SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green’s pending return to the Warriors comes with plenty of questions.
Has he mended the trust he broke when he punched Jordan Poole last week in practice? Can Green find a balance between competitive fire and anger? Are his Warriors teammates OK with his return?
Steve Kerr fielded some of those questions Tuesday night with hints of uncertainty after announcing that Green would rejoin his teammates Thursday.
But he spoke with profound conviction when it came to Kevon Looney’s leadership in what Kerr called the biggest crisis he’s faced during his Warriors tenure.
“Loon is incredible,” Kerr said. “This guy has so much wisdom. He’s so quiet that if you don’t pay attention, you may not realize he’s become the moral compass of our team. A special human being. Special. And he was a key instrument in everything we have done the last week to try to get things back on track. I’ll ride with Loon forever. This is a special man.”
Looney’s evolution from a quiet “church mouse,” as Kerr put it, to the Warriors’ guiding light became clear amid this crisis with Green. He became a leader somewhat under the radar, over time.
Looney has undergone surgeries, suffered from a mysterious illness and been pushed to the back of the bench — only to become a key player in the Warriors’ dynasty, starting must-win games in the NBA Finals. Few players have seen such highs and lows.
That ride yields perspective.
“Loon is such a level-headed guy. He’s like the rock of the team,” Moses Moody said. “I imagine he was instrumental in this decision.”
Looney is not much older than the “young core” at just 26 years old, but he’s wise in experience. It was only natural that Looney step up, along with Steph Curry, to put the pieces of a broken and untrusting locker room back into place.
In the team’s decision to allow Green back ahead of the final preseason game Friday night, Looney was a bridge between the locker room and higher-ups, especially with all the younger players that make up nearly half of the Warriors’ roster.
“I’ve just been communicating a lot with everybody,” Looney said Tuesday before Kerr announced that Green would return to practice. “I know a lot of times when something happens, everybody has an opinion, but a lot of guys don’t want to say it because everybody is new. Just being able to give guys the freedom to speak, ask everybody how they feel and what’s going on.”
Four titles and Curry’s international superstardom brings a spotlight onto the organization that sometimes gets harsh. Not long ago, the Warriors and Green were at the center of controversies involving Kevin Durant’s free agency tension and very public sideline fights that broke out because of it.
Looney has been on this ride before, but in different shoes. He remembers asking questions and talking through the drama — some known to the public, some not — with Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and, yes, Green.
“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had things go on and we had great veterans, they all came to talk to everybody,” Looney said. “Everybody was able to get their opinion. When you give your opinion, you feel like you matter. Like you’re a part of something.
“And that’s my job is to go around and make sure that everybody knows what’s going on and get a pulse on the locker room. Not be the voice for them, but speak up for the guys who have an opinion but don’t feel comfortable yet. I’ll be the guy that says, ‘OK, if that’s how you feel, I can go talk to them if you want me to do it.' ”
It isn’t just Looney’s teammates and Kerr who see his leadership transformation. He quietly saw it in himself, even at his lowest. In 2019, when doctors couldn’t diagnose his random pains and strains on the court (later diagnosed as a neuropathic condition) his family and friends started to question if Looney’s basketball career was worth the pain.
“My friends had doubt. I think some of my family even had doubt, but I didn’t have doubt,” Looney said. “I was upset, disappointed, but I was never in doubt (thinking) I couldn’t make it back. I started my career with injuries, but I was playing on one of the best teams ever. I knew I belonged out there. Once I got that confidence — if I can play with these guys, I can play anywhere.”
All those years of injury rehab turned Looney into a gym rat. He’s become the first to arrive and last to leave the weight room. Anyone arriving at the gym after 8 a.m. will see Looney posted up in the corner of the practice facility doing Joga — a more physical form of yoga — before the day begins.
Looney is always there. It’s how he earned his job as the team DJ, an unofficial job he parlayed into an internship at Warner Records this summer. Once retirement starts creeping into his brain, Looney hopes to get into the music business. Not as a musician — he can’t rap or sing, he says — but with a goal to own his own label one day. For now, at least, he owns the auxiliary cord in their Chase Center locker room. A job he’s held since he was a rookie.
“I kinda just took it,” Looney said. “I earned that role and did a decent job enough that people didn’t complain.”
Through music, he’s learned to read the room. If he’s with fellow Milwaukee natives like Poole and Patrick Baldwin Jr., he can play something new, or maybe an artist with Chicago ties like Lil Durk. If he’s sharing a locker room with 19-year veteran Iguodala, he can’t turn on any new music. Back when Looney was the youngest player on the team with the auxiliary cord responsibility, he stuck to oldie playlists only.
“If I play any new music, Andre be talking crazy, like ‘What is this you’re playing?' ” Looney said. “You have to know your crowd.”
For how much this Warriors locker room changes, celebrates and, conversely, endures crises like this current one as they hope to repeat as NBA champions, Looney knows what tune to strike with this crowd. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but this time he took the reins. It was only right.
How will the Warriors move on from this? Looney thinks this crisis can make them stronger.
“When you’ve been through wars and you’ve been through adversity, it makes that bond that much closer and tougher to break apart. We’ve seen guys in their darkest days and guys in their best days,” he said.
“We’ve been through hard times and we never folded before. So we won’t fold now.”
