Both his face and his basketball are deceiving. The first would deny, in the sight of anyone, that he is only 26 years old. The second would deny, by the intelligence shown, exactly the same thing. Although perhaps that double track has a good explanation with Kevon Looney (Milwaukee, 1996): he has been able to live several races in one, to the point of giving him time to get lost and find himself several times along the way.
“I think he is very undervalued by everyone,” said Steve Kerr, coach of the Warriors, just a few weeks ago, denouncing the lack of focus on his center, key to the success of Golden State. “He is the definitive professional, he gives us enormous stability,” insisted a Kerr who is usually clinical with what he says and how he says it. In the final series he averaged 7.6 rebounds and six points.
In public perception, Looney is just a secondary on the Warriors. But behind the curtain there is much more. He is not only “one of the most respected guys in the locker room”, as several colleagues have reiterated on multiple occasions, but he acts as a balancing piece within a team that, living clinging to the vertigo and creative impulse of its nuclear piece (Stephen Curry), requires security points for that glow to be lethal. Just as no skyscraper would rise so tall without a good foundation.
Looney is defensive versatility – capable of containing any rival assignment, inside or outside –, solidity in the dark work of attack – efficient in the pass and exceptional putting blocks that free his shooters – and lifesaver in rebounding. It is in this last section, in fact, where he has most impressed this season. His work with the Serbian coach Dejan Milojevic, landed in the franchise last summer and with a past in Spain (specifically in Valencia) during his time as a player, has notably increased his performance under the boards.
Milojevic transferred to Looney an old technique used by Dennis Rodman, one of the best rebounders in history, which consisted of studying hundreds of shot trajectories in order to anticipate where the ball might go. Both in close and far launches, with little or a lot of arc and depending on their angles. “There are many people who think that the rebound is just a matter of desire,” explained Milojevic himself to journalist Marcus Thompson. “But that’s not enough.” Rebounding, at elite levels, is also a science.
In reality, Looney didn’t seem designed for all of this, to level out big structures or serve as a counterpoint to differential talent. For a time what was expected, in fact, was that he acted as that decisive piece. At the age of 16, without going any further, dozens of scouts came to his native Milwaukee, week after week, to check if that popular narrative was true, if the next Kevin Durant was there. Exceeding two meters, he had an insulting facility for any section of the game, especially the creative one. And he moved like a feline, which added to the staging of an appositional monster, perfect for new-age basketball. Looney gave off a futuristic scent.
That boy, with a brilliant academic profile, was offered a Harvard and Yale scholarship. But also a few basketball programs of the highest national relevance, such as Duke, Florida or Michigan State. But who would finally get the pearl would be UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
There everything would begin to change. During training in the summer of 2014, with some of his new teammates, Looney received a painful blow to the hip after Isaac Hamilton fell on him. He was unable to run for several weeks, even having difficulty walking. His high pain threshold and desire to compete kept him from being short, but from then on he was never going to be the same.
Its lateral displacement was reduced to ashes, also limiting the changes of direction and making, in short, that that prodigy without position became something much more ordinary. So when his name was made to wait on the night of draft of 2015 (he was chosen in the thirtieth position, largely due to doubts about his physique), the serious countenance he had was only softened by the wise words of his mother, Victoria, there present with him. “Son, you don’t need everyone to believe in you, it’s enough for one person to do it for you to show them what you’re worth,” she pointed out.
Looney had gone, in not too long, from being one of the most promising talents in the world to being just another one. But his fall hadn’t even hit the ground. In the middle of that summer (2015) he underwent surgery on his right hip, the one that had bothered him so much a year before. And shortly after returning, when he began to exercise, another setback would force him to go through the operating room again, where he would be operated on for the same ailment in the other hip.
The doctors explained that he suffered from structural abnormalities that caused problems in his hips, something very difficult to understand for a boy who, at the age of 20, had seen his dream vanish too quickly. In the end, he had exchanged his aspirations for glory for prostheses that complicated even his daily life. Something as simple as getting out of a vehicle for Looney was a nightmare.
A fellow veteran, Andre Iguodala, came to the rescue. He helped him change his diet and take extreme care of his physical preparation, learning to live with ailments that, already chronic, had limited his physical abilities and altered his profile as a player. His brain, however, was still there. Just as clairvoyant. And from there he built his revival.
The best season of Looney’s career has peaked these playoffs, where he has left decisive performances against the Grizzlies or Mavericks, consecrating himself as an essential piece, almost cult, in an exceptional team already one win away from the title (the sixth game against Boston in a series that dominates Golden State 3-2, at 3:00 on Friday the 17th, at the Garden). Even so, his true value, the one that defines him the most and best, remains hidden almost always behind the numerical, only being observed through how he improves the rest when he is by his side. Automatically, almost by inertia.
And it is actually that, speaking of a collective sport, the ideal virtue.
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