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Kevon Looney of the Golden State Warriors shoots the ball against Steven Adams of the Houston Rockets defends during the first quarter in Game 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals.
Kevon Looney found it easy to leave the Golden State Warriors, even though their championship window is still open.
The now-former Dubs center, who signed with the New Orleans Pelicans this off-season, shared why it was time to depart the Bay Area on the Warriors Plus Minus podcast.
Looney, a member of three championship teams since the Warriors chose him with the final first-round pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, averaged 4.5 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.6 assists while averaging 15 minutes per game last season. He played 76 games with the Warriors but started just six.
The 29-year-old inked a two-year, $16 million contract with New Orleans, leaving after playing 599 games with the Warriors and averaging five points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists.
What Did Kevon Looney Say About Leaving The Warriors?
The star-studded Warriors advanced to the second round of the NBA playoffs for the third time in the past four seasons and are only three years removed from their last NBA title.
Still, Looney felt things changing, especially with his role and in contract negotiations.
“The last few years everything’s been changing,” Looney said. “My minutes are always up and down. I don’t know how they really view me or what they’re really going to offer.
“With the Warriors, it can vary from the mid-level [exception] to the [veteran] minimum. That’s a big difference.”
Looney completed consecutive contracts with the Dubs signed under Bird rights, including his most recent three-year, $22.5 million contract. He confirmed the Warriors had asked him to wait until after free agency had started in previous years but couldn’t afford to this time around.
“I wanted to control my own destiny,” Looney said. “I know how they like to negotiate, how they like to do business. It was going to be a low-ball [offer] probably to start at. If I could find nothing else to start at, if there was no other money out there, I knew I would have to take it.”
When he told Warriors brass about the Pelicans’ offer, which was the highest annual-average value of his career, Looney could see they were content to let him leave.
“Once the deal happened, there wasn’t any ‘we can offer you this or whatever,’ they were just like ‘congrats,’” Looney said. “It kind of felt like, alright they’re not going to top [the Pelicans’ offer].”
When Did Kevon Looney Feel Things Change?
Though Steph Curry has remained the constant in the Warriors organization, Looney was also a fixture.
Yet, when asked when things began to change, Looney cited an example from this season’s playoffs against the Houston Rockets, where he averaged just nine minutes per game.
“It was no one moment,” Looney said. “This year, we were going against [Houston center] Steven Adams, they [were] not giving me the chance to do what I do.
“I was like ‘alright, y’all don’t trust me. I thought y’all trust me. Y’all don’t think I’m really that good anymore?’ They put me in at the end of Game 7. Why did we have to get to that point?”
Pat Pickens is an experienced sports writer and media personality who has written for outlets like NHL.com, the Associated Press, the New York Times and USA Today. He covers the NFL, NBA, NHL and NBA as a breaking news contributor at Heavy. More about Pat Pickens
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