Little-known Kevon Looney is all of a sudden an important piece for the Warriors in the NBA playoffs.
Patience, hard work have led Looney to meaningful time on court during the playoffs
OAKLAND >> With each new meaningful playoff minute, Kevon Looney can make his free-agency cash register ring a little louder.
But it might not be the Warriors doing the bidding.
The team took a calculated risk in October when they declined to pick up Looney’s $2.2 million option for next season. Suddenly, though, the 6-foot9, 220-pound forward has never looked more valuable — and the biggest games are still to come.
After three years as an afterthought, Looney emerged as a pivotal chess piece and could be called upon to help slow the Houston Rockets when the Warriors open the Western Conference finals on Monday.
Looney’s playoff minutes are already way up from the regular season — from 13.8 minutes to 21.2 — because he’s proven to be a versatile defender off the bench, capable of protecting the rim or switching out on guards.
If his breakout party continues against Houston, Looney could be looking at way
more than that $2.2 million when he becomes an unrestricted free agent on July 1.
“I really don’t think about that,” he said after practice Thursday. “I know if I go out there and play well, good things will happen. I just keep working hard. The goal is to win championships, so that’s all I’m focusing on.”
It wasn’t as if the Warriors doubted Looney when they decided not to exercise his fourthyear option. But tax ramifications were a factor, as was the unlikelihood that Looney would play well enough to attract many free-agent suitors. The Warriors figured they might be able to get him back at a discount rate.
Still, they saw his remarkable progress and how hard he’d worked to get back on track after two hip surgeries. Not long before that fateful option decision, Coach Steve Kerr pulled Looney aside and told him: “No matter what happens, if you just keep being on the path that you’re on, you’ll have a long career.”
So there Looney was in the first-round against the San Antonio Spurs, playing fundamentally sound defense against LaMarcus Aldridge and playing with the toughness and athleticism the Warriors knew was there all along.
And there he was in Game 1 against the New Orleans Pelicans, posting a game-best +34 plus/minus in just 24 minutes.
As the Rockets series approached, Looney traced his breakout performance in these playoffs to the work he put in when no one was watching.
After two hip surgeries, and with his Warriors career increasingly murky, he spent last summer back at UCLA at something of a basketball bootcamp.
From July through early September, Looney teamed with a taskmaster named Rico Hines. A former Bruins player himself, Hines was the Warriors’ player/ athletic development assistant from 2006-10 under then-head coach Don Nelson.
Now, he runs offseason workouts in a UCLA gym. Hines — like Nelson — likes to push the tempo. So he put Looney through drills with an emphasis on a full-court sweat.
“When I got him, he wasn’t in that good a shape, to be honest with you,” Hines said by phone
this week. “He hadn’t really been doing anything.”
Hines ensured that Looney made up for lost time by putting him through long hours. The main activity each day was a starstudded, full-court pickup game featuring the likes of LeBron James, as well as the Rockets’ James Harden, Chris Paul and Trevor Ariza.
But Hines also arrived early with Looney and guided him through strength-and-conditioning drills. Then Hines stayed with Looney afterward and they worked on his
shooting touch.
The thing that impressed Hines the most during these grueling sessions? Looney didn’t complain.
“Never,” Hines said. “I ain’t ever heard him complain about anything, ever. Whenever you asked him to do something, he did it.
“He really wants to be good. People don’t understand that he’s really young. He only played one year of college and he was hurt. You know what I mean? He’s a young kid who really understands the game. … I think the
sky’s the limit for him. I think he can really, really be special because he has a lot of skills.”
Looney can complain at least a little bit now: He said Thursday that his strict summer diet was a challenge. He went from eating whatever he wanted — which is to say, Taco Bell — to picking out fresh veggies. With an additional push from Warriors veteran Andre Iguodala, Looney also hired a personal chef who steered him away from chalupas and toward broccoli and chicken breasts. Looney
said Thursday that he lost 20 pounds within a month.
“I credit Rico a lot,” he said. “He pushed me hard throughout the summertime.”
There was a time when it all looked easy for Looney. As a senior at Alexander Hamilton High School in Milwaukee, he averaged nearly a quadruple double — 27.9 points, 12.7 rebounds, 7.0 assists and 8.0 blocks per game.
“He was so long and so skilled and smart,” said Tom Diener, now the head coach at Cedarburg High and a man with five Wisconsin state titles to his credit. “He played everywhere on the floor, from point guard to center, and he pretty much dominated. He’s always been a really unselfish, smart player. Never took a bad shot.”
That’s the player David Grace recruited hard, first as an assistant at Oregon State and later at UCLA after Steve Alford added him to the Bruins staff.
Looney was the first player Grace ever recruited for UCLA, and it was a stiff competition. Duke wanted him. So did Michigan State.
Still, Grace figured he had an edge.
” I knew he loved LA,” he said. “And being from Milwaukee, he had to be able to go to a spot where he could thaw out and enjoy the weather.”
Looney played only one season at UCLA, averaging 11.6 points, 9.2 rebounds and shooting 47 percent from the floor. But he also showed signs that there were better days ahead.
“He had some hip issues and he fought through those things,” Grace said. “He never complained one time. Not one time did he complain. We knew he was hurt, but he never used that as an excuse.”
Looney fell to the Warriors with the 30th pick in the 2015 draft because of concerns about a lingering hip issue, as well as general rawness.
But Looney was also only 19 at the time of the draft, making him the ninth-youngest player taken in the first round. The Warriors took him because they could afford to be patient with his recovery and growth — after all, they were loaded.
“They had all the talent in the world, so they nurtured him,” Grace said. “Some teams would have tried to force him to do things because of the need.”
Now, at long last, Looney is dusting off some of those all-around skills that once made him one of the most prized prep recruits in the country.
Potential free-agent bidders might want to listen up: Looney might finally be on the rise at age 22.
“I’ve been saying this for so long: He’s going to be somewhat of a latebloomer because his body needs to catch up with his abilities,” Diener, his high school coach, said by phone Thursday. “And I think you’re starting to see that happen now. He’s still probably four or five years away from being the player that he’s ultimately going to become.”