. “It defies credulity.”
In her video, Gay also addressed a common question surrounding Thompson’s infidelity.
“How could he cheat on her at all?” Gay asked rhetorically. “People get cheated on no matter what they look like, no matter what they do, no matter who they are.”
Even The Sims weighed in with a post on X. When The Sims is dunking on you, that’s bleak.
If you can’t handle a Hottie❤️🔥 stay out of the kitchen😒 pic.twitter.com/ArerpSHvEH
— The Sims (@TheSims) April 27, 2026
Why do people cheat?
Infidelity has been at the center of several major news stories in recent months. Earlier this month, NFL journalist Dianna Russini and New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel were outed as having an alleged workplace affair that led Russini to resign from her position covering the NFL at the Athletic.
In July 2025, a Jumbotron camera at a Coldplay concert caught two senior executives — a CEO and the head of HR — in an intimate embrace in the nosebleeds while being serenaded by Chris Martin. What followed was a flood of memes, TikToks and unfair internet sleuthing that put the couple under further scrutiny, with an intense lens that dwarfed the one at Gillette Stadium.
“Public shaming is now a participatory sport,” Miski Omar wrote of the ensuing brouhaha surrounding the couple in The Guardian. “Viral justice is gamified. We chase information like it’s loot in a moral scavenger hunt for names, jobs, partners, homes. Every new fact unlocked is rewarded in likes and retweets.”
A similar phenomena is already happening with Megan and Thomspon, and it’s one that can actually stifle their healing, per Ilana Grines, a California-based licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist.
“These private relationships are so public, but we really don’t know what’s going on,” she told Playboy. “We don’t know about the conversations or the repairs, and we don’t know about the healing.”
There are many reasons why a person stray outside of their relationship, but usually it amounts to a person experiencing “unmet needs,” according to Grines. However, Grines said, when she says “unmet needs” that doesn’t mean that people who are cheated on, such as Megan, are at fault.
“The person who has stepped out of the agreements of the relationship holds the onus of speaking to those unmet needs,” she said, whether the needs are emotional, sexual, or otherwise. “They could just turn to their partner and say, ‘Hey babe, I’m really struggling with X. But instead, they make the choice to step out of the confines of their relationship and that is where the problem happens.”
Grines specifically mentioned Megan’s statement about “trust, fidelity and respect” was a “value statement” that likely indicated that monogamy was an “important pillar” of this relationship.
Instead of stepping out, Grines said that honest and open communication is, as always, best. But if you’re looking for a nonmonogamous relationship structure that wasn’t in the initial relationship agreement, be careful.
“The timing of this conversation matters the most,” she said. “When we enter a relationship and say, ‘I’ve really struggled with monogamy in the past,’ having that conversation from the jump is a good way to respect your partner or partners. If he said, ‘Babe, I’m really struggling, I’m not sure I can do this, tell me what your apprehensions are,’ that’s a really good way of opening up the conversation.”
She added, “It’s hard and it’s painful, but it’s honest, and there’s an ability for you both to co-author the next chapter of your life together.” But unethical nonmonogamy (i.e. cheating)? Not cool.
Since Megan’s post, rumors have swirled that Thompson had been unfaithful with previous partners. Once a cheater, always a cheater, right? Not quite, according to Grines.
“Cheating is more about the cheater than the relationship,” she said. Rather than focusing on the sexual or emotional part of cheating, it can be useful to think about why a person might have broken an agreement in their relationship and couldn’t communicate their needs. “If there’s no accountability and there’s no understanding of what drove the behavior, there’s no insight into changing yourself,” she said.
So, you got cheated on. What’s next?
Whether you’re of Stallion status or not matters little. As we see here, anyone can get cheated on—and it sucks. You can take a note from Megan if you find yourself in this unfortunate position, though: Grines said she is happy to see Megan speaking publicly.
“It’s probably her first step in healing, which is to say, ‘I’m not carrying the shame on my own. This is the way I was hurt. I’m not pretending that I wasn’t hurt by this,’” she said.
Leaning on your friends and—when you feel ready—jumping back into the dating game can also be helpful. But, when will you be ready? According to Grines, being able to name and process your feelings is a solid first step in getting there. Maybe that’s not a public Instagram story airing out the betrayal, but it might be the ability to talk openly with your guys about what happened without feeling shame.
Well, you cheated. What now?
If you find yourself in the same position as Thompson, well, you fumbled. But we established that once a cheater does not mean always a cheater, so what happens next? Grines said it’s important to recognize where this relationship might have fallen short in terms of meeting your needs and look for partners that can fulfill them.
“Maybe it’s about him exploring different relationship structures, nonconventional relationship structures that don’t fall in the line of monogamy,” she said. “Those are all important things to walk into a relationship with rather than let it be the reason you walk out of a relationship.”
However, Grines stressed that cheating does not have to be the end of a relationship. Infidelity, she shared, is the most common reason people seek her out as a couples therapist; for those people willing to do the work, therapy can often help them come out stronger on the other end.
“It either changes the course of the relationship for the positive or it unmasks something that was already there that neither person wanted to pay attention to,” she said. “It usually allows the couple to be stronger afterwards because they’ve learned how to communicate about really challenging things and they’ve addressed underlying needs.”
