Kevon Looney, the power of experience

The Warriors were all smiles after a “surprise” win in Cleveland to end their trip. Steve Kerr’s various “role players” around Jordan Poole gave the building blocks for their third success in five away games and Kevon Looney He did his part with 4 points, 17 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks.

Throughout the seasons, whether leading to the championship or more complex training, the pivot has been able to meet expectations and continue to progress towards a successful 2021/22 episode on an individual and collective level.

Selected teachers

While he’s now part of the Warriors’ “hard core,” Kevon Looney acknowledged the contribution of his seniors throughout his journey.

“I’ve had a lot of great veterans in my career, a lot of great mentors that I can learn from. I had a hard time at first, but all these challenges helped me prepare for today. When I’m on the field, I’m just trying to bring that leadership and toughness that we sometimes lack to our team. It took me a long time to learn all that (laughs), but now that I’ve learned, gained experience and gained confidence, I feel really good on the court and I feel like I’m playing the best basketball of my career. “he declared.

Pivot specifically pointed to Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut and Zaza Pachulia as key players who helped shape his game, while also having three-subject expert Kevon Looney to pay more attention to the small details as well as the small vice shots. to go forward.

“You just get experience, you do the same things over and over again, like learning where players like to be on the court, learning their preferred places, how to recover shots from certain people, knowing where they’re going to go. Those are the things I learned from them, and they’re the best I’ve ever known. are good screeners. So learning from them has allowed me to reach this level.”he added.

The importance of never giving up

All these years of watching and learning have shaped him technically as well as mentally.

“I learned how to stay calm and overcome difficulties (laughs). I had the opportunity to experience a lot of tough playoff games, a lot of ups and downs in the playoffs. And I learned that if a team makes a series, it’s not the end of the world. If you’re down 3-1, 2-1, it’s not the end of the world. You can come back. Various things like that. I learned from playing with these guys and watching them go from strength to strength to never give up. In the 2018 series against Houston, we were down 15 points at halftime and nobody was worried, everybody just kept fighting and playing our style of basketball. And that’s what I learned: trusting the process, your system, your teammates on and off the field can really take you a long way.”

As the Warriors endured a difficult first stretch of the season marked by a lack of road wins, the pointers he continues to apply today are only starting to trend in the right direction.

“Obviously it helps in a season like this where there’s a lot of ups and downs. We just trust our culture and what we’ve built, we know that if we play our style of basketball, it works. I rely on it.”he continued. “Once we started playing team basketball, focusing on what brought us here, we started losing. But when you have experience winning, you know what to do and start going back to the basics. We have to do it. We did that on this road trip, and I think that’s why we won.”