\n<\/p>\n
SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The day before Kevon Looney produced the best game of his professional career, he sat in a hallway at Chase Center in San Francisco, thinking about the way his role had changed since Golden State drafted him in 2015.<\/p>\n
This was a team known for its smaller lineups; that\u2019s how it had won a championship that year. At 6-foot-9, and despite a wingspan of more than seven feet, Looney was considered undersized.<\/p>\n
Looney chuckled at the thought, then he considered it a little bit more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league\u2019s kind of changed, and now I\u2019m more the traditional center now in the N.B.A.,\u201d Looney said, as he thought about the way people sometimes talk about Golden State. \u201cSo it kind of is weird to me. Sometimes it feels like a slap in the face when they\u2019re like, \u2018They don\u2019t have any size.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looney typically is not the most talked-about member of the Warriors. He was drafted less than two weeks after Golden State won its first championship with Steve Kerr as coach, and was part of the team for four consecutive appearances in the N.B.A. finals and two championships. After overcoming early injury woes, he became a critical part of Golden State\u2019s roster, and this year was one of only five players leaguewide to play in all 82 regular-season games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In the playoffs this year, Golden State has been able to count on him. He didn\u2019t start in Games 1 through 5 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies, then started and grabbed 22 rebounds in the Game 6 win that clinched the series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
On Friday night in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Mavericks, Looney scored 21 points with 12 rebounds in the 126-117 comeback win. It was the first time since his only season at U.C.L.A. that he had scored more than 20 points in a game. It was also the first time a Warriors center had scored 20 points with at least 10 rebounds in the playoffs since 1977.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see the work that he\u2019s put in to make that a reality,\u201d Golden State guard Stephen Curry said. \u201cNow, in the playoffs, just taking that next step. He brings a lot of joy to what we do in the locker room. I\u2019ll call him, like, the muse in the locker room. He kind of just has a great demeanor about him. He\u2019s the bridge between the vets and the young guys. Pretty awesome to see him adapt to that role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr called Looney \u201ceverybody\u2019s favorite guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forward Draymond Green called him a master of professionalism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThe same professional he is today, he was when he came in the league,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n
Looney may have projected professionalism and levelheadedness to Green, but the truth was that when Looney was drafted, he was a wide-eyed 19-year-old just trying not to break anything.<\/p>\n
This team was riding high after its championship, and his job was to fit in, not to stand out. As the only rookie, he didn\u2019t have anyone with common experiences to talk to about what that was like and what he should do.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely was intimidating,\u201d Looney said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That July, he was in Las Vegas after playing in the N.B.A.\u2019s Summer League tournament, where teams field rosters of their young players and N.B.A. hopefuls. The veterans on his team were in Las Vegas for a players\u2019 union awards show, and one night Andre Iguodala texted, asking him to bring over some doughnuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like 1 in the morning,\u201d Looney said, laughing. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know if he was serious. First day, I\u2019m already scared. I don\u2019t want to mess up on my first day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He attended the awards show, but when the team went up onstage together, he said he was too shy to join them. That shyness persisted during the early part of the season as the team went 24-0 on its way to an N.B.A.-record 73 wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey used to joke that I didn\u2019t talk for the first six months,\u201d Looney said.<\/p>\n
In addition to requesting doughnut deliveries at 1 a.m., Iguodala took Looney under his wing and helped him adapt. Green would invite Looney to spend time with him just to make him feel more comfortable in this new setting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That helped in the locker room, but Looney would experience other challenges. He had hip surgery before his rookie year began. Then he had another hip injury in his second season.<\/p>\n
Looney had never missed a game in college or high school, and called the injuries \u201cdevastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what we had,\u201d Kerr said, noting that the team did not pick up Looney\u2019s contract option for a fourth season because he had not played much. He continued: \u201cAnd then his third year he has a great year, it\u2019s like, uh oh, we might lose this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Looney was keenly aware of the questions the organization had about him, but he took solace in the support from his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways got the respect from my teammates, and that made me keep going, that made me feel good about myself and know that I\u2019m doing the right thing,\u201d Looney said. \u201cEven if the fans \u2014 you might have a bad game, the fans might say you\u2019re not good enough, somebody might say you\u2019re not good enough \u2014 but when you\u2019ve got your teammates saying, like, \u2018Man I don\u2019t care what the stat lines say, I want to be out there with Loon,\u2019 it\u2019s a great honor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looney was inactive throughout the playoffs for his first two seasons. But in his third season, he began to have a significant role for the Warriors and contributed to their 2017-18 championship run. He often defended the best players.<\/p>\n
Now 26, he\u2019s a veteran on a team that has incorporated young guys who are experiencing their first playoff runs. Looney knows what that felt like and tries to help guide them through the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
And if Golden State wins another championship this year, it will feel a little bit more special, given his contributions.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make an impact, and start a lot of these games, playoff games, be there for the team, have some big roles in playoff moments, this\u2019ll mean a lot to me,\u201d Looney said. \u201cIt\u2019ll just be kind of like the cherry on top to be able to close it out and win and be there for my team.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The day before Kevon Looney produced the best game of his professional career, he sat in a hallway at Chase Center in San Francisco, thinking about the way his role had changed since Golden State drafted him in 2015. This was a team known for its smaller lineups; that\u2019s how it had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[608,324,227,3135,665,3136,228],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15586,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15584\/revisions\/15586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}